by Aman Gupta
“That’s a harsh accusation to make,” said Anthony.
“Sorry, it’s my personal opinion. I do think you, Mr. Daulton, sir, are legendary,” said Sam.
“That wasn’t what I was saying,” said Anthony. “Perhaps, you should spend a little time getting some fresh air.”
“I agree,” Sarah said.
“Of course,” said Sam.
She rushed out of the back door as the entire hall, filled with students, watched.
Anthony put down the mic as Victor Daulton looked at him.
“Great, now wait at the entrance,” said Jay.
“Why?” asked Sam.
“There’s this Verati bodyguard doing his rounds with 3-4 others,” said Jay. “I’ve been monitoring him for few minutes. He’ll leave soon for couple of minutes. That’s our window.”
“How do you know he’s Verati? Maybe he’s a campus guard,” said Sam.
“No, he’s different. Also, never seen him before,” said Jay. “Get ready. You have to run towards the back exit in 20 seconds.”
“Okay,” said Sam.
Jay managed to successfully loop the camera feed. He and Sam met near the server building.
“Oh my god, that was crazy,” said Sam.
“I had fun,” said Jay.
Sam smiled as she tilted her head. They entered the building through a vent near the backdoor.
“How do you know about this?” asked Sam.
“I saw this once. Always wondered where it led to,” said Jay.
“If I die today, I’m killing you first,” said Sam.
“The only reason we are here is because you couldn’t keep your fingers in your pockets,” said Jay.
“I am sorry you have to go through this,” said Sam.
“Here, we use this duct above us to cross the corridor. Look there. This duct turns right, directly into the server room,” said Jay.
“What’s the duct for?” asked Sam.
“Maybe water. I don’t know, but looks safe,” said Jay.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go in there,” said Sam. “I am not sure we’ll make it.”
“We have no choice now. Either way, we’ll have to reset the surveillance system. So why not do what we came here to do?” said Jay.
“Okay,” said Sam.
Jay lifted her while she unscrewed the vent. He helped her enter the vent and then pulled himself up. They started crawling forward, on all four, unaware whether the vent will be able to hold their weight.
“Stop staring,” said Sam.
“What?” asked Jay.
“The only reason who entered after me so that you could stare at my ass,” joked Sam.
“Well, it is your best part,” said Jay.
“Shut up,” said Sam.
“Don’t flatter yourself. Who am I, Jack? Keep moving,” said Jay.
“Who’s Jack?” asked Sam.
“Your boyfriend from your class,” said Jay.
“How do you know about that?” asked Sam.
“Always assume I know everything,” said Jay.
“Well, it’s not a serious relationship,” said Sam.
“Why? Because I liked your ass. Give that guy a chance,” joked Jay.
“Oh, don’t flatter yourself,” said Sam.
“Then why?” asked Jay.
“We want different things in life,” said Sam. “He wants to be rich and famous, and I want..”
“Me?” said Jay.
Sam laughed. “Keep dreaming.”
“And you keep telling yourself that,” said Jay.
Sam stopped.
“Why did you stop?” asked Jay.
“No, nothing. I was just thinking something,” said Sam.
“Well, use your brain and multitask. It’s your best thing,” said Jay.
“I thought my ass was my best thing,” said Sam.
“Having stared at it for almost two minutes now, I am no longer a fan. You know what they say – some things are better left to imagination,” said Jay. “Take a right here. No point going straight.”
“God, I hope we die. Only thing I ask is I get to see you suffer,” said Sam.
“I’m not a fan of showing emotions. So you wouldn’t know even if I suffer while dying,” said Jay
“Can’t let me have even that…” said Sam before being interrupted.
“Shhh..Listen! Someone’s here,” said Jay.
“Where?” whispered Sam.
“Below us, few yards ahead,” mouthed Jay. “Stop moving or he’ll hear.”
They stopped moving and decided to wait for few minutes to see if the person left.
“He’s not leaving,” whispered Sam.
“Must be a guard,” whispered Jay.
“What now?” whispered Sam.
“I go back and distract him, while you go forward and delete logs from the server,” whispered Jay.
“It’s a suicide mission. If you get caught, you’ll be expelled or worse,” said Sam.
“It was always a risk. I knew this when we entered the vent,” said Jay.
“So that’s why,” whispered Sam. “No, it’s not worth it. Not to me.”
“We don’t have a choice,” said Jay.
“Unless..” uttered Sam.
“What?” asked Jay.
“We do the drunk couple,” said Sam.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“We play a drunk couple who entered this building to have fun..you know..kissing and stuff. He comes closer to break us up and then we knock him out. You see where I’m going?” said Sam.
“Yes, the name is self-explanatory. But how does it help us? This mission of ours only works if it’s a stealth mission. A knocked-out bodyguard is not exactly the best way to accomplish it,” said Jay.
“Well, I can’t imagine any other way,” said Sam.
“Well, stop imagining. There’s one,” said Jay.
“No, I already said we’re not doing that,” said Sam.
“Ok fine. There’s one other way,” said Jay.
“What?” asked Sam.
“We point his attention to the opened vent,” said Jay. “But it’s risky.”
“What’s the risk?” asked Sam.
“If he’s an idiot, he looks inside the duct and doesn’t see us and closes the vent again. If he’s smart, he runs an all systems check,” said Jay.
“What All Systems Check?” asked Sam.
“Seeing this crawl space, I think we are in the liquid nitrogen cooling duct, which explains why it leads to the server room. No doubt created for a worst case scenario like fire or invasion. We don’t know how much time we have till we find a wide opening to get out of this duct, or if there’s any. So in that case, we are likely to die,” said Jay.
“That’s a terrible plan. For all we know, he could be the world’s most thorough guard,” said Sam.
They heard a second voice getting louder every second.
“Great, now, we have two guards,” said Jay.
“Maybe they’re switching positions,” said Sam.
“New plan,” Jay said after a few seconds.
“What plan?” asked Sam.
“We move forward,” said Jay.
“Why?” asked Sam.
“I think they just left. Maybe Daultons are leaving soon. Anyways, let’s hurry,” said Jay.
They moved forward for another hundred meters before finding a vent underneath. Jay and Sam kicked the vent repeatedly, as it broke and landed 20 feet below on the floor. Jay jumped first and landed awkwardly on his ankle. Sam jumped on his back while he laid on the floor.
“Thanks for the cushion,” said Sam.
“Great, no need to worry about my ankle anymore. Pretty sure won’t be able to get up now anyways,” said Jay. “What are you? 200 pounds?”
“I’m 120,” said Sam.
“Are you sure? My back says differently,” said Jay.
“Hurry up. We need to find a terminal,” said Sam.
“You go right a
head, I think I’ll just lay here for a while,” said Jay.
Sam ran from the back of the room towards the front, to find a terminal. After searching for a minute, she found one that was already logged in. “Finally some luck,” said Sam.
It took her a few minutes but she finally managed to delete her logs. She ran back towards Jay, who had gotten up by helping himself towards a nearby abandoned server rack.
“What now?” asked Sam.
“My back’s fine, thank you for asking,” said Jay.
“Don’t be such a crybaby,” said Sam. “How do we leave? It’s almost 15 feet high,” said Sam.
“Relax, this server rack is about 10 feet,” said Jay.
They somehow managed to get back into the duct crawl space.
“Round 2,” said Jay.
“What?” asked Sam.
“Nothing. Lot funnier in my head. Just keep moving. You know the way, right?” said Jay.
Sam smiled. They managed to get out of the duct and the building before the guards returned.
“Now, the hard part,” said Jay. “Getting back into the surveillance room to restore the cameras.”
“Just tell me what to do, I’ll do it. You should head back to the dorm,” said Sam.
“I’ll be fine. Let’s go,” said Jay.
They ran back to the back exit of the seminar hall building.
The seminar was still happening, the entire campus was empty.
“There are guards everyone. What are we doing to do now?” asked Sam.
Jay showed her a keycard.
“I swiped this from the surveillance floor. We just need to get to the elevators,” said Jay. “There’s that guy again.”
“What guy?” asked Sam. “That massive beast standing near the elevators?”
“Yes, looks like he’s doing his rounds again. Hurry, we need to go to the room on the left. He usually exits the building from where we are standing right now. Follow me,” said Jay.
They tip-toed half way while pattering the rest, as they got to the room. As the guy walked by, they exited the room and ran for the elevators. They got off on the floor just below the surveillance room and decided to take the stairs to the floor above. After finding a guard posted near the elevators, Jay and Sam smiled looking at each other after having made the right decision.
When the guard was looking the opposite way, they ran towards the main work floor. They played hide and seek with the four guards posted near the surveillance center room, hiding behind the desks and chairs arranged in dense rows. Jay used the keycard to open the room. As soon as they opened the door, an engineer was walking towards it.
“Where are the guys?” asked the engineer.
“Busy. That’s why we have been sent here,” said Jay.
“Well, do you want me to run the backup now or later when they are here?” asked the engineer.
“No, I think it would be better if we did it when the regular guys got here. We are just temp here,” said Sam.
“Fine, guess I’ll come back later,” said the engineer.
“See ya,” said Sam as she leered towards him.
The engineer blushed and exited the room.
“See, there are some things you cannot do alone,” said Sam. Jay rolled his eyes.
“There’s a problem now, though,” said Jay. “Once we reset the loop, this floor’s cameras will capture our movements.”
“Reset all the cameras except this floor’s. We place a delay timer on the cameras we need to make to the main entrance,” said Sam.
“How do I do that?” asked Jay.
“Move over,” said Sam.
She started working on the system.
“What are you doing?” asked Jay.
She explained, “I wrote a program called Night Sparrow that takes over the system’s operations for a certain amount of time. Once that expires, it restores the operations and self-destructs. No one’s the wiser.”
“Untraceable?” asked Jay.
“Yes. Well no, it generates some random chunks of files which are unparsable without the program. They aren’t detected by any firewall or a Trojan scanner. So yes, it’s untraceable since no one’s going to be looking for some random files in an operation of a large scale like this,” she said.
“That’s awesome,” said Jay, proudly. Sam smiled.
Jay, meanwhile, observed the cameras to see the movements. He noticed that Brianca was back on stage, delivering the closing address.
“Looks like they’re about to finish,” said Jay.
“All cameras are restored. The program is almost done loading,” said Sam.
“Look there. That guy’s now busy standing behind Victor Daulton and Anthony Arnold. We can take the elevators,” said Jay.
“It’s done. I got us 60 seconds. Any longer, the program might not self-destruct in time,” said Sam.
They saw on one of the screens that the floor’s elevator was no longer manned by a guard. Sam started a timer on her watch.
Jay and Sam exited the door and crawled towards the elevator. After a few close calls, they managed to get to the elevator in the final few seconds. They got off on the ground floor and joined the crowd which was exiting the hall. They went different ways, to regroup later at the dorm.
In the evening, Jay was resting on the bed in Sam and Brianca’s room, when Sam entered.
“Where’s O’Donnell?” asked Sam.
“She just left. Apparently, they loved her speech today,” said Jay.
“One time she says something nice and we aren’t around to hear it,” said Sam, as she sat on the side of the bed.
“Don’t worry, she said they recorded it. You better get ready for many viewings as a roommate,” joked Jay. Sam laughed.
“Thank you for what you did today,” said Sam.
“That’s what friends are for,” said Jay. “I’m sure you would’ve done the same for me.” He smiled.
“Jack and I broke up,” said Sam.
“I’m sorry,” said Jay as he sat up and hugged Sam from behind.
“Actually, I broke up with him,” said Sam, as they stopped hugging.
“Why?” asked Jay.
“Felt like the right thing to do,” said Sam.
“Don’t worry, me and Brianca will find you a new one.”
Sam replied, “I don’t think I need more friends. Today I realized that you two are the only people I want around me, you know.”
“Oh my god, you’re heartbroken,” said Jay, as he made a shocked face.
Sam laughed.
“See, this is what I’m talking about. You get me. With Jake, it was hard work. This, what we have, that’s easy. I want easy,” said Sam.
“Jack,” said Jay.
“What?” asked Sam.
“Your ex’s name is Jack. You just said Jake,” said Jay.
“Did I? Oh my god!” exclaimed Sam. “Is it bad that I don’t care enough to remember?”
“As much as I want to say yes, I’m pretty sure you want me to say no. So, no,” Jay said.
“Do you think one day we can be more than just friends? I mean, I don’t like you that way, yet. But you get me more than my own parents, if that makes any sense,” asked Sam.
“I’m pretty bad when it comes to relationships, so I don’t want to screw this one. Right now, we both need each other, but as a friend,” said Jay.
“I agree,” said Sam as she smiled looking at Jay.
“I never asked. How’s your ankle and back?” asked Sam.
“Fine now. Got a magic potion from a guy,” said Jay.
“What guy?” asked Sam.
“I do have guy friends, Sam. Not my fault that all girls like me,” said Jay.
“Brag much? I doubt you’ll get another girl to like you. One day, you’ll come back running to me, and I’ll be sure to say I told you so,” said Sam.
“Brianca said the same thing about you,” said Jay.
Sam grabbed a pillow and smacked it on Jay’s face.
“Round 2,” he said, as he grabbed another pillow.
CHAPTER 9: OBLOQUY
Eric, Kate, Emma, Joey and Vik went to West Gate, a town of 10,000 people, which was the first one out of the 5 in the county, to propose nominating a mayor. Before that, the county didn’t have a mayor for over 7 years. West Gate lied towards the west of the county, almost 50 miles from Morrow and nearly the same from New Bay, while Morrow was the south corner. West Gate occupied a big area in the county though most of it was a dense forest that went as far as New Bay.
Unlike Morrow Town, which had the look of a city with apartment buildings; wide, developed roads and a distant community, West Gate was more like living in suburbs. Bigger homes, just a couple of buildings in the entire town, and a close community which had each other’s back. Almost everyone knew the other’s name. The roads were much narrower. The locals loved the old school feeling of the town, even though the median age was around 35 years.
Eric, Kate and Joey drove together in Eric’s car while Emma and Vik went together in Emma’s car. The roads were bad, the travel was worse. The tortuous roads through the mountains made the journey bittersweet. Eric had never been to West Gate but knew its reputation of being hostile towards cops. Vik and Emma were giving each the cold shoulder, before Vik relented.
“Fine, I’m sorry,” said Vik.
“Sorry for what?” asked Emma.
“Whatever that I did, that has got you fulminating against my presence,” said Vik.
“Well, it’s not so much as you did. But what you want to do is why I’m mad at you,” said Emma.
“And what’s that?” asked Vik.
“Kill Jenna..Kate.. in cold blood,” said Emma.
Vik laughed.
“What’s so funny?” asked Emma.
“Who told you that?” asked Vik.
“You did,” said Emma.
“No, I didn’t. Everyone is thinking a lot about this, except me and Kate, the only two people who are actually involved,” said Vik.
“So, you are not going to kill her?” asked Emma.
“No, she’s going to help me..” said Vik, before turning mute.
“Help you what?” asked Emma.
“Not important right now,” said Vik.
“Do you need any help? If you do, you could’ve asked me, you know,” said Emma.
“If plan A fails, I might need it, but I hope I don’t,” said Vik.