by P. S. Power
Katie had also gotten the combination, so that probably wouldn’t be needed. It was why he, and not Brian, was the one going in. If there was a problem, he might be able to get into the thing before getting caught. That wasn’t all of it though, since apparently, he was faster in his transition into a place than the other guy was. Brian might be kept out by the Infected kid’s field, being too slow. Howard was getting inside, as long as he got to the right place.
There were things that needed to be gone over with the crew first. It was still the first day, but the others hadn’t picked up that the tech device stopping their powers from working was a kid though. Then, he hadn’t either. Interestingly, the boy wouldn’t stop Denis or Brie at all, power wise. Telepaths seemed to be pretty well able to get around the boy.
“What’s the issue then? I mean, the kid won’t really stop us. Neither will their alarms or guards. This is an impossible job, except for our crew here. We can do this. Why hide what’s really going on?” Also, and the most important thing, was in what else they might be lied to about.
She shook her head then and sighed again.
“Brian… He had his first mode removed. It was… Well, really, it was magic. We have some friends from a different world that can do that. He got some upgrades at the same time, so he’s pretty much impossible to stop in a fight now. The problem is that he’s still a really good guy. Self-sacrificing. It was worse before, but even now he’d feel honor bound to save Noah, the boy, if he knew about him. He’s a real prisoner. Even if they do give him some games to play and let him pick what he eats each day. He’s also alone constantly and doesn’t want to be there. I’m afraid that if we let Yi know about all of this that he’ll insist we save him, and we can’t really. Not without showing our hand first.”
It took a second for him to work through things. It had been in the files, how the whole building, the vault, as it was called, kept the secrets safe. Things were stored there, but twice a year they moved everything to a new location. One picked by a computer, without being known to any living human at all, until after it had happened and was secure again. Which was why they had to hit it now, in the next four days.
Really, he got the basic idea.
“The instant we get out with the goods, they’ll clean out the building and move everything else they have there. Including… What was the name? Noah? So we can’t even just tell Brian that we’ll come back for the kid. Worse, if he can’t control his power, then… We can’t move him using ours at all. We’d need to get him into a van or truck, then cart him off. Get a team of regular people in for it, so they won’t be working at a disadvantage. Maybe some of your magic buddies? If that won’t just be shut down by the kid, too.” He tried to work through how to steal the boy. Noah didn't want to be there, after all.
That might make it easier.
It was academic though, not anything he was planning to really do. If you got too complicated with your plans, you got caught.
Every good thief knew that one. Really, everyone that did anything that had to be correct the first time got the basic idea. Adding things to the plan would lead to failure, most likely. They had a specific goal and needed to keep on that. Little Noah wasn’t being raped each day, for one thing. Howard knew that, because he lived in a space alone, with no visitors, except when they moved him.
It was a crummy thing to do to a little kid. They could have at least gotten him a teacher or something. Except, doing that would leave a line open, that he could use to escape. Whoever was doing all of this had one thing right. At every turn they were tying off almost every way to get at them. In his entire career he’d only encountered a few situations that were really that well done. It wasn’t really human, being that complete, but it worked.
The woman shrugged at him, turning away from the green and blue sea to stare into his eyes.
“That might work. The thing there is what you already know. We can’t risk saving him like that. If we botch this, a lot of kids are going to die. Some of them will anyway, even if we do everything perfectly. The first thing that’s going to happen, if they’re about to get caught is a massive dump of the evidence. The bodies of their abuse victims. Every week that passes they do that anyway. There is no evidence left, other than the pictures and video they’ve collected to blackmail their own people. I’m just…” She stopped and closed her eyes. “I’m in love with him. With Brian. I have been for a long time. Before I knew you. He time traveled back to the early eighties and we met. He’s a good person. Kind and gentle, inside.”
Which was what they didn’t need at the moment. He’d seemed locked on and pretty hard, to Howard, so he nodded.
“You still have to tell him about the whole thing. First, before we go in. I’ll back you on it, but we can’t lie to our own team. You have a good reason to do it this way. We’ll have to pick up Noah on the other side of this. You can track him, right? We can hit here now, then follow up at his new location? We’ll have to do it a different way.” At least in his experience security got tighter after the first job, almost every single time. The easy way to stop him would be to take mirrors and shiny bits out of the area. Once they picked up that it had to have happened that way, it would be easy enough to do. A can of black spray paint would be enough, if they were thorough about it.
The woman winced, then nodded.
“Fuck. I really… We could just hide it from him.”
“Except that we can’t, Katie. You just said you love him. If you really mean it, you’re going to have to put him first. Sure, these kids, but he seems like a standup fellow. A real good guy. Run it past him, and see. If we have to pull out of the job… Well, then we do. I can’t see him jumping that way.”
She shook her head.
“No… He’ll just go in alone and try to do it all himself. Which he can’t. He can kill everyone in the place, but even with the combination, they’ll blow the building before he can do all of it.”
That part had been in there as well. The place was wired. Howard hadn’t worried about that though. They wouldn’t take out their own building for at least ten minutes after they learned he was there. If he did it right, that would be after he was already gone, making that unneeded. The info had been up front on that one. It wasn’t a joke that the building was a literal death trap.
So he grinned at her, trying not to smirk.
“Let’s get to that then? We don’t win by waiting. Not in a case like this. He’s our ride into the city, so if he’s pulling out, we need to know about it today. I’ll break the news?” That way if the guy got upset, he could scream at Howard for it and that wouldn’t ruin Kate’s chance with him, later.
“No. You’re right. I’ll do it. I hate this. These… I’d just kill them all, if I could. Cindy can do it. Kill them all at a distance, with her mind? We don’t get along that well though. I sort of ratted her out to the man once. She’d been a serial killer at the time, so it had to be done. The problem there is that she’s pretty certain that I’m a super-villain now.”
He didn't get that, so looked at her, waiting for the rest of the story. Which she knew, since the super part was really a part of things.
Kate snorted a little, seeming playful suddenly.
“The thing with Devorah. She tried to take over the world. She was doing that the whole time that we worked together, so it wasn’t a short-term plan. Using us to make it happen. Anyway, it had pretty much worked. I was in with her. Working for the IPB, but so undercover that only two people knew about it other than me. Well, and Braid. Devie. She was a thousand steps ahead of us all. Brian had to kill her. Otherwise we’d all basically be her slaves right now. We all were, for about three weeks there. Even if you didn't know it. There was no more free will.”
That was news to him. Except that he had heard the name Braid. Not that Brian, his new crew member, had killed his old pal, Devie. It sounded like it was needed, even if that didn’t make it better to his way of thinking.
“Damn. That’s�
��” He shook his head, not knowing where to go with the idea.
“Right. You only ever knew her as a friend. She wasn’t evil. It was her power that did it in the end. She saw all of the possible futures and it was driving her insane. The real kind of crazy. So she tried to find a way to prevent that from happening. Basically, she’d won. Brian managed to get her into a pocket universe where they fought. He won there, since her ability to see the future couldn’t save her forever, in an empty space. It was still really close. She wasn’t the same woman you knew back then. Even… Well, she’d already started her plan, even back then. If he hadn’t saved us… Things weren’t going to be good for all of us. Not for long.”
She didn't say any more on it. Not even asking him not to be angry at Brian. He was, a bit. Even if he understood that a soldier didn’t always get to pick what his job was. It had been a real war. Even from the front room of the old folks’ home, Howard had understood that part. Sure, it had been mainly fought by a little girl on the good guys’ side, but that didn't mean it wasn’t real.
So, even feeling a bit off, having heard about the news, Howard tried to let it go. So far Brian had seemed like a standup guy, like he’d said to Kate not long before. Then, he’d been in similar situations before in life. You had to balance the present against the past. It wasn’t always easy, but sometimes you compromised, in order to get the job of the moment done.
So, even if he was upset with the man for killing an old friend, it was important not to fly off the handle over it.
“I get it. Let’s go and deal with this now?”
They walked, without the woman trying to sweet talk him into anything. Or out of feeling the way he did. Loyalty was a thing that he was decently good at, but it could be bad for business. So, they went up the big hill, nearly half a mile to the large house that Kate had for herself. It had something like fourteen rooms. He knew that since he’d taken ten minutes to scout the place. Looking for things to steal. It was a horrible thing to consider, but he really wanted to get what he could from the place.
It was off though, that feeling inside of him.
Removing a spoon from the kitchen seemed as valuable to him as far as the rush of the thing as taking millions of dollars would have. It was a problem. Then, that was why the Infected were looked down on. They all had different mental malfunctions, but they all had them. Except it seemed, a few. Like Yi and some of his pals.
That, getting that done, was going to be needed for Howard. Otherwise he was going to end up in prison, since it was way too tempting to take anything not nailed down. As it was, it would be hard just to get through the day without boosting things.
When they got inside, all of the others were still in the conference room, being watched carefully by the little gray cat. Tabitha saw him, and scampered over, looking young and healthy still. She meowed once. Communicating something.
A thing he kind of understood.
“They’ve been being good then? Just reading things and talking in human gibberish at each other, you say?” That got a nod from the cat, which had Katie smiling.
“Yeah. That part is a bit strange. I think it’s that you and Tabby merged a bit when you took her into the mirror. It’s probably why you’re stronger and more flexible than you used to be. The youth part is all you though. You may want to avoid taking anything else with you like that? At least if it’s too large. Mass seems to be important, if I’m guessing right.”
How much of a guess it was, he didn't know. Kate kind of knew everything, after all. Even if it seemed like she might be teasing. The gal had pretty much all skills as well. Which meant that her taking lessons from him all those years ago hadn’t really been about that. She had his skills. All of them. Not his power though, which made him being there now make sense. Though, even back in the day he’d had contacts that she didn’t. Knowing things didn’t mean you had control of it all.
The bit with the cat made a lot of sense to him. He was getting information from her and at the same time, she seemed to understand him. That was unusual, to say the least.
“Interesting. So, you’re saying I shouldn’t get a pet canary?”
Kerry grinned at him, as if finding out that he was part cat now wasn’t a big deal in her world.
“Get a racoon? Maybe you’d grow a little mask? That would fit for you, right?”
He had to admit that it might.
“It would also give me away, so I should probably not go for that one.” He grinned though, looking at the girl. She was cute, really. Sturdy and a bit muscular, but that had its charms. No one wanted a woman who was going to blow away in a stiff breeze, after all. Or die every time it got a little chilly.
Not that he was going to start something with her. For one thing she’d mentioned having a fella back home. They weren’t married yet, so that probably meant there was wiggle room in there. The job though, was the important part. It had to come before anything fun like a gal.
Kate looked at them all, not focusing on Brian at all.
Which to Howard was so obvious that it fairly sang out in her body language. It seemed like Brian got it as well. At least he tensed a bit, and started looking around, as if there might be a threat.
“There’s a problem. With the job?”
She tried locking eyes with Denis, for some reason. The man nodded.
“That blocking field? There… The room it’s in?”
Howard nodded then, since that was exactly correct. It showed the man had a keen mind.
“Yes. Turns out that the tech they’re using is a person. A kid.” He shouldn’t have spoken first, but Kate let him, as if it were something he’d figured out, not her. As if her ability to read the kid wasn’t going to be noticed.
Shrugging, she finally looked over at the guy she liked.
“It’s worse than that though. An Infected boy. He’s twelve, but naturally blocks some other infected abilities inside a certain distance. He can hit a larger area if there is metal or wires around. He’s a prisoner, but if we try to remove him, we lose the data in the safe as a real tool. We can’t do both at once. The thing is… Noah, the kid, will be moved instantly, once we finish the job. I can locate him, maybe, but it will take time. The system they use is good, as far as getting around people looking for them.”
Before the others could speak, Howard changed the game. He wasn’t a con man and never had been, but he’d been around enough of them to have picked up a trick or two. What they needed to do, right then, was to reframe the problem.
To keep the others from pulling out or going for the boy, instead of the data.
That meant speaking first. So that no one could come up with a different idea.
“We… Don’t have a right to ask you to help with that part. Going after him. It will mean going back in, since we have to get the data on all of this first. The truth is, little Noah isn’t going to be raped by these creeps. The other kids will be raped and killed if we don’t get to them first. Some of them will, even if we do. Almost certainly. Kate… Brie, wants to save him, but I had to put my foot down on this. We have to save the larger group of kids in danger first. I know, that’s evil, but…”
He just waited, as Kerry looked ready to cry and Den frowned so hard his mouth turned white at the edges. It was the curly headed fellow that spoke, taking a deep breath first.
“I agree, given all that. How do we get Noah out though? They’ll move him, so… We hit them on the road?”
Howard blinked, since that wasn’t a horrible plan, to be honest.
“I don’t know. We need a real team for that.” Smiling, he waved at them all. “I mean people that aren’t going to try and use powers, then get stuck when they make the grab and they don’t have that extra trick up their sleeves. We have to assume that it will happen fast and be hard to track. Can we… Do any of you know who to get for that?”
There had been a time when he would have called on some of his war buddies for things like that. Not all of them by any means.
Most of them were great men, but some of them would have declined, being too ethical to take on a government operation, no matter who they were raping.
Denis made a small noise in the back of his throat.
“We should get with Burks. We know about a thousand guys that can pull this kind of thing off. The kid is Infected, right? So, we have a legal right to take him. No one can stop that. We don’t have to tell anyone about it, either. We don’t need a warrant for this kind of thing.”
That was news to Howard.
“All right. We have to do this quietly though. I’m not all that certain we should work with the feds like that. Still, if we can get the boy out as well, we should do it. If nothing else, he’s valuable, right? You have an Infected threat, and just walk him over to them, getting things calmed down. That’s valuable.”
Interestingly, Kerry rallied a bit then. Her face was concerned, with a bit of a scared expression, but her words were calm enough.
“That could work. I know that the rest of this is off the books… Only, it all has to be. We’re watched too closely for anything else. How do we set this up?” She looked over at Brian, as if that was his job. Then, he was clearly their team leader, even if the current plan was Katie’s.
Howard honestly didn't know the answer to that one, so kept his trap shut. He was all for helping to steal a kid. As long as it was for his own good, at least.
The Asian fellow tilted his head, clearly thinking about things for a while. Finally, he nodded.
“We need to get in touch with Christian. That or Cindy. Then we get them to set up a meet with Burks. I can do the pick up on that. Brie, you can do an information package on the new mission?”
It would be harder to do that, since they were going up against an AI or computer on the new job. Her powers wouldn’t actually know when things were going to happen, or how. If they did something unexpected, like getting a helicopter in place, instead of a truck or car, they were stuck. Then… well, if they could follow the movement well enough, they could try again, later. They had to have a plan in place for a lot of things though.