When the Whizz-Kid Gets Older
Author: Diivine
Disclaimer: Dark Angel belongs to James Cameron, Charles H. Eglee and company. The Whizz-Kid, however, is my propriety.
Rating: T.
Summary: Little vignette of the Whizz-Kid series. A night in the life of an older Zane.
Feedback: It would be a pleasure!
Author's note: I couldn't help it. I had this little story written for a long time now. Normally, it was suppose to be the prologue of The Whizz-Kid story but I decided to let it go and took the X5 escape as the starting point instead. I hope you'll like it.
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When the whizz-kid gets older
(Or, no casualties; just a few ruffled feathers)
Carson City, Nevada, USA – March, 2019
The young man frowned and threw a glance over his shoulder. As he turned slightly around, the only noises he could decipher in the room were the soft humming of his laptop and the leather of his jacket rousing in the swift motion of his moving. He waited in complete silence; his breath caught in his throat and his piercing grey eyes staring at the doorway. He stood still for a moment - in which he debated with himself about his toying mind. When he was certain he was alone, he went back to the task at hand.
Had he had a normal body, cold sweats would certainly have been drenching his forehead by now. His slender form and normally relax shoulders were tainted from both tension and anticipation. Fortunately, he knew how to be unaware of the tensed muscles in his joints and to focus on some more important matter; only one thing was on his mind at the instant.
Without noticing doing so, he brushed away from his forehead an ever-falling strand of hair, granting his left hand a second of mercy before it went back to its fast, yet quiet, drumming rhythm over the tabletop.
Back in his childhood, a.k.a. Manticore's hellhole, Zane had often been reprimanded to be left-hander. He wasn't designed to be; it had been a manufacture flaw, he'd guessed after giving it some thoughts. It had disturbed everyone in the compound; from the doctors (because it had bothered their infallible creation process of perfect soldiers) to the hand-in-hand combat instructors (for apparent reasons). Even Krit, albeit he had been more annoyed than disturbed by it, didn't like it. The fact that they were elbow-bumping while eating was the explanation of their mutual annoyance. Fortunately, for both his and Krit's sakes, he had learned to use his right hand over the years. Still, he was favouring his left one when dexterity was needed.
The computer biped and his frown deepened in cocentration as he successfully entered the bank database system. He browsed every employee's names and found the login he was looking for. He connected to the guy's account and clicked on the secret question: it was an easy way of finding one's password. He saw that is informant had been right: the bank director was a crack of mathematics and he had protected his system with an algebra enigma. 'What kind of guy use matrix figures as a password?' He imagined the bank director wearing gold rim glasses, sporting a satisfied smirk over the password he had just set up. 'Anyone could be able to figure out the solution, idiot' he told the fictional man in his thoughts as his mind started calculating a complicate pattern of matrix sequences he knew was called Leibniz formula. He had spent the entire week studying linear algebra formulas and vectors for that fateful moment.
His hand left the keyboard again and picked his pencil. He started writing on the polish metal surface of the desk. He narrowed his eyes in concentration and pursed his lips together.
"Two, seven, six, eight, three, four, one, five..."
His eyes scanned the screen once again and then returned to the cold surface.
"No, no. That's not right... Two, seven, six, eight, four... Yeah, that's it," he spoke out aloud.
He tapped the answer into the password box and was finally granted access to the files he had been hacking in. He entered the database and started looking through the information. When he finally found what he was looking for and inserted a disk into the driver. He pressed the enter key of his laptop and a transfer began between two bank accounts.
His attention went back to the hallway. He hadn't heard anything but he felt someone coming toward the room. He stood up and went near the doorway. He waited patiently in the shadows, the hall's lights casting a hard glow over the floor beneath him.
Then, he heard them. Footsteps. They were coming his way. They belonged to a heavy weight person and judging by the laps of time between each footstep, he knew it had to be a tall guy. At this hour of the night, it was certainly a guard doing his usual round, he decided.
The man stopped in the doorway. As expected, he was tall and bulky. He pulled out a flashlight, turned it on and swept it into the open room.
The transgenic held his breath for a few seconds, in which he wished the guard would leave unarmed and unaware of the danger he had been in. Just as his hopes were about to come true, his laptop did an alarm sound.
The young man's eyes rolled heavenward and a sequence of cursing words crossed his mind.
The guard step back inside the room, and he pulled out his weapon. "Who's in there?" he asked. "Show yourself, now."
The young man waited until he had took another step inside before he acted. First, he disarmed the guard with a quick blow to the hand and he encircled his arm around his throat, blocking his air supply. Then, he was gently helping the unconscious body of the large man to the floor.
"Sorry, man. I know you were only doing your job. "
He went back to his laptop. The words 'Transfer complete' were visible on its screen. He turned off the computer, put it into his backpack and erased every trace of his presence.
A few minutes later, a guard was found unconscious by a colleague, a bank alarm was set-off and a thief was long gone.
On the crime scene, the draft of the letter Z had been tagged on the polish surface of the desk. And if one carefully paid attention, matrix and numbers could be deciphered beneath its red painting.
***
He punched in the numbers given by his older brother. It was an emergency phone number to be use, as Zack had sternly told him, for emergency only. He had to give his brother a point for his people skills. Or lack of.
He rolled his eyes at the greeting message: "Zack's mailbox. Speak if you have an emergency."
"This is Zane. I'm on the move. I'll contact you later this week to give a new address and such. Cheers. "
The speech wasn't new for him. It was like already knowing all the lines of a movie you had seen too many times. It had only slightly differed from its normal course one time before. It had been when he had caught the national Eyes Only broadcast three months ago. However, it hadn't changed that much even that time.
He was grateful for Zack's mailbox. He didn't feel like speaking directly to him. It was for the best of both parties. He didn't need to listen to Zack's babblings –meaning the few grunting words his brother would growl about him not being careful enough and being too much of a womanizer- and Zack didn't need to waste any time trying to convince him –unsuccessful he may had- to stop endangering himself. It was a win-win situation.
It wasn't like they didn't get along. No, far from that. As far as Zane could remember, never had they raise the tone at each other. It was more of the fact that long, silent, uncomfortable moments were always present with Zack around. They exacerbated each other. Zane was sure by now that Zack had never experienced anything cool. The guy was no fun and himself was too much of an extrovert for Zack's likings.
He hung up and searched his coat for a quick smoke. He needed the nicotine. As he lit up the Camel cigarette hanging from his lips, he walked to his old beat-up pickup. Inside, Maya, his German shepherd, was swinging her tail happily at him. He stepped inside the car and gunned the engine.
"Say goodbye to Carson City, Maya."
The End
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Author's note: I think I'm happy with this little story; I didn't reveal any great spoiler and successfully introduce you to Zane's future self without giving any clues of the original story. I hope you liked it!