Disclaimer: I only own what is not directly from Maximum Ride or the movie that this is roughly (or not so roughly) based off of

National Secret

Chapter Three: Listen To Fang

Iggy - 2:00pm - Washington D.C.

I stood outside the Lincoln Memorial, one foot a step lower than the other while Fang sat father up a few steps. "This is huge," He said, staring off into space, "Prison huge." He looked at me, "You are going to go to prison, you know that, right?"

I nodded slightly, "Yeah, probably."

He tilted his head to the side in a slight shrug, "It'd bother most people."

"Sam's gonna try and steal it," I explained, "And if he succeeds, he'll destroy the Declaration. Fact is, the only way to protect the Declaration is to steal it. It's upside down." I sat down next to him, "I don't think there's a choice."

"Igs," he sighed just as a woman walked past him, giving a weird look at his suit and converses. "For gods sakes," He stood up and turned to me, "It's like stealing a national monument. It's like stealing him," he gestured to the Lincoln statue. "It cant be done. Not that it shouldn't be done, but it cant be done."

I looked at him blankly.

He sighed, "Let me prove it to you."

Iggy - 2:10pm - Washington D.C.

We sat in the Library of Congress, Fang standing on the other side of the desk in front of me. "Okay, Igs, pay attention," he flipped through the pages of a thick book. "I brought you to the Library of Congress. Why? Because it's the biggest library in the world. Over twenty million books, and they're all saying the same exact thing: Listen to Fang.

"What we have here, my friend," he said as he pushed his reading glasses up on his nose, "is the entire layout of the archives. Your builders blueprints, you've got construction orders, phone lines, water and sewage, it's all here.

"Now," Fang flipped through different pictures and pages in different books as he talked, "When the Declaration is on display it is surrounded by guards, and video monitors, and little families from Iowa, and little kids on their eighth grade field trip. And, beneath and inch of bulletproof glass, is an army of sensors and heat monitors that will go off if someone gets too close with a high fever.

"Now, when it's not on display, it is lowered into a four foot thick, concrete steel plated vault." I raised my eyebrows and he continued, "That happens to be equipped with a electronic combination lock and biometric access denial systems."

I leaned forward, "You know, Thomas Edison tried and fail nearly two thousand times to develop the carbonized cotton thread filament for the incandescent light bulb."

Fang leaned his head back, rolling his shoulders, "Edison."

I nodded, "And when asked about it, he said 'I didn't fail. I found out two thousand ways how not to make a light bulb, but you only need to find one way to make it work'." I showed him the page I had found a moment ago in the book I was looking through, "The preservation room." I gestured to the book, "Enjoy."

His eyebrows scrunched together, but he leaned forward anyway to read.

I rested my chin on my folded hands, "Do you know what the preservation room is for?"

Fang's eyes scanned the page as he replied, it sounding more like a question than an answer, "Delicious jams and jellies?"

"No, that's where the clean, repair, and maintain all the documents ad storage housings when they're not on display or in the vault. Now, when the case needs work, they take it out of the vault, directly across the hall, and into the preservation room. The best time for us, or Sam, to steal it would be during the Gala this weekend, when the guards are distracted by the VIPs upstairs.

"But we'll make out way to the preservation room where there's much less security."

I sat back in my chair, waiting for Fang response. "Well," He said, skimming through the page again, "If Sam, uh… preservation… Hm… the gala…," He looked up at me, "This might be possible."

I nodded, "It might."