Henry wished he could move.
When he'd build the secret compartment under the bench at the back of their 1978 Chevrolet Beauville it was to hide items, not someone and certainly not someone with his large frame; having the extra items hidden in there with him certainly wasn't helping.. He'd only been hiding in it for ten minutes and he was already cramping up. The one advantage of his situation was that he was wedged in it so tightly that he didn't bounce around when the van hit a pothole.
The van stopped and Katherine talked with the guard at the entrance of the underground parking. She flirted with him a little as he went over her identification; they had intercepted a package that needed to be delivered. Katherine got out and walked to the side of the van. The sliding door opened and the guard commented on the size of the package that was on the middle banquette.
The door was closed and a moment later Katherine was back in the driver's seat. The van moved for a minute and then stopped again. The engine turned off.
"We're in position," Katherine said, "Give me at least ten minutes to make the delivery and then find where their server room is." She exited the van.
Henry slapped the cover off the bench and proceeded to extricate himself. The sides of the bench bent a little and complained, but they didn't break. They were a double layer of quarter inch titanium with a film of Henry's design in between. The film would trick any x-ray machine into seeing a tool box, a lose wrench and an empty coke can regardless of what was in it.
Finally Henry was out, not that the low ceiling let him get any more comfortable. He swiveled the middle banquette and pushed it against the left wall and slid the door open.
The van was parked against a concrete wall with the air vent cut in it perfectly centered in the door's opening. Henry took a screw driver set out of one of the compartments next to the door and found the right head to remove the vent cover.
The vent was rectangle a foot and a half high by two wide. It would take someone the size of a child to be able to crawl through them and based on the blueprints they were able to get from the security company who had wired the building there was a laser tripwire every ten feet. Brandon pharmaceutical was very serious about their security.
He took out the spool of fiber optic cable from where inside the bench where he had been hiding and secured it with a rod in the doorway. He had tried to hide it somewhere else, but it was the only place a five hundred feet spool of cable would fit.
He gave the spool a spin before taking the cushions off the middle banquette and throwing them in the open bench. He grabbed the leather handles that had been revealed and carefully lifted the metal plate that was the seating area. When it was out of the banquette he turned it, careful not to bang the monitors that were attached. He secured it against the backrest of the banquette.
He pulled out the hooks from the top of the backrest and lifted the whole thing up the two feet he needed to hook them on the hidden latches in the ceiling. In the process he also lifted the base of the banquette to table height. On it were three clipped down laptops.
He swiveled the passenger chair and slid it until he was comfortably seated in front of the workstation. He turned on the left most monitor and a split image of the view from the four sides of the van appeared.
"Mac," Katherine called softly.
Henry turned and in the ventilation opening was Katherine's head. "Any trouble finding the server room?" he asked as he took out a bag containing a few tools and 'U' shape hooks.
Katherine's hands extended through the concrete wall. "No, it's on the fifth floor, right off the main ventilation trunk."
"So about two hundred feet of cable?" Henry handed her the bag, waiting for her nod before letting go.
"At the most," she answered as she closed her hand on the handles and brought the bag through the wall. "Shouldn't take me for than half an hour to get the cable there and connect it."
"Are you going to be ok?" Henry asked as he pulled on the end of the cable and placed it six inched inside the vent.
"I'll be ok," she said. One of the 'U' hooks phased up though the bottom of the vent until the cable was surrounded by it. "This isn't the first time I've had to maintain partial phasing for an extended period." She took hold of the end of the cable and pulled it up to make sure the hook was solidly fixed. "I'll be back shortly."The spool spun as she moved away. It stopped every so often as she anchored the cable down.
Henry used the time to turn the laptops on and run them through their paces.
Twenty five minutes later Katherine phased through the van and plopped down on the driver's seat, panting and covered in sweat. She nodded to Henry and he connected the cable to the junction box under the table and all monitors came to life.
^We're ready,^ He thought for Jean's benefit.
* * * * *
^Remember people,^ Scott said as he got out of the car, ^this is a rescue, not an attack. Violence is to be an absolute last resort.^ He put the glasses on, the clear lenses didn't have any magnification, but they completed the look. He'd spent the last week letting his beard grow. With his hair slicked back and the contact lenses changing his eyes' colour to brown he was hardly recognizable. Wearing a grey suit he looked quite respectable.
Jean got out from the other side in a matching suit. Thomas exited from the back wearing a black business suit and they crossed the road to the Brandon building.
^Mac, Katherine,^ he continued, ^we need you to tell us what floor those dampeners are one since it's a good bet that's where we'll find the scientist.^
^As soon as we find them you'll know,^ Katherine said, ^We'll also try to deactivate them, but don't count on that. We *will* give you as much of a security blackout as we can though.^
Scott approached the security desk. The woman behind it eyed them.
"Etienne Laurence and associate," Scott told her. "We have an appointment with your director of product distribution in exactly," he pause as he looked at his watch, letting the seconds tic by, "ten minutes," he said when the needle hit twelve.
The guard checked her schedule book and nodded when she found his name in it. The company Scott had used to make the appointment was one of the fronts the AMA used for their sting operations. Thomas hadn't obtained permission for them to use it, but he was friends with some of the people in charge of maintaining them. He now owed a few of them favors, but they'd agree not to notice the activity.
She pulled out three badges and started handing them when she was distracted by someone entering the building.
Scott caught Ororo's entrance from the corner of his eye. She was wearing red high heel shoes, a red vinyl mini skirt and a small red plush jacket over a pink tube top. Her white hair was died black and styled so that it only came down to her shoulders instead of her lower back. She was definitely going to be remembered, but not recognized. If she exposed any more skin she would have to be arrested for indecent exposure.
A step behind her Bishop was dressed in a black suit that managed to make Thomas' look festive. With the black sunglasses he was wearing and the humorless look on his face there was no mistaking him for anything other than a bodyguard.
Ororo walked through the lobby like she owned the place, and Bishop followed ready to break the arm of anyone who dared touch her. People parted before her. She reached the elevator and Bishop pressed the call button. When the doors opened Bishop entered first. She stepped in and turned around with a flourish, looking at the crowd which had stopped moving, as the doors closed.
There was a moment of silence after she was no longer visible; probably everyone asking themselves if she had been real. Scott cleared his throat and the noise seemed to being the crowd back to life. He took the passes and handed the extras to jean and Thomas.
^Peter, have you made it in?^ he asked.
^DA,^ he answered as a side door opened. Peter stepped out from it carrying a ten gallon water bottle on each shoulder. His hair had been bleached and he was wearing the uniform from the local bottled water company.
Only Scott, Ororo and Peter had had to change their looks since it was possible someone they had interacted with while they took down Genietech might now be working here. Henry's large frame was distinctive enough that nothing short of putting him a gorilla suit would have hidden his identity.
Peter took the same elevator up as they did, but stayed in it while the other three left it on the second floor. From there Scott, Jean and Thomas went their separate ways, they would attract less attention this way and they would be able to cover more grounds.
While the purchase of the V3425-C indicated one floor would be locked off, none of them could believe that all the scientists would be there. Too many different pieces of equipment were needed for any kind of genetic work and not all of them were easily moved so they memorized, with Jean's help, the pictures of everyone who had been kidnapped and were now on the looked for them.
^Jean,^ Henry said, ^I need a private link with Scott.^
^You have it,^ she replied.
^How are you doing?^ Scott asked.
^We've confirmed that the dampeners are on the eight floor. We've also hacked their camera system, and we found a complication.^
^What kind?^
^Twelve mutants under heavy guard, all of them with visible mutations . . . and they're kids.^