OK, I'm finally updating.
No, I don't own Genius Squad.
Anna heard the purr of the car's engine well before it came into view. She leaned back against the stones arranged around the drain opening, adjusting the bad clipped around her waist. In her black skirt and long sleeved wet suit top, she blended in well with the dark niches and bunches of plants. The drainage opening was set into a small hill that hid her from any late night workers. She doubted that anyone would be there at two in the morning, but it never hurt to be cautious.
She looked down at her watch. Even though the moon had set a while ago, she could see the dark numbers clearly, just like she could see every leaf on the trees a hundred yards away and hear the car engine even though it had not materialized in the darkness. The senses came with the genes.
A sedan appeared out of the blackness. Anna didn't move a muscle as the owner coasted to a stop and silenced the engine. The man, way to optimistic for this world, whom Cadel had introduced as Trader stepped out of the car. There was something about him that made the hair on the back of her neck rise, but Anna couldn't quite put her finger on it. Must be that sixth sense thing animals are supposed to have.
"Do you think she's here?" Trader asked as the other guy, Cliff, who had seemed in charge of the infiltration side of their operation, got out of the drivers side. Anna rose and silently picked her way over the rocks. Cliff nodded over Trader's shoulder and he whirled.
"Anna!" He said in a delighted tone of voice.
"Trader." She responded calmly with a nod. "Cliff. Do you have the things I need?" Cliff nodded and held up a bag.
Anna unclipped the bag from around her waist. A sack of heavy duty clear plastic, the top was folded over several times that kept the water out. There was a clip on each side, with straps long enough to encircle Anna's waist. Inside were four square mirrors, each about the length of her thumb, and three slim metal rods with clips on ball bearings at each end. There were also two of the one inch headsets. Anna handed one to Cliff and tucked the second into her ear. Her hair, left loose, fell over it.
Cliff opened the black bag he had brought and pull out the torch cutter Anna had requested, along with a pair of goggles and the flashlight. Anna could see perfectly well underwater without either of the last two things. But a tunnel at night was going to be as black as a cave. The goggles, which she had never worn in her life, were for any chemicals that may be in the water.
Anna knew the toxic chemicals used in DNA analysis. Her father had kept them in his workshop. Red iodide and crystal rinses, acids of the stronger variety. Not things a person really wanted to get in her eyes.
Cliff held up a flash drive and a tiny black cylinder, which Anna supposed was the camera. Anna folded them up into one of the two plush towels she had in the bag.
"Anything else?" She asked.
"You're a person of few words, aren't you Anna?" Trader asked.
"No, just with overly cheerful people. Did you find out about surveillance in the labs?" Trader's smile slipped for a moment.
"No." Cliff took over.
"If there are cameras, I wont go in. I'm not going to risk my rear when there's a possibility you guys can crack it from the outside." Anna warned them. She turned her back and walked over to the grate over the opening. She lit the cutter with a click and began to burn her way through the bars. There was a little stream of water coming out of the drain. Anna carefully placed her feet so it couldn't touch her.
"How does this thing work?" Cliff asked as he tried to take the cutter out of her hands.
"There's a switch on the side." She swatted his hand away and cut through the last bar. Setting the torch down, Anna grabbed hold of the grate and yanked. It came away with a piercing squeal. She set it down gently and cocked her head to the side, listening. The only thing was their breathing and the subtle sound of three heartbeats. After a second the bug noises started back up and she breathed a sigh of relief.
The opening of the drain was three feet across, but, as she climbed into the opening, she could see it narrowed to two feet, and tilted down sharply. She could see the glint of Cliff's flashlight off water.
Anna looked back. "I'm not sure how long this will take. You can stay or go back, it doesn't matter to me. If I can't find air in ten minutes I'm coming back. I'm not going to risk drowning in here." She warned. "Anything else?"
"If you can find a computer you can get into, there's a single file on the drive. Just drag it onto the desktop and open it." Cliff instructed as he helped Anna tie the cutter to her forearm.
"See you later." She said, beginning the two minute process of filling her lungs with air. She set her watch for ten minutes and pulled the goggles over her eyes. Leaving her sandals by the opening, she slid, headfirst and arms out in front of her, into the dark water.
The steep decline of the pipe caused it to be filled with water. The trickle coming out the drain must have been overflow from some source. Once inside the pipe, she was surrounded by water.
For some reason she had never understood, an excess of water molecules triggered an catalyze in her cells, causing them to access a portion of DNA that was not present in normal humans. The cells went into overdrive, breaking down her bones, muscles, and veins in a matter of seconds and reforming them just as quickly into a different form. One covered in dark chocolate fur and powerful in the water. The process, however, was exceedingly painful.
Anna stopped just out of Trader and Cliff's sight, gritting her teeth as spasms of pain shot up her legs. Her nerve endings screamed as they were broken down and moved. She felt like her legs were being ground into raw meat. Then everything went numb as the nerves were finally silenced, and she had a few seconds of blessed relief. But it was over too soon, replaced by a growing feeling of rawness that stung, the way the skin under a blister did. Finally it stopped.
She had had this ability from the moment she was born. But despite twenty years of changing and swimming and living, she still felt an overwhelming sense of power and joy that she could shoot through the water at speeds not even an Olympic swimmer could match and turn on a pin. In the water, that is.
Anna flicked on the underwater flashlight, keeping it on it's lowest setting. The water around her glowed with the dim blue light.
Anna flicked her tail from side to side, speeding through the water. She kept careful track of the distance she was traveling. The first grate was directly under the outer wall of the building, and she didn't want to run face first into it.
The walls were streaked with rust, eve though they couldn't have been that old. Some of the rust was dyed blue green in the middle. Ugly green spots showed where bacteria were growing. Anna touched the goggles over her eyes.
Finally a cross hatched circle appeared in the water ahead of her. Anna slowed, backpedaling with her arms as much as she could. She still hit the grate hard with her hands.
Anna worked the ties of the torch with her free hand, loosening and finally unraveling them. The tank drifted down to the bottom of the pipe. Anna snatched it up and lit it, working quickly around the circle. The bubble from the heated water shot up to the top, forming a little pocket before they drifted back the way she had came.
She sliced through the last bar and shoved the grate away from her. It fell, cut as close to the pipe as she dared, with a muffled clank. Anna grabbed the cutter and glanced at her watch. Five minutes down, five to go. She was running out of time.
The second grate was a little ways beyond the first. Anna slowed and looked down the pipe. It narrowed dramatically. Before she had had a few inches on either side. Now she suspected she would be bumping up against the metal.
The bars were thicker; by the time she was through she had less than two minutes. Anna shot forward, following the map she had memorized. Her elbows knocked against the sides as she saw a glimmer up ahead. Her face burst out of the water, and slammed face first into the drain cover. Anna winced as her nose broke with a crunch of cartilage. She could feel crosshatched bruises forming on her face.
Growling, Anna shoved the grate up an away, hearing it clang on the tiled floor. That was when she saw the tripwire beam running across the opening.
Mellary unclipped her pack and, holding the lip above the water, carefully maneuvered the mirrors out of the pack without letting a single drop in. Anna clipped th mirrors into place, forming something like a rectangle with an open bottom. Anna wedged it into place next to the eyes of the tripwire. In a single swift move she twisted the two side mirrors into position. Now the laser was bounced around th4e edge of the tunnel, leaving the middle clear. Anna pulled herself out of the drain, careful not to bump the contraption. Her tail hit the tiled floor with a wet smack. Anna rubbed a towel quickly over her tail, and a few painful seconds later she stood up, only slightly wobbly.
Her bare feet made no sound as she crossed the dark lab room. Bars of moonlight ran down the middle of the room from tiny windows near the ceiling. Computer banks whirred quietly from along one of the walls. Thick cables led to terminals spaced around the room. Long counters ran through the room, and different machines buzzed, beeped, or sat silently. Anna recognized most of them. What ever the genius squad thought was going on in the lab, they were certainly set up to analyze DNA. There was a large locked refrigerator that probably held patient samples and, sure enough, a tank of liquid nitrogen.
Anna pulled out the camera and looked around for a good place to hide it. There weren't any camera's in the lab. Probably they didn't want anyone to be able to hack in and look at footage. But it scrapped the hiding-a-camera-on-top-of-another-one move. A classic.
Still, there was a dark corner. No body ever looked in corners. These were civilian scientist, too wrapped up in their work to notice anything. Anna pulled herself up onto one of the counters and fixed the camera on top. A group of cables ran into the ceiling from the counter. Anna pulled apart the bundle and twisted the wires from the camera around the main power cable. She tucked it back into the bundle. And jumped down.
That was when she saw the moving shadow preceding the guard. Anna ducked under the counter and tucked her legs under her, pulling the black skirt down. She held her breath as the glass doors to the lab slid open. Footsteps hesitated on the opening. Anna's heart sounded like a drum. Moonlight glittered off the water she had spilled onto the floor. She waited for the footsteps to come into the room. But the doors slid shut and the footsteps faded down the hall. Anna let out her breath.
She crept out and brushed her fingers across the keyboard, bringing the monitor to life. It was locked and password protected. Of course.
Anna wasn't a hacker. But she clipped the flash drive into the computer anyway.
"Cliff?" She asked quietly, flicking the earpiece on with the tip of her finger. "Do you have any idea how to get into the computer?"
"Regular password screen?" His voice asked. Anna told him it was. "Well, you can try…" He talked her through the setup.
"And that should do it." Anna hit the last key.
The computer let out a loud beep, followed by a second. Anna winced as the sound pierced her sensitive ears. She yanked the flash drive out and stuffed it into her bag. Over the beeps she thought she heard faint footsteps, hurrying her way. Anna slid into the drain.
"What's that?" Cliff's voice had finally come through the earpiece.
The pain hit hard. She clenched her teeth, trying her best not to let her mind slide backwards into the world of pain waiting behind her eyes. She grabbed the drain cover and pulled it back into place.
A second later the glass doors opened. Anna backed up silently.
Footsteps crossed the lab, heading for the computer that was still screeching. It fell silent. The guard moved around the room, hesitating by the counters. Anna's lungs were straining. She hadn't had time to saturate them with oxygen. Like a how a whale could take more that a half an hour to prepare for a dive, it took her a while to get a full breath. While her lungs were the same size an any other humans, they were able to hold a much higher concentration of oxygen per square centimeter than a normal persons. But it took time. Time she hadn't had.
After a few agonizing minutes, the guard left. Anna made herself wait a little while longer before she pushed up the drain and took several deep breaths. She let the drain settle silently and twisted the mirrors away from the laser. She collapsed the rectangle, and gripped it in her hand as she shot back down the pipe. It took her five minutes to make her way back to the opening set into the hill side.
Anna slid out silently into the dark crevasse created by the opening. Trader and Cliff were sitting in the car. They weren't looking her way. Anna toweled off and slid her feet into her sandals before she stepped out of the opening and into the moonlight.
They stepped out of the car to meet her. Anna was wrapping the towel around her hair.
"What was that beep?" Cliff asked.
"Alarm." Anna said shortly. She handed the flash drive and cutter back.
"So, how did it go?" Trader asked with a grin. Anna leveled him a look.
"The alarm went off. How do you think it went?" She stretched and yawned. "If you need anything else, Cadel will know how to get ahold of me." She walked off toward the trees, where she had parked a while ago, and vanished into the dark.
REVIEW. Please.