As Harley woke, the last of the rain dispersed to a clear evening just outside Metal City.
"Hey, kid, it's getting late. You should hit a hotel or something."
"Thanks for the ride and all that."
"No problem. Keep the poncho", he added as she started to fumble with the straps. "You may need it in a while yet."
So the plastic-clad teenager lay her skateboard down on the worn roadside. As she was about to push off, Luis's mournful voice drifted down to her.
"I just wish I had something more to give you...here." Luis was holding out a wad of cash. "Go home, kid. You'll be better off there than anywhere else."
Harley was about to protest that she wasn't running away from home, until she realised she had no home to run from. She took the money and pushed off with the feeling that her heart was somehow missing something...
Harley traversed the unfamiliar streets of Metal City with Luis's farewell ringing in her ears: "If you ever need help, look for the Orange Guy."
Look for the Orange Guy. That was nice.
But now Harley had other manners to attend to. She didn't intend to wait any longer to make her way to the DNA building; getting her bearings wasn't difficult. You could see that ugly, jagged letter D from the edge of the city, rising above the other buildings, the same unmistakable logo from her father's ties and lapel. Unforgettable.
She headed towards the building through the centre of the city as dusk fell around her. With them the lights of Metal City sparked on, tiny stars of urban life, symbols of cosy families at home. Fathers returning from work and children running to meet them, life winding down as the moon came up.
As the doors of the DNA building came into view, the last rays of the sun sank below the horizon, giving way to the winking lights around the bridge she'd just come over.
According to the map of Metal City, acquired easily from the library, a water line ran directly beneath this building and a bey pit graced the back instead of gardens. She tramped around the building, all too aware of the cameras following her every move, their soft clicking sounds making no attempt to mask their presence.
Harley guessed that her father was either settling down for a late dinner or an early bedtime; normally Merci would be tracking every movement in the building and reporting unusual activity back to Doji. He was probably leaving his security team in charge at the moment, as nobody was usually daring enough to sneak in at night. At the front of the building was the domestic entrance that masked the building's sinister intents; at the left wing was a water hose long enough to reach to the front door and back to its holster twice flat.
Peering in the doors, Harley guessed that the stairwell door was protected by a hydraulic locking system, usually about 4 to 6 pipes long. Each hydraulic channel would release at the command through DNA scanning at the door, and judging by the advanced technology in the building itself, the hydraulic channels were probably nanorobotically bound. Every time one was cut, an electric current would pass through the nanobots, sealing in the liquid again. This also protected the channels from bursting.
But is there were no electric currents...
A plan began to form in Harley's head.
About 10 minutes later
Fssssh...
All the camera picked up was a grey blur, and then all was black.
Benzel Tigris returned to Harley's hand, hot and sharp. She shook off the pain from its claws nonchalantly and regarded the camera. As she suspected, a power line had run behind it, connecting to all the other cameras in the building. This one now lay mangled by sheer speed in the hedge around the building, the power line behind it severed cleanly in two.
Step 1 was complete. Now for step 2.
Harley threw a rubber ball through the public entrance; the desk clerk turned his head.
"Whoops", Harley called anxiously, hearing the clashes coming from the room the ball had bounced into. "I..TOTALLY did NOT mean to do that, could you possibly grab that for me?...I don't wanna mess anything up in there..."
"A little late for that." The desk clerk raced after the ball.
Thank goodness for mainstream dollar stores and their fist-sized rubber balls.
Harley crept inside as a voice came over the intercom; she retreated into a conveniently placed alcove and watched her chaos unfold.
"Mr. Banks, this is security...all camera feed for the first floor has gone completely blank..."
From a room startlingly nearby came a soft voice through a walkie-talkie. "Roger that, security, I'm checking it out as we speak."
The electric technician that Doji kept around hurried up the elevator at a touch of the thumb pad. Harley grabbed the water hose from outside and hurried in the direction he'd come.
Sure enough, behind a small and unsuspicious wooden door was the electricity room. She threw open every steel panel. This was where the maintenance for all the electricity in the building was conducted, the only room or area where even an inch of bare cable was exposed to human hands. She released the bend in the still-running hose and it spurted around the room.
Harley cringed in the middle as a spectacular show of blue and yellow and white sparked around her like lightning on the loose, and then all the power in the building went out.
No cameras. No lights. No computers.
Most importantly, no nanobot-conducting electrons.
Before the lights had gone out, Harley had practically memorized her surroundings. Hidden by a panel now opened just to the right and front of her, 6 water-filled tubes had lay, pulsing with the combined effort of billions of nanobots. She snatched the knife from her survival kit and slashed through the hydraulic channels in an easy stroke.
She heard a hisssss through the darkness as the hydraulic locking system released and more water pooled at her feet. She raced through the right-wing lobby the way she'd come and into the dark doorway behind which the stairs lay patiently, hurrying before Merci got the message to turn on the energency power stored day by day in the basement by the light of the sun.
Almost 10 seconds after she'd entered the stairwell, the hydraulic lock closed with a soft whooosh. But since Merci hadn't had the time to connect with her heat signature as she passed through the doors, she was left to traverse them in the darkness.
Step. Step. Step. Stop. She turned right, then left, through the twisting staircase hidden behind the walls. Nonstop, a girl on a mission.
It was a long, long way to the top.