Chapter 2

Tanner scanned the museum for cameras, guards, alarms, and blind spots.

After drawing a rough map of the museum, he then jotted down all the aforementioned objects. But when he took a moment to look at it all, he realized there was a very small window of success, thanks to a double camera setup in the room with the blades. If only there was a way to shut them off... Maybe he could try to take the keys off of one guard, get to the security room, and shut the cameras off? No, that would expose him to the second guard.

He then heard footsteps coming nearby. Tanner quickly slid behind a display. He didn't peek out to see who it was, but he heard it pulling something out, then the person started to walked away.

Tanner looked up to see a security guard walking away, but he noticed a piece of paper on the ground. He got up and picked it up. It was a sticky note claiming that the computer firewalls were down in order to install a more secure program. Tanner began to wonder why a guard would be so careless with this information, but he didn't put too much thought into it.

Tanner finally left the museum, trying to piece together a successful plan, but he didn't know how to hack or anything. He started to remember one of his old friends bragging about how his new PC was extremely powerful. Why did that come up? Oh. Oh no... Why him? Maybe he could pay someone from his school computer lab? He only had $200 left, and they would probably take 200 as a bare minimum. Tanner decided to at least call his old friend. He still had his number.

"Tanner?"

"Hey Charles," Tanner reluctantly answered.

"Tanner, it's been like forever! We haven't talked ever since you went into that, "Lone wolf" phase. What changed?"

"I was wondering if you could help with something."

"Um, I suppose. I'm not gonna help you cheat on school or anything."

"No, I'm above that. No, I was wondering if..." Tanner was trying to think of a non-criminal way of putting it.

"If what?" Charles asked.

Tanner finally decided to be blunt about it. "If you could hack into the museum cameras."

"Uh, are you serious?"

"Unfortunately."

"Why?"

"You know the..." He didn't know whether or not to trust him with his true motive. "Let's just say something there belongs to me."

"Well, whatever that is, I'm not helping you. It's crazy enough thinking about stealing from a museum, much less bringing me into it, considering all the stuff you asked for in the past."

Tanner finally snapped.

"But you never helped me back then! Now you owe me a big one for all the times you did nothing. Now you can either be a true friend for once, or abandon me like you did all those times before. I'll be at the park tomorrow if you finally decide to be someone." Tanner hung up.