Disclaimer: I don't own any of the universe. Maria is mine, for the most part, as well as Claudette and her kids. Nobody else is. I don't own the city of Montreal, Quebec, or the town of Lennoxville, Quebec (but wouldn't it be cool if I did?). I'm just having a little bit of fun with this.
Chapter 7:
Montreal, Québec
Skulking around, Maria decided, wasn't exactly her style. Admittedly, she didn't really know what her style was, but after having followed Claudette's instructions to the letter as far as sneaking past the security system that was in place and making her way up to the fourth floor without so much as tripping an alarm, Maria had decided that this definitely wasn't it.
Security guards, police officers… They were something she could fight. They were solid, real. She could get her hands on them and beat them to a pulp. Now, she was sneaking from one camera's blind spot to another, stepping over laser beams… She couldn't fight some guy in some distant room watching a bunch of television monitors.
She gently forced herself to retain her composure. She'd promised Claudette that she'd play it her way this one time, and she wasn't in the habit of breaking promises.
Room 407, she could almost hear Claudette's voice telling her exactly where to go. End of the hall to the right.
Claudette had managed through a little maneuvering, to obtain information on the security of this building, and so far, everything she'd said had been dead on. If she was right again, there was a case of valuable jewelry in the vault connected to 407.
Getting into the room would be the easy part. Getting past the vault door would be a bit more of a challenge. Maria wasn't an electrician by any stretch of the imagination, and she had no clue what the 6-digit combination was. But if Claudette was right, she had all night to figure it out.
Not that that would be long enough if she spent the night guessing. Maria was hardly a mathematical genius, but it was pretty trivial to figure out that there were a million possible combinations, which meant that it would take almost two weeks, even if she didn't spend any time sleeping.
She would just have to jump off that bridge when she got to it.
Now, the door.
She checked the doorknob, knowing that she would find it locked, but it was worth a try. So she rested her hand on the door, just above the doorknob and gently (for her) pressed against it. The doorframe gave with a crunch. In the silence of the hallway, it seemed loud, but nobody was close enough to hear it. There wasn't much point in picking the lock here, even if she knew how. Whoever owned this office would know that it had been broken into when he found the jewels missing anyway. She stepped quietly into the large office, lit only by the city lights shining in from the large window behind the desk. The vault was impossible to miss. It was a massive steel door laid into the wall on her left, with a large keypad not unlike that on a telephone and a small bright screen which demanded that the user enter a combination to open the vault.
Okay, how do I get past that?
She didn't know anything about whoever it was that occupied this office, but the warden back at her previous residence had the combination to his office safe written down on a slip of paper in the top drawer of his desk, since he could never remember it.
She shrugged. It was worth checking anyway. It wasn't like the vault was going anywhere in the time it took her to check.
She stalked her way across the thickly-carpeted office and slid behind the large oak desk. The desk drawers were locked, but they opened easily with a generous application of elbow grease. Her gloved fingers gently sifted through the piles of post-it pads, pens and paperclips.
Nothing, she thought to herself, frustrated.
The second drawer revealed nothing more interesting than a grocery list.
"7-9-0-5-0-1"
Maria looked up, startled. She hadn't even heard anyone approach. The woman standing before the desk looked to be in her mid-twenties; a long, dark braid hung over her left shoulder and stretched nearly down to her bare midriff. Her dark eyes looked quiet, penetrating intensity of one who had spent most of her life as an outcast.
It was an intensity Maria had got to know well.
"The combination to the safe. That's what you're looking for, right? It was taped to the bottom of the top drawer." She held up a slip of paper between her fingers which had some numbers scrawled on it.
Maria darted around the desk, prepared to bolt for the door, but the woman only needed to take a couple of steps to the left to stand between her and the door.
"Running out already? But, baby, I just wanna talk a little." She flashed a sultry smile.
Maria stood a few feet in front of the woman, her jaw clenched, her eyes narrow. "I'm only telling you this once," she hissed, "get out of my way." Her muscles tensed. With her strength, she could pound this woman into something closely resembling raspberry preserves; and she would, if it came to that, but she had promised Claudette not to.
"Guess we're not gonna spend much time talking." The woman looked disappointed, "we could cuddle later if that's more your thing."
"I said: Get out of my way." Maria lunged at the woman.
She, for her part, agilely danced out of the way, and simply pressed her hand against the center of Maria's undefended chest.
Maria saw a flash of blue, and felt herself flung across the room to slam into the wall. Every muscle in her body spasmed uncontrollably. It was as if she'd just come in contact with a live electrical wire.
"Oops." The woman held her hand up, tiny bolts of lighting jumping between her splayed fingers, "guess we're having that chat after all."
"What are you?"
"A freak. Same as you." The woman slid a glove over her hand. She walked to her prone body, and squatted next to the incapacitated woman, "and, believe it or not, I'm about the closest thing you have right now to a friend."
"What have you done to me?" None of her limbs seemed to be responding well, or at all, for that matter.
"Don't worry, you'll be fine in a couple of minutes. I just needed you a little helpless for a bit." The woman shook her head, "You're in deep shit, Maria and you need all the help you can get."
How the hell does she know my name? "The police…"
"The police are the least of your problems, girl. They're still combing Virginia for you."
"So…"
"The Watcher's council, Wolfram and Hart, all the creepy-crawlies on the Lennoxville Hellmouth; you really think you could go on a rampage here and not have any of them notice?"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
The woman cocked her head, "you really have no clue what this is about, do you?"
"You have about five seconds…"
"Or what, you'll spasm at me?"
Maria's fist swung at the woman's cheek. She wasn't expecting it and it slammed into the side of her face. Maria felt another jolt of electricity, weaker this time, fire through her arm to her shoulder. She got shakily to her feet as the strange woman lay, dazed on the ground.
The woman brought her hand up to her cheek and winced, "damned Slayer healing," she muttered.
Slayer. That was what the man that other night had called her.
"Look, tell whoever sent you, and whoever sent that guy last night that I just wanna be left alone." She paused, catching her breath, "and I sure as hell don't need your help."
"You did tonight."
"What?"
"Look over your shoulder," the woman told her.
"What are you talking about?"
"Behind you. In the corner of the room near the ceiling."
Maria turned around, and looked as directed. Even in the dark room, she could see a small plastic box hanging from the ceiling.
"That's a motion detector," the woman answered her unasked question. "This whole floor is wired with 'em. Now, the reason why this room isn't crawling with cops right now is because I shorted them all out."
"If you're expecting a 'thank you…'"
"No, but think about it for a second." The woman pulled herself, with some effort, to her feet, "do you honestly think that the same person who gave you the information that you needed to get this far, who managed to get you to this floor without so much as raising a single red flag somehow didn't know that this floor was rigged with motion sensors?"
Maria was silent, realization creeping over her like a cold fist gripping her heart.
"Sucks, doesn't it?"
"Even if you're right…"
"If I'm right, it seems to me that there's someone who needs talking to far more than me."
Maria looked over at the vault door, than back at the office door behind her.
"You have maybe three minutes before the security guard realizes that he's not getting a signal from the motion sensors on this floor, and there's no way you can clear out the vault and get out of the building in that time."
Maria turned around and ran out the door.
The other intruder stood for a moment in the center of the office, then unfolded a cellular phone from her pocket and dialed a single number.
"Angel? It's Gwen. I've made contact, and she was receptive. I'll keep you informed." She closed the phone and slipped it back in her pocket.
She looked at the vault. Three minutes 'till he realized that he had no signal from the motion sensors on this floor, another four for him to make it up to this floor. And he came up the west stairwell. As long as she exited by the east end of the hallway, she had plenty of time.
She smiled. Well, she was a thief, after all.