Pidge buzzes through her morning classes on the day of the break-in, brain working overtime on half-realized anxieties that she banishes before they can take root and anticipation that she couldn't banish if she tried. She's only marginally aware of the instructors' voices, and the rote journey from room to room is just background noise. At the edge of her thoughts, she can feel Keith, mindlessly taking something apart, focused and tense as an arrow nocked to a bowstring. At a little after one, just as her electronics lecture comes to a close, he taps at the connection. A few seconds later, her phone vibrates.
heading out
She grins as she reads the message, feels her heart give a heavy, excited thump.
okay
be careful
you too
There's a ghost of his grip on the bike's handlebars, and then he's off. She lets out a breath and straightens her expression. It's time for her to set up her stakeout. She stuffs the phone back in her bag and makes her way out the door with the rest of the class. Hunk, who shares this class with her, gives a wave in her direction, but she pretends not to see and ducks out the building's side exit, headed for the main lecture hall. It's a long, blocky concrete edifice whose main entrance faces the administration building across an anemic square of perpetually burned grass. Most of the first two floors are classrooms and student amenities, but the third floor is filled with faculty offices, Commander Iverson's among them. Pidge passes the bored-looking security guard on duty at the main entrance and turns immediately right into the student lounge. The seat by the door gives her a clear view of both the building's main entrance and the elevator further down the hall. She crams herself down into the chair and opens up a problem set to pick away at, an eye on the elevator. From there, she just has to wait.
Time drags by, but after about twenty minutes, there's a brief spike of tension from Keith. An impression of hot air and asphalt smell and something smooth and round gripped in his hand. There's a moment of uncertainty, and then a rush of satisfaction. A minute later, her phone vibrates.
key worked
She relaxes.
of course it did
he's not out yet
I'm going around to the back
I'll tell you when to go
okay
She checks the time. 1:22. According to his schedule, Iverson should have a meeting in the administration building starting in about eight minutes. They just have to wait.
It feels like it takes forever, but it actually takes only about five minutes before she hears the elevator doors chime and Commander Iverson passes by the student lounge doorway and out through the main entrance. She watches him start briskly in the direction of Administration before messaging Keith.
he's out
go up the back stairs
hurry
He doesn't waste time messaging a reply, but there's a wordless burst of acknowledgment over the link, and a sense of motion. She waits tensely, counting down the seconds as the sense of motion gives way to a blurred impression of a hallway. They've got at most three or four minutes to get in before Iverson's computer locks itself - it's all riding on Keith's ability to get past the locked office door. She feels Keith extract something from his pocket and the dim impression of a thin strip of metal pressing against his fingertips. He concentrates for a few seconds while she holds her breath, and then there's a snap of satisfaction and a tactile click. A few seconds later, her phone buzzes again.
made it
She gets a bright, indistinct impression of the glow of a monitor and the barely-there feedback of a haptic display. She lets out a breath and feels a grin cross her face.
nice
you good to go?
It should be fine from here. The difficult part is over. Iverson's meeting is scheduled to last the full hour - that should be plenty of time. All Keith needs to do is run her script and get out.
There's a rush of confidence over the link, and the satisfying soft click of the drive sliding home.
yeah I'm good
Two minutes pass, and then five, and nothing untoward happens. A little of the anxiety comes back as five minutes turn into seven with no sign of an end. She sends Keith a cautious mental prod and gets back a sense of boredom and the vague idea of a progress bar. Her phone buzzes.
30 percent
search or download?
download
Her brows raise, and she feels a spark of excitement. If it's taken this long to get to thirty percent on the download, they've found something big. Keith catches onto that thought, and she feels him echo back that thrill.
"Hey, Pidge!"
She starts as Lance and Hunk thump down into the seats next to her.
"Hey," says Hunk. "Tried to catch you at the end of class, but you ran out of there in a hurry." He eyes her, quick and perceptive, and gives a faint frown. "Everything okay, man?"
She shakes away from the connection. "Yeah, fine. Just had to grab something from my room."
His expression clears and he nods. "Ah, I hear you. I'm always forgetting stuff."
Lance leans around him, his upper half sprawled lankily out on the table. "Annnyways. We're studying for the operations exam tonight. You want to come? Hunk is bringing snacks."
She blinks, thrown a little off-kilter at both the distraction and the invitation. It's just a study session, not a big deal, but even so she's kind of touched to be included. Even if it does come at the worst possible time. "I… yeah, sure," she says at last, a little awkwardly. "Thanks." There's another buzz from her phone and she glances to the side.
60 percent
Over halfway done. Just a little bit longer. She forces her fingers to relax their grip on her stylus.
"Awesome. Figure we can meet up here around seven?"
He waits for a confirmation and she nods.
"You won't regret it, dude. Hunk made these dumpling-things last time? Just…" Lance makes a clutching gesture in the air, expression rapturous. "Ugh. Perfection in fried dough form."
Hunk steeples his fingers thoughtfully. "I was thinking nachos this time."
"Hunk, if you make nachos I'll be ruined for fast food nachos for life."
"Good."
"How can you-"
The whir of the main entrance sliding open catches her attention, and Pidge looks up in time to watch Commander Iverson pace past the lounge, heading for the elevator. Her thoughts go cold and numb and she snaps her gaze over to the wall clock, heart pounding. It's only been about twenty minutes.
She shoves at the link and Keith's attention swings toward her.
"Pidge?"
Hunk is looking at her expectantly, and she realizes he's just asked her something. She grabs for the phone. "Sorry, I have to answer this."
He waves a hand. "Sure, go ahead." Lance wriggles his eyebrows and says something about a girlfriend, but she's already typing.
he's back early
get out of there
There's a gut-clenching jolt of adrenaline and a snarl of tangled, staticky ideas too fast for her to decode. Then something in Keith's presence tips, like a pile of odd-shaped parts relaxing into gravity, and his thoughts lock into something cool and sharp.
94 percent
She stares uncomprehendingly at the phone for a second and gives the link another hard shove. What the hell are you doing? she thinks as loudly as she can. There's no reply on Keith's end but that stubborn focus, and finally it sinks in that he's not moving.
Down the hall, the elevator doors ding.
"Shit," she hisses out, and lurches to her feet. Hunk and Lance look up in alarm. "Sorry," she blurts, and scrambles for the door. She makes it out in time to see the elevator doors close behind Iverson's coattails and keeps going, racing for the stairs at the end of the hallway. She's not sure what she's going to do - there's a vague notion that maybe she can delay or distract Iverson somehow, buy Keith some time.
As she hits the second stairwell, there's a beat of triumphant satisfaction from Keith and the rocking click of him pulling the drive out of the port. He's got it.
So move, she thinks at him, and hauls at the stairwell door.
Three things happen almost simultaneously:
The stairwell door bursts open, giving Pidge a clear view down the hallway.
Keith steps out of Iverson's office.
The elevator chimes and Commander Iverson emerges.
For one horrible second, nothing seems to move. And then there's a stomach-dropping lurch of realization from Keith. Iverson's eye widens and his expression turns thunderous.
"Kogane?"
Keith bolts for the stairwell, going so fast Pidge has to flatten herself against the wall behind the door to avoid getting trampled. He jumps the short flight of stairs to the next landing down and books it. Behind her, Iverson is barking into his phone in short, clipped sentences. She has time to catch "security" and "Kogane" before she darts down the stairs after Keith. All she can sense through the link is a blur of motion and impact. As she gets to the bottom of the stairs, his thoughts jerk sharply. There's a wrench, and a metallic stab of pain in his shoulder. Alarmed, she shoves past the door and into the main floor. The hallway is crowded with a handful of curious cadets. She spies Lance and Hunk in a cluster of students trickling out from the lounge. A little past the lounge door, the security guard she passed on her way in has Keith scruffed by his collar, an arm twisted behind his back. Heart in her mouth, Pidge slips out the stairwell doors and draws closer, until she's hovering at the edges of the crowd. A few seconds later, heavy steps thump down the stairs behind her and Commander Iverson strides down the hall, red-faced and scowling. Outside, another security guard approaches. She inches closer into the small cluster of students.
"Is that Keith?" She jumps and finds Lance at her shoulder, staring incredulously. "What's he doing here?"
Down the hall, Iverson and the guards confer. Iverson says something to Keith. He doesn't reply, jaw clenched sullenly shut. All she gets through the link is a stubborn sense of resistance. A beat passes. Iverson shakes his head, and the guard pulls both of Keith's hands behind him. The other pulls a set of cuffs off his belt, and her stomach plummets.
"Looks serious," says Hunk, quiet and unhappy.
Lance scoffs, but his expression is uncertain. "Keith's a basket case."
"Shut up," she snaps, before she can stop herself.
"What-" Lance starts to say, but is interrupted as the whole procession marches down the hall toward the interior of the building, Iverson at the lead.
"Enough gawking, cadets. Gossip on your own time." The crowd mills and he takes another step forward. "You heard me - show's over. Get moving." Reluctantly, students trickle back into the lounge, and Pidge is caught up in the flow. She tries to catch Keith's eye as he passes, but he's scowling fixedly ahead. They turn down a side hall and she's left hovering awkwardly at the lounge door with an handful of other students.
"What was that?"
"Was that Kogane? Didn't he drop out?"
"I heard expelled."
She swallows and takes a breath before snatching her bag up from the table and shoving her computer into it. "I'm going," she mutters to Lance and Hunk, knowing she sounds short and not able to care. "Still need to finish the lab report for Li. Not going to get anything done here." She shoves past the crowd in the hallway in the opposite direction from where they'd taken Keith and turns into the grungy single-occupancy bathroom at its end, locking the door behind her. For a second she stares at herself in the mirror, wide-eyed and pale, before turning away to lean back against the door.
"What the hell, Keith?", she mutters furiously. What the hell is he doing? She wants whatever the Garrison knows about Kerberos so much it's been gnawing a hungry, aching hole in her chest for weeks and she knows Keith wants it just as badly. But he's going to be arrested. He's going to face criminal charges. He might go to prison.
There's a sting in her hand and she abruptly realizes shes clutching the strap of her bag so tight the buckle's gouged a divot into her palm. She takes a breath and carefully relaxes her grip. After a moment, she taps at the link. A couple of seconds go by where she can't really sense anything but stubbornness and a jittery haze of leftover adrenaline, but then there's an answering tap, accompanied by a sense of tired familiarity and a vague ache in his shoulder.
Where are you? She thinks as hard as she can. She's not sure such a specific question will make it over the connection - she's never gotten words from Keith. But they've never really tried to communicate over the link purposefully either.
Enough of it must come through. There's a hazy impression of his shoulder against a door and the brassy gleam of numbers. Room 103.
"Okay," she says aloud. "Okay. I'm going to get you out." That must come through too, because there's a snap through the connection, a jagged spike of alarm and a snarled, roiling tangle of worry and refusal. Shut up, she pushes at him, and hoists her bag higher on her shoulder before easing the door open.
The hall is fortunately empty, and she pauses a moment to consider her options. "Room 103," she mutters to herself. "Right." She eyes the side passage that leads to it, but after a moment, discards the direct approach. Instead, she turns herself back in the direction of the stairwell. She tramps up the to the second floor and cuts through the hall to the building's other side. There, she takes the stairs down again to the ground floor. It puts her close to Room 103 on the opposite side of the hall from the student lounge and the main entrance, hopefully in a direction nobody will really be paying attention to. Cautiously, she cracks the stairwell door and cranes her head to peer around the doorframe. Room 103 is closed and quiet. The security guard from earlier stands next to it, his radio in his hand, wearing an expression somewhere between bored and annoyed. She holds her breath, and after a second, he straightens the collar of his uniform and paces towards the the end of the hall, radio raised to his mouth.
"Kid's locked up for now. What's the ETA on the transport?" There's a brief silence, and then a hissing crackle from the radio.
"Fifteen minutes is what they're saying. Stand by at the main entrance to direct."
He grimaces. "Copy that." The radio goes quiet, and he draws himself up and heads down the hallway.
Once the sound of his steps has faded, Pidge carefully walks over to Room 103. "Keith?" she tries, as quietly as she can.
There's a stir of movement from the other side of the door, and an unhappy, anxious ripple through the link. "Pidge, what are you doing? Get out of here."
"Shut up. You were supposed to get out of here."
"The whole point of this was to keep you clean!" A whipcrack of frustration goes through the link, and she scowls at the door. There's a twist and strain in his shoulders as he reaches for something. "We got the data, okay? I can reach my pockets. I'm putting the drive in the trash. You can get it after."
"I said shut up," she hisses. "I'm getting you out of there."
"Leave it, Pidge. You're going to get caught. I'll figure something out."
"Oh yeah?" she bites out. "Like what?"
A slight hesitation. "There's a window," he mutters.
"With your hands cuffed?" she scoffs incredulously. "Yeah, that's a great plan, genius."
He doesn't answer, but his thoughts take on a speculative tinge, and there's a sudden pressure in his wrists as he pulls them back against the cuffs. Dimly, she can feel him trying to gauge whether he can skin himself out of them and how much it'll hurt. "Yeah, no," she snaps. "Save the gory escapades for a last resort." She thinks back to the feel of something thin and narrow across his fingertips when he'd broken into Iverson's office. "You've got picks, right? Can you slide them under the door?"
"Will you just-"
"We're talking about this later, but I'm not leaving," she grinds out. "Can you or can't you?"
There's a silence and another burst of frustration, but finally he lets out a sharp breath. "Maybe. They're in my pocket too."
She feels secondhand the strain in his shoulders as he twists to get at them. A nerve-wracking minute goes by, and then there's a pair of tiny, high-pitched metallic impacts on the vinyl floor. A second later, she hears a scuffing sound and a shadow covers the space under the door. A pair of thin metal slivers inch out and she crouches to pick them up. One's a cheap flathead screwdriver, the flattened end of its blade bent at a ninety degree angle. The other is a narrow strip of metal that might once have been half of a pair of tweezers. It's been painstakingly filed down, its tip bent up into a hook. She stares at them and then eyes the lock.
"Do you know how to use them?" Keith asks suspiciously after a second.
"Not really," she admits. She's got some idea of what's inside a door lock, but isn't exactly sure how that translates to the tools. "You're going to have to walk me through it."
There's a weird hesitation, and for a second she thinks he's going to argue again. But then something yields, and a flurry of ghost sensations tumbles over the link. There's the careful pressure of the picks in his hands and a notion of probing and testing and sudden give. "I… Okay," he says, and the brief silence that follows is more uncertain than stubborn, like he's trying to put his thoughts into the right order. "You need to get the screwdriver in first. Put a little bit of pressure on it."
She darts a quick glance down the hallway before bending down to insert the screwdriver into the keyhole. It slides in to the shoulder of the bend, and she tentatively rests her palm on the handle and pushes it down.
"Not that much pressure," Keith interjects, alarmed, and she hastily lifts her hand.
"Some of us don't have a wealth of breaking and entering experience to draw on here, okay?"
"I don't-!" She blinks at that sudden burst of frustration, but he tamps it down and goes on before she can really react. "Nevermind. Doesn't matter. Get the pick in next."
She slides the pick into the lock and pushes it in until she feels it stop. "Sorry."
"It's fine." It comes out brusque and uncomfortable. She takes the hint and leaves it. "There's a bunch of little pins in the top. You need to push them all up. You'll feel them catch. Just don't push them up too far."
She frowns. "How do I know if they're up too far?"
There's an inarticulate grasping feeling in the link that winds up collapsing in on itself. "Just don't overdo it."
She scowls and probes at the lock's interior, dragging the pick forward and feeling it catch and snag unevenly. It feels weirdly out of step with the faint sense-impressions she gets from Keith, and she abruptly realizes he's used to doing this with his left hand. She pushes tentatively at one of the uneven points. It retreats up and catches and she feels a tick of satisfaction. She finds and pushes against others, but the satisfaction quickly withers and dies. Even when she's sure she has them all up, the door stays stubbornly locked.
She takes a breath and shoves down an edge of panic. She's not sure how much time has passed, how much time she has left before the transport the guard was talking about shows up.
"Pidge," Keith starts.
"Pidge? What the hell are you doing?"
"Shit!" her voice comes out in an embarrassing squeak and she jerks backwards, the picks clattering onto the floor.
"I mean," drawls Lance from where he and Hunk crowd the door to the stairwell, "I'm pretty sure I know what you're doing, but I'm not clear on the why." He sobers. "Seriously, man, what are you doing? You could get in so much trouble."
She finds her voice again. "None of your business."
His brows knit. "I mean, maybe, but you were acting weird and we were worried. And, dude, I gotta tell you, you're not making me less worried here."
"Just-"
Hunk's eyes dart between her and the door, and he frowns. "Is that… is Keith in there?"
In the back of her mind, she feels Keith tense. She doesn't say anything, but Lance takes one look at her and his mouth snaps shut. "Oh man. Dude. Just leave it. I don't know what happened out there, but it looked serious. Keith is absolutely not worth that kind of trouble."
Her fists clench, and she feels something snap. "Just shut up, okay? Keith's my friend. The only reason he came here in the first place was because of me, and now he's going to get arrested if I can't get this open, so just leave, okay?" She swallows, and to her vague horror, feels a prickling at the corners of her eyes.
Lance takes a step back, hands raised. "Keith's your friend? Mister Too-Good-for-the-Rest-of-Us prodigy? That Keith?" His expression falls into something more sympathetic and he sighs. "Pidge-"
Hunk gives the closed door of Room 103 another long glance, and then something firms in his expression and he takes a long step out from the stairwell. He kneels down to sweep the picks into his hand before she's realized it. "Here," he says quietly. "Let me try."
"Hunk?" says Lance, aghast.
Hunk, still kneeling at the door, ducks his head bashfully. "You know me. I get nervous. Having something to do with my hands helps. Used to do this with old padlocks all the time just to keep busy." He slots the screwdriver and pick into the lock and probes carefully, with the efficiency of familiarity. He glances up and gives Pidge a somewhat wavery smile. "It doesn't sound like he hurt anyone or anything."
She shakes her head. "No!"
Hunk's smile solidifies. "See? And he's Pidge's friend." There's a minute click and the door swings open.
Keith is standing stiffly in the middle of the room facing them. Hunk takes a cautious step inwards. "You're, um. Keith, right? I'm Hunk."
Keith blinks uncertainly. "Uh. Hi?"
Lance shoulders into the room. "Hey, Kogane. You better not be setting Pidge up for something here."
Keith's expression goes flat and he blinks harder. "Do I know you?"
While Lance sputters, Hunk gestures at Keith's cuffed wrists. "Do you want me to…?"
He gives a curt nod. "Do it."
"Hurry," adds Pidge. Keith catches her eye and jerks his head towards the trashcan. She gets an impression of opening his hand to let something small and rectangular drop into the wastebasket by the desk. She nods and goes over to it, lifts a rumpled wad of paper up to grab the drive.
"Do I even want to know?" mutters Lance.
"No," she says.
There's a muffled click, and Keith pulls his arms out in front of him with a relieved breath, rolling his shoulders. "Thanks," he nods to Hunk.
"Okay, great," says Lance. "Now that we're done with the Houdini act, we should probably get out of here."
"Don't need to tell me that," Keith mutters, making his way to the back of the room.
Lance eyes him and squints narrowly. "Seriously? The window?"
Pidge drifts over alongside Keith. The window's on the back side of the building, looking out on a crowded corner of the student parking lot. They're on the ground floor, so it's not much of a drop. She nods sharply. "Less chance of getting caught than going out the front."
Lance and Hunk exchange a glance, and then the former sighs and drags a chair over to wedge under the door handle. Something relaxes in her chest and she breathes out a relieved breath. "Thanks, guys."
"Don't worry about it," says Hunk after a minute, coming over to anxiously frown out the window with them. "You're, uh. You're really going to have to explain all this though."
"I promise. I'll explain. Later." Hunk nods, satisfied, and turns his attention to helping Keith pry the window open as wide as it can go. They're momentarily stymied by a screen that seems to be permanently attached to the window frame, but Keith hisses and pulls out a pocket knife, cutting them a choppy exit.
"Seriously?" mutters Lance.
"Seriously?" she echoes, shooting Keith a skeptical sideways glance.
"It's practical," he replies stolidly, shoulders hunched.
He drops out the window and she follows. As Lance is halfway through the window, there's a rattling at the door handle.
"Hurry!" she hisses.
"I'm going!"
"Oh no," says Hunk.
Lance heaves himself out the window, limbs flailing before he catches himself. Hunk hastily throws his leg over the windowsill, just in time for the door to burst open. There's a shout from inside, and Hunk yelps. All three of them leap to pull him down the rest of the way. He tumbles out the window, and they're all sent sprawling onto the ground. She opens her eyes in time to catch a glimpse of the security guard from earlier and a cop leaning over the windowsill looking down at them before the link jolts like a live wire and Keith yanks her the rest of the way up.
"Come on!"
"Hold it right-" the cop starts, but they're already sprinting around the corner of the building towards the parking lot.
The security guard barks something into his radio, and distantly, she registers a breathless, panicked "Oh man, oh man, oh man…" from Hunk behind her. They careen around the back of the administration building and pelt across the lot to the far corner, where Keith's bike is parked behind a truck. A door slams somewhere behind them, but she doesn't look back. Keith slings himself onto the bike and she piles on behind him.
"Get on the back!" he roars, and the bike dips and rebalances as Lance and Hunk heave themselves onto the stabilizers. Keith slams the ignition home. The bike's engine coughs and then thunders as he guns the acceleration. She hangs onto him for dear life and they speed out of the lot, a small crowd of curious students and red-faced security personnel trickling out the doors behind them.