Episode Three : Necessary Crimes
Soundtrack: Supertramp's "From Now On" (Just 'cause it fits…)
Chapter Three: Petty Theft
It was sunset by the time Jeremie was ready, half an hour into the invisible warriors' time limit. Long shadows stretched across the floor of the vast, empty first level. The doors of the elevator clicked and hissed open; Jeremie stepped out, trailed by the overboard and bike. "I'm going back to the school to monitor you – and keep Jim from noticing you're gone. Keep your cell phones turned on so I can keep tabs on you using the GPS system. You know the way. Get in, grab the papers, get out and come home!"
"You can't see me, but I'm nodding," Odd assured him. The overboard shook slightly as he climbed on; the overbike soon followed.
"Aelita?" Jeremie asked.
"Right here, Jeremie." An invisible hand rested on his. Jeremie could feel the blush creeping up his cheeks and quickly looked down.
"This is for you," he said, pulling out a black floppy disk. "It has a search and destroy virus targeting any file with our names in it. You have to load it onto the server at the precinct." He could feel her nod – she was standing almost uncomfortably close.
"I will, Jeremie." The floppy floated out of his hand and vanished as Aelita tucked it in her pocket; then the overbike shook again, revved up, and headed off. Odd's board followed. Jeremie stared after them until both had exited the Factory, then headed back towards the school.
A shadow behind one beam against the wall of the warehouse resolved itself into a pair of girls. "What were those things Jeremie had behind him?" Asked the black-haired one, "I knew they were doing something suspicious here!"
Kloe didn't bother to correct her. "That was just Jeremie. The others are probably still in here, but this is our best chance. Where are those minions of yours?"
Sissi glanced behind her where Herve and Nicolas were standing. Herve glared through his glasses, arms folded across his crisp white shirt. "We are not minions, Reporter Girl."
Kloe glared back. "Would you prefer cohorts? Cronies?"
"We're Sissi's friends," Herve said flatly.
Kloe dropped her gaze, shrugged, and quickly changed the subject. "We can figure it out later. We don't have much time." She headed for the elevator; the others followed.
The door of the weathered elevator slid open easily, but once inside there was something of a problem – a multitude of buttons and some manner of numbered keypad. Sissi eyed them with some frustration, and Kloe's, mouth tilted to the side as if trying to solve a puzzle, but Herve, still steaming, shouldered past the reporter to stand by the girl he called his friend. "Sissi, do you have any blush?"
"Mm?" She replied in puzzlement, "Why? Need a quick touch up?" He held out a hand, and she handed over a slim case produced from one pocket in her skirt. Brows knit in concentration, he brushed the cosmetic over the elevator buttons, then the numbers on the touchpad.
"No. It's simple," said Herve, who had seen this on TV once. "The blush shows fingerprints. This is the floor they went to-" he pressed a button, which lit "-and the keypad has a four-number access code, so once I know which numbers, it's just a matter of pressing them in different orders." He suited actions to words as he spoke, punching four buttons in different combinations. Suddenly, the elevator lurched downwards. "Eventually, something happens." He returned the blush to Sissi and stepped back, patting his hands in a satisfied way. Kloe was impressed in spite of herself; it was the sort of thing she would have come up with.
The elevator sank, then gradually slowed and stopped. Despite their massive construction and dilapidated appearance, the movement of the doors was smooth and balanced, the only noises as they slid apart the hiss and click of complicated machinery unlocking. Why bother with the security, Kloe wondered, when someone with a little makeup and some patience can get it open? Then she saw the room beyond, and her train of thought stopped as if it had run into a brick wall.
It was a computer lab, really, with an industrial look. Enormous green computer screens hung before a swiveling chair, displaying a random-patterns screensaver. A holographic projection hung near that, a three-D representation of a sphere with four flat spokes radiating outward. There was a massive cylinder of metal, containing hardware perhaps, numerous twisted cables, and exposed pipes lining the walls. Truth be told, it looked more like the bridge of a sci-fi space ship then something you would find under an old, disused factory. And it looked… familiar…
Jeremie typed rapidly. "Virtualization!" A policewoman barging in from the elevator. A pen slipped free of her fingers, sailing across the room. Leaning over Jeremie's shoulder. Fear. "Send me."
"Deja-vu," Kloe muttered, rubbing her head. Intellectually, she knew she had never been here before, but she seemed to have some impossible memories attached to it.
Nicolas was wandering the perimeter, looking lost, but then, he always looked like that. Herve was scrutinizing the hologram. Sissi had begun poking around the computer, shutting off the screensaver and revealing line upon line of dancing code.
Kloe trotted over, pulling free an electronic trinket that had been hung about her neck and hidden under her shirt, vaguely resembling a cigarette lighter in shape and size. Uncapping it revealed a metal extrusion made to interface with a computer; the rest was sleek plastic, and slightly larger then her thumb.
"What's that?" Sissi demanded.
Kloe knelt and began searching for a USB port. "It's a flash drive. I'm going to copy some of this code. As much as I can fit." Finding it, she plugged her device in.
"Because you're actually a super genius who can take it home and figure out what it does?" Sissi suggested caustically.
Kloe shook her head and began searching the menu for some sort of copy function. "No." That had to be it, SC – Ext. source. She hit enter: there was a hum, a pause, then a 'disk full' message. "I'm not actually very good with computers," she continued, pulling out her flash drive and recapping it. She hung it about her neck and tucked it into her shirt. "But… I know someone who is."
- - - -
On the sidewalk outside the precinct building, two riderless vehicles the likes of which Earth had never before seen pulled up alongside a row of shrubbery. There was a minute of scuffling as invisible hands shoved the strange contraptions behind the bushes, safely hidden from casual sight. Then a low, serious voice asked, "Aelita? Odd?"
"I'm here," whispered a breathy, feminine voice from the sidewalk.
"Me too," agreed a rather higher-pitched voice from the vicinity of the bushes. There was a rustling, and some leaves dropped to the ground.
"Let's do this, then. How do we get in?"
Aelita felt in her pocket where her cell-phone hummed gently next to the flat square of the floppy disk. "Jeremie said as soon as we got close he'd start jamming the security systems… but if he can't hack them, we'll have to wait until someone walks in."
"Jeremie – criminal mastermind," muttered Odd sarcastically, "How long do you bet we wait until someone shows up?"
The darkness grew silent. Short of bumping into them, no passer-by could possibly know the three small-time criminals were there.
Suddenly, a black-and-white car shot around the bend, lights flashing, and careened into an empty parking spot with a screech. The department logo was stamped on its side, and the people who jumped out were in uniform. "Come on!" shouted the driver, a gangly, dark fellow with glasses and the required hat, "we don't sign in, we don't get pay."
"I'm coming," muttered the girl in the passenger sheet, jamming a hat atop her long blonde hair. "But I take no blame if we're late. Got that? I'm not the one who had to stop for coffee."
The guy swiped his ID card and hauled the door open; the girl followed. Neither noticed the door hung open behind them a little longer then, by normal mechanics, it strictly should have.
As the police officers vanished into a brightly lit room full of the sounds of people signing in and out, Ulrich, Aelita, and Odd breathed identical sighs of relief, stopping by a metal door that opened onto an inconspicuous stairwell. "Well, we're in," muttered the air where Ulrich was standing.
"We have to go downstairs," Aelita whispered. The handle on the door to the stairwell twisted, and the whole metal door swung inward. "That's where the files are stored, on the blueprint."
At the bottom of a staircase that echoed with the tread of invisible feet, a second metal door swung open, revealing a long, empty room lined wit filing cabinets, "Ulrich, take the left side," Aelita directed, "Odd, the right."
"Where are you going?" Ulrich asked.
At the other end of the room, a door opened, revealing banks of whirring computer servers. "Straight ahead," said Aelita's voice as the door swung shut.
Fifteen minutes later, near a drawer on the right wall that hung open, there was a whoop of delight. A filing cabinet on the left slammed shut; a sheet of paper floated up from the drawer left ajar, and Odd's voice read out: "Prank call regarding 'zombies' or 'living dead' placed from Kadic Jr. High!" He riffled through the filing cabinet and pulled out another. "'Unidentified machines with inimical intent originating from Kadic...' What's inimical? Well, it's all here."
Ulrich and Aelita walked over, or at least, walked somewhere, their unseen footsteps echoing in the file room. "Then let's take it and go," Aelita urged, "before someone comes down here!"
Odd sorted through the sheets of paper in the cabinet, finally keeping about a dozen reports. "That's all," he told the others happily, "almost too easy!"
Ulrich winced, invisibly, but you could hear it in his voice. "Please don't jinx us."
"Jinx?" Questioned Aelita's voice. The file cabinet closed; a few seconds later, the door to the stairs opened. There was a suggestion of fingers about the knob…
Footsteps echoed in the stairwell. Ulrich, holding the middle position, stared at the place his hand should have been. Was that the faintest of outlines? "Aw, no. Thanks a lot, Odd."
"What?"
The door at the top of the stairs opened, and the three stopped just in time to avoid a pair of policemen standing in front of the exit.
"I don't get it," said one, sipping at a cheap paper cup of steaming coffee, "We're guarding the door? Like someone's going to walk off with it?"
"Some smart-aleck messin' with our security, I hear. We're just makin' sure they don't get away with whatever they're pullin'. Don't let anyone in or out without ID 'till we find out what that is," the second informed his partner, holding his own coffee in both hands.
The three Kadic students backed into the stairwell again, leaving the police to glower at their escape route. "Now what?" Ulrich whispered furiously, "We can't wait here until these guys leave, the invisibility thing is already wearing off!" He held up a hand by way of demonstration; the tips of his fingers were completely visible.
"What we need is a window," mused Odd.
"Jeremie…" Aelita half-begged, half-growled.
There was a sound of a door opening – the front door, by one of the police officers. On the other side of the door was a girl with black clothes blending into black hair and the darkness without, so her face and hands were the only things visible. The Kadic students peering down the hallway recognized her at once.
"Excuse me?" She said, pushing the door wider, "I'm sorry, my brother just dumped a virus into the main power grid that might have scrambled some security systems?" She felt someone brush past her. "Anyway, it's contained now. But I figured I should report it in case someone complained." Two further invisible presences moved out into the night. "Do you need a record backtracking the problem? I've got it here, but the virus is pretty lethal, so be careful when you open it." She offered a CD-rom.
The policemen fell into a brief, whispered conference. Without waiting for a response, she dropped the CD on the table between them and stalked out, letting the door swing shut behind her.
She hadn't gotten far when Ulrich's voice muttered in her ear, "Thought you didn't want to be an accessory to crime."
Yumi shrugged, looking ahead, but a minute smile tugged at the edges of her lips. "You guys know you'd be helpless without me. Let's go home."
- - - -
Monday afternoon found four kids once again wandering the grounds of their school. The air was clear and crisp. It was one of those autumn afternoons that tells you in no uncertain terms winter is rapidly approaching – you could feel a bite of cold in the wind, smell the peculiar metallic tang of snow mingled with the crisp aroma of dried leaves. It was a time of transition.
But some things never change.
"I thought we'd never get through Sunday!" Odd exclaimed, now visible once more from the tip of his gravity-defying blonde and purple hair to the rounded toes of his sneakers. "I mean, I was beginning to want school to start again!"
Aelita laughed, shaking her pink-topped head. "I think we'd better make sure Jeremie hasn't activated a Tower – he seems to be possessing Odd!"
"Nah," said Ulrich, "I just saw him in Italian. He couldn't get to the Factory that fast even if he kept our vehicles."
"How is it he can program a CD with enough information about a lethal virus to fool the police, but he can't remember how to say, 'Buon giorno, mi chiamo Jeremie?'" Odd wondered aloud.
"Speaking of programming," Yumi flipped dark hair out of her face. "Aelita and I need to head over to the computer lab."
"Aelita's taking a computer course?" Odd grinned, "I know there's a joke in there somewhere."
Aelita offered another small laugh. "Well, knowing about computers from the inside is an advantage, but I don't know much about using basic programs. Or the internet!"
Yumi nodded. In the distance, something rang. "There goes the bell. Let's go, Aelita." The two girls broke off from the group and made for the computer lab, newest building on the Kadic campus.
Inside the long, low building, neat banks of monitors stood back to back along rows of desks. Banks of servers hummed, warming the air, and Internet hubs blinked; mice clicked and keyboards chattered. Yumi and Aelita took the last pair of seats, noisy metal folding chairs near the front that clanged and tangled with the desk legs as their occupants settled in and the class began.
At a desk in the back, nearly flush with the far wall, a blonde haired girl with a slim black choker and a pen behind one ear tried to hide behind her monitor as she illicitly checked her e-mail.
TO: CanadianBelleIT. investigativejournalist1FR. Hiya!
Elyse! Hey, wzup? How's Italy treating you?
Kadic rox my sox, but the cliques are XP. I've already gotten involved in two rival groups. Didn't handle it vry well. Also, the newspaper is understaffed. And the food is blech. But the classes are Awshum. Missing you; the only people (person) here who looks like he can hold an intelligent conversation won't talk to me.
Sending you a package xpress. Has a flash drive w/ some weird code you might like. Not sr what it is, open w/ care.
Kloe Makhavi
TO: investigativejournalist1FR. CanadianBelleIT. RE: Hiya!
Kloe! As they say in Italy, Buon Giorno, la mia cugina! The language is frankly simple compared to binary/hex, and Italy is fab. From your description of Kadic… well, better you then me.
Checked out the code. Wow! Haven't seen anything this good since… well, last week, when I was checking out the software from my great-uncle. Still, it's pretty impressive. Looked like a deuce to decrypt, but I hit it with some of the key programs I've been using and it fell apart in my lap. Laptop. Made me late for school this morning. Beautiful, beautiful code. No idea what it does, though. Thought it could be a video game, but I bet the whole thing would take more processing power to run then my /whole neighborhood/ has. You only sent a TINY PIECE. Like, that is to the whole thing as one tree is to a square mile of forest. Really. It's fiendishly detailed. Also, looks like it has an embedded printer driver, which makes /no/ sense.
Must go back to class now. Send me more! I cleaned your flash drive and am sending it to you & another one with more memory. Should reach you by tomorrow, will tell you more later
Arrivaderci,
Elyse Hopper
– Fin –
I adore cliffhangers.
Oh, you're wondering why this is late? Various reasons. However, to make up for it, I give you... two chapters today! Yep, that's right, go find the next episode's first chapter as soon as you finish this one...
Taidine