"Hands up, kid!"
Edan froze. He had screwed it up. Badly.
He slowly brought his hands up and away from his sides, then turned to face the man pointing the gun at him. It was the floor's local security guard, brandishing a Glock 9mm, and with every intent to use it, should his quarry try anything smart.
Edan figured he had maybe three minutes before the red alert the guard had sent brought a SWAT team up to the floor he was on. He knew he could handle them - hell, he could level the building if he had to - but the whole point of the plan was discretion. Something that, at the very last second, he had let slip.
It was a fairly thorough plan. He visited a local PC tech support shop and nabbed a business card from the counter. Then he walked into the UN reception, said that he had had a call from some office about PC problems. The card was reputable, his smile had worked, and he found himself in the posession of an elevator key for the floor he needed.
No one stopped him as he walked down the hall, and no one saw him slip into a unmarked door. Inside was a shelf of supplies, and behind that, a nondescript black plate, mounted on the wall. He lifted it, inserted the activation key, and Kaida called in ten seconds later, bursting with excitement, saying that the mainframe would be ready for use in thirty minutes.
Feeling accomplished, he removed the card, killed the light, and stepped outside without first checking if there was anyone in the hall. He bumped into the security guard, who brushed it off as a harmless mishap - until he saw the activation card. It was just Edan's luck that the back panel had been exposed, and there were green and red buttons visible.
Thanks a fucking lot, Bin Laden, he thought, as the guard pulled a gun on him and demanded that he drop the bomb. Edan tried explaining that it was a memory card, but the guard reached for his radio. Edan bolted down the hall, but didn't make it more than ten feet before the guard pulled the gun on him.
"It's not a bomb," Edan said, as levelly as he could. He fully intended to get out of this without destroying anything, as he had promised to Kaida.
"Sure, kid. And you're up here without official identification. How'd you get in? Killed some of my friends?"
Edan sighed. "The receptionist let me in. I'm tech support."
"Bullshit. We have a team of nearly three hundred technicians - we don't need outsiders."
"It's was a personal call."
The guard shrugged. "Makes no difference to me. You're standing on a secure floor of the UN building with no security clearance, a shaky alibi and a unidentified device. Give me one reason I shouldn't shoot you right now."
Edan thought about that for a second. "Because," he said levelly, "I'll catch the bullet and send it back at you before you realise you've pulled the trigger."
The guard laughed, but dropped it when he saw that Edan wasn't bluffing. He didn't look the type of kid that could bluff well.
"Sure, kid. Security'll be here in a minute, and then you can try telling that to them."
There was nothing more to say. Edan's mind was racing. He needed to get out of this, he needed to get out of it now, and he needed to get out of it without leaving any questionable evidence. All he had in his left hand was the activation key. An idea formed in his mind. It would be tricky, but it could work.
"Well," Edan said, relaxing his legs and shifting his position slightly. "I guess I won't need this anymore," he said, tossing the key towards the floor.
In that split second, the guard's gaze shifted to the key. And in that split second, Edan went into a spin, twisting towards the right.
He dropped down as he finished the first 180, hunching on his right leg and extending his left. He swept very close to the floor, catching the key with his outstretched foot before it could even hit the floor. As the key sailed off - heading straight for the guard - he completed another half-spin, then planted his left foot in the ground and pushed himself backwards, towards the guard.
Edan twirled around in mid air, swinging his right leg way up. The key slammed into the guard's hands, releasing his tense grip on the gun. And one moment later the heel of Edan's shoe made contact with the left side of his head, knocking him out and sending him sprawling to the right, slamming into the opposite wall, and coming to rest across a few chairs and potted plants.
Edan hit the ground with his left foot, then went into a controlled collapse, falling and spinning, bringing all his limbs to ground. He ended on all fours, one arm in front of the other, shoulder angled, feet staggered, poised ready to strike again. All those years of hand-to-hand combat training in his dragon form really had paid off.
All the guard remembered, though, was a blur of motion, and then a massive blow to his face. Edan remembered it a little differently. He jumped up, grabbed the key, the guard's gun, then tore down the passage, looking for the stairs. He eventually found them next to the elevator, burst through, and continued on up the stairs.
A few flights up he came to a locked door, which a quick 9mm round took care of. And then it was another two flights of stairs, and he was out on the roof. There were three helicopters in the air - local police, SWAT, and the local news channel.
"Shit!" he screamed to himself, then ran to the edge of the roof, away from the helicopters. This was the last thing he needed. The SWAT helicopter saw him, and turned to pursue, but was too late - he had already leapt off the edge of the roof.
"I'm standing in front of the UN building, where only moments ago, thousands of panicked employees were evacuated from the building by emergency response teams. Details are sketchy at this point, but it appears that a terrorrist managed to get inside the UN building, while carrying a device which a local security guard claims to have been a bomb.
Moments later, a teenager exited on to the roof of the building, after which a helicopter observed as the teenager jumped off the roof of the building. Police aren't clear on whether or not this teenager had anything to do with the incident in the main building, but they say that they haven't managed to recover the body yet, claiming that it 'disappeared' into thin air right after he jumped..."
Kaida muted the sound output and grinned. She somehow found it deeply amusing that a strange kid with a little black box could spark so much fear and tension. The door to the control room slid open, and Edan collapsed against it, still in human form, and visibly shaken.
"Wh..." he began, then shook his head as he lost his train of thought. Kaida stood up, strode towards him, and gave him a quick, firm hug.
"You did well," she said.
Edan inhaled and shook his head to clear it. "Yeah, and without blowing anything up," he said. "Just like I promised."
Kaida laughed. "You didn't need to," she said, waving a claw at the incoming newscast. Edan looked over, and all it took was a shot of the UN building being stormed by SWAT teams to know that he had had a massive effect. He watched the screen for a few seconds, but shrugged.
"I can't be held responsible for their phobic behavior. How's the server doing?"
"Running pre-start checks," Kaida said, walking back to her chair. "I want to make sure that everything's working before we actually fire it up. If we start prematurely and break something, then that's it - we're screwed."
"Huh. And Jet? Jorcy?"
"Yeah - they went into Moriseriko. Jet has this idea that if there's anything of significance happening with the local army, someone in the city will know about it."
"Won't doubt him there," he said, then stepped back to the door. "I need coffee," he stated. Kaida grinned.
"Sounds great."
"Sure does, doesn't it?" he asked, then left the room.
Kaida watched the door close behind him, and smiled at a secret thought before turning back to her work. The moment they had the server fired up, they would be able to sweep the entire span of the Northern Continent in less than twenty seconds. Then she would rally Jet, Jorcy and Edan, and they would all go rescue Flame from wherever he was being held.
Quick, simple, easy to remember - the kind of plan people like Edan would approve of. Throw in a few big explosions, and you could get Jet and Jorcy on board in no extra time at all. Kaida chuckled at the thought, as she streamed in a list of environmental functions from the server's tertiary activation point.
It was by a sheer stroke of fate, and nothing more, that the Earth link shared a terminal with the Anchor monitors, and the loud beeping noise which signaled the initiation checks of the Moriseriko anchor had been suppressed along with the CNN newscast. Had Kaida known about it, though, there was nothing she could have done anyway, but at least she may have been able to put up more of a fight.