Chapter Five - Breaking and Entering

It took three quarters of an hour to lose the enemies on his tail. At last, Seth ducked in a deserted alley and took the communicator from his pocket. It opened, and Erik's face appeared moments later.

"About time," he said in relief. "Five more minutes, and -" He stopped, studying Seth's face closely. "Uh oh . . . . I know that look."

"They got Mel."

Silence filled the connection, broken only by Adam, cursing in the background, obviously listening in. "The Observers are hiring local street gangs to do their dirty work - three of them surprised us outside the Questioners' Consulate. They've got paralysation casts to catch targets who run."

Adam's face replaced Erik's. "Did you get the gang name?"

"Yeah. They were calling themselves 'The Sigilscars.'

The thief nodded. "Good. I've got a contact with them. They'll be able to help."

"With what?" Erik's voice cut in. "They're the ones who turned Mel over to the government."

"The contact's a spy, you dako-brainer. He has no real loyalty to the Sigilscars. And if Leader-Boy's planning what I think he is, we're going to want to leave town in a hurry. If we know where the governments gangs patrol, we'll have a cleaner, faster getaway."

Seth nodded once. "Sounds good."

"What is the plan, exactly?" asked a newly reappeared Erik. He listened intently as Seth explained, scribbling something down every once in a while. When he finished, he looked over what he'd written and nodded in satisfaction. "Seems pretty do-able. Adam and I can pick up the stuff we'll need and meet you somewhere. You pick the place."

"There's an old warehouse about five blocks from the Questioners' Consulate. Meet me there in two hours."

. . . . .

The snowfall had changed to freezing rain by the time Erik and Adam arrived at the warehouse. The massive sliding doors were cracked open, Seth waiting just inside, distinctly not in a good mood. He leaned against a square, concrete pillar, arms folded, and glaring at a tiny gouge in the floor as if it were somehow to blame for this situation.

He looked up as the others entered, giving a brief nod. "Right on time." Straightening, he stepped forward. "You get everything? Erik nodded, holding up a heavily laden backpack. Pulling his cloak tighter around around his shoulders and lifting the hood, Seth breathed deep. "All right - let's get going."

They covered the distance to the Consulate by way of back streets and alleyways, counting on shadows to keep their identities hidden. Within minutes, the tan-coloured brickwork wall of the Consulate was directly in front of them. The building was three storeys high, with white decorative molding around the flat roof. Windows broke the building face's monotony, all dark.

Setting the backpack on the wet ground, Erik removed their first tool - a tightly coiled length of rope, knotted at three-foot intervals, with a padded grapnel at one end. He passed this to Adam, who - eyeing the roof molding - gave the rope an experimental twirl, before swinging it up and away. Right on target, the grapnel latched onto it's target.

"Got it."

One by one, the three of them pulled themselves up, using the knots for leverage. On the roof at last, they pulled the the rope up after them, leaving it near the edge for a quick descent.

"The main computer centre is on the other side, on the third floor," Seth said, voice low. "We'll have to get rid of the outer alarm first, though. Breaking in would set it off."

"Got it covered," Erik answered, hefting a spray can. "This should keep it quiet."

Adam raised one eyebrow skeptically. "Hairspray?"

"Liquid insulation."

The boxy alarm proved to be too far down the wall for any of them to reach by leaning over the edge. Instead, they relied on lowering Adam down head-fist by hanging onto his ankles. Pushing the tiny tube through the alarm's grille, he depressed the button to start the flow.

"How much of this stuff do I put in?" he stage-whispered up to the others.

"Fill it up - the hammer on the alarm can't move," Erik hissed back. "It's the hammer hitting the bell that makes the noise that triggers an alarm with the Peacekeepers. Take that out, and we're fine."

"Right."

Five minutes later, with the alarm well insulated, they hauled Adam back up and set to work. In the front left corner of the roof, Erik marked out a circle in chalk, before stepping back and giving the nod to Seth.

"Nega Mass!" the dark-haired leader muttered, sending his cast into the centre of the circle. The stone roofing glowed briefly, before crumbling and collapsing in on itself. The sensors inside detected only deviances from the normal room temperature - falling stone would cause no reaction. Similarly, the guard patrols covered the detention levels only, a fact Adam had rightly called 'careless.' Lying on his stomach, Erik rapidly set up a small viewscreen, running a wire-thin cable from it to a tiny robotic device in his hand. Setting the little thing down on the edge of the hole, he tapped a few keys on his gauntlet and sent the robot over the edge and inside. The three of them watched the screen as the little critter crawled upside down along the ceiling. For several moments, the minusucle light above the little thing's camera eye illuminated only the plain gray of the ceiling surface. Then, all of a sudden, the stark white of the sensor reared out of the shadows.

Erik grinned. "Bingo."

Tiny arms eased through the ventilator grilles of the sensor, automatically searching for the wires that were needed. As they boys watched, the red light on the sensor's side flashed once, and went dark.

"We've only got thirty seconds to re-wire," Erik said, typing furiously. "After that, the alarm goes off, and we're as good as sigilsunk."

The seconds ticked by as the robot, following it's instructions as they came, pulled wires from their ports, switched them around, and fused others together. Twenty-seven . . . twenty-eight . . . twenty-nine . . .

The light flared back into existence, and the three boys breathed easier. "Re-wired," Erik sighed. "Now, all it sees is a video loop of an empty room. We're good to go."

"All right," Seth said, not wasting any time. "Let's get in there."

Once inside, they had to rely on handlights to find their way around. The room consisted of several rows of counterspace, a computer terminal placed every four feet or so. Miles of cords snaked along under the desks, power outlets shielded by heat inhibitors to prevent them from setting off the alarm with the warmth they gave off. The amount of technology in the room was staggering.

Grinning like a kid on Christmas, Erik moved forward to a tall, slender cylinder in the room's centre. "You know you're in the right place when there's a Knowledge pillar right in the room," he said quietly, the low volume not hiding his excitement. Reaching into a side pocket of the backpack, he drew out a disk , slipping it into a slot on the pillar's side.

"What was that?" Adam asked, frowning at the little piece.

"Slicer program," Seth answered - Erik was already immersed in . . . something. "It'll let him access the data inside the pillar without needing to have the two passwords."

"And we're just getting this thing now?" the thief hissed in irritation. "Why didn't you mention this beforehand when we were talking about how to get in the system?"

Gray eyes narrowed. "Hey, don't look at me. I didn't mention it earlier because I didn't know Erik had the program. And he didn't tell me because slicer programs are extremely illegal. The only way to get one is through the right contacts, and those are even harder to come by than the program."

" . . . . I don't know what surprises me more - the fact that you actually condone the use of this thing, or that Erik has better contacts than I do."

There was a quiet beep from the terminal closest to the pillar, it's lit screen shedding illumination on Erik's face. "I'm in," he said, fingers flying across the keyboard. "Starting the data search."

Almost immediately, little windows began popping up on the screen. Eyes flashing to each as they appeared, Erik frowned in concentration. For several seconds, he sat stock-still, watching. Then, all at once, his hand shot out, touching one of the windows at the upper right corner; all activity on the screen halted.

"Found it."

Leaning in, both Seth and Adam looked in puzzlement at the mind-boggling mix of numbers and symbols. No real words were discernible, merely gibberish.

The former thief glanced sideways at Erik. "Uh . . . got what, exactly?"

"Oh . . . . Sorry, hang on a second." He typed something in, causing the screen to blur briefly. When it cleared, the gibberish had been transformed into understandable words. "It was encoded," Erik explained sheepishly. "I forgot you guys can't read that stuff."

Seth was already reading. "It's fine," he said absent-mindedly. "These are the prison records from the last forty-eight hours, right?" Erik nodded. "Can you highlight the high-priority prisoners?"

The red-haired boy's eyes lit up. "Because that's what Mel will be!" As he typed, red bars appeared across certain names and information. As Erik continued, the page scrolled down, more red bars appearing over names.

"This place can't possibly hold all these people," Adam muttered. "It's got to be a transfer point for other prisons; places like Gata-shin or any of the political prisons set up by the Council."

"There!" Seth's finger pointed to one of the red bard. The screen stopped, a new window opening. A small picture at the left showed Mel's face, her information listed to it's right.

"Does it say where she's being held?" Adam asked, skimming the data.

"Cell 6495 - HP in J-wing," Seth said, straightening. "We're in J-wing right now, aren't we?"

A map appeared at Erik's prompt, a pulsing red dot signifying their location. "Yeah, we're right on the edge of the wing, about five floors above her. All detention cells are underground to prevent prison breaks - we just have to get down there."

"Can we do it without setting off any alarms?"

More typing and another window. "Uh . . . not really. Look at that; those are all the guard posts between us and her." At least twelve red dots were visible.

A grin curved one side of Seth's mouth. "Well, I guess it's more a question of whether they can stop us, then, isn't it."

Casting him a concerned look, Adam spoke up. "Hey, in case you forgot, this is supposed to be a sneaking in mission, not a complete internal assault! We don't have that kind of firepower."

The monitor went dark as Erik shut it down. "It doesn't have to be a full-fledged attack to be successful. All we have to do is get to the cells, get Mel, and get out again. If we have the right strategy, it should be easy."

"Yeah," the thief muttered. "If."