Chapter 12
"Four down, one to go," Luther murmured with some satisfaction as he proceeded to the one emergency exit he had yet to seal. Up to now no one had taken any notice of him. It was always surprising how in the eyes of the public wearing a workman's overall gave you the authority to do anything. Not that there were a lot of people around the back of the building, especially at this time of day.
He had just set up his tool box, when he felt the soft buzz of his cellphone notifier in his pocket. With a sigh he pulled out the device. Alarmingly red writing was already screaming at him from the lock screen, revealing the details once he had identified himself. He didn't like what he saw.
"Brandt, what's going on?" he asked, trying to sound annoyed rather than concerned. "The connection is down. Completely."
"We've had a bit of a fight down here," Brandt replied. With his own voice, Luther noted, not the computer generated image of Benji's. "One of the servers might have taken a bullet. Or two."
Luther cursed silently. Without the upload completed, their plan would be pretty much screwed. And right now they were still not even almost there. But he still had one joker up his sleeve. "Benji? Can you fix it?"
Benji stepped out into the hallway and tried to orient himself, blinking away the mixture of water and fake blood that still kept running down his face. "Maybe I could," he replied, staring down the corridor. "But I'm nowhere near there. I don't even know what floor I'm on."
"Alright, then I'll go in," Luther decided. Benji knew it was the best thing to do, but there was protest from the others.
"I don't think that's a good idea," Brandt put in. "If you come in, then either we have an open door, or you seal it from inside, which would mean, we won't get back out."
"The only one that's still open is that small exit from the maintenance shafts between ground floor and basement," Luther argued. "And it looks pretty unused. I don't even think they know it exists. I'll come in. Period."
Meanwhile Benji had made sure the hallway was empty and proceeded in the direction of the elevators, when he spotted a familiar sign on a door at the end of the corridor. "In the meantime I'll try to do some reroute from here."
"You can do that?" two voices asked at once, surprised.
"Uh, maybe," the technician replied, not wanting to be premature. "And it'll take some time."
"Give it a try," Luther answered. Unnecessarily, for Benji had already decided to go ahead with it anyway. Quickly he covered the distance to the door in question before anyone could spot him, and knocked politely. There was no reason for running in doors, unless he needed to, but when there was no reply he turned the handle and found it was locked. Neil must have gone home already.
It took the agent mere seconds to pick the lock and soon enough he was inside and closed the door. The room was eerily dark without the familiar dim glow of screens and diodes, but he quickly found the main electrical switch, as well as the computer's power button. He sat back and started looking through the drawers, while he watched the boot-up sequence. In the very back of one he found a stash of Mars bars. The young Scot surely wouldn't mind.
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Once it had become clear that Luther would come in anyway, Skye had refused to climb back into the ventilation system, as had Brandt, and so both of them were waiting with Ethan for the door to open, guns ready.
It was Luther who finally came in. He had decided to open the door once and for all by taking out the lock, partially because he didn't have any lock picks or skeleton key he could have used. Lydia, meanwhile, was gone, leaving only a dark smear on the door where she had impacted earlier.
"Let's have a look at this mess you've made," he announced as he stepped into the room and proceeded to the damaged computer right away.
"Nice to see you, too," Brandt muttered, trying to sound sarcastic, but his relief was far too obvious.
"How does it look?" Ethan asked glancing over Luther's shoulder, who had knelt down next to the huge computer and already removed part of the casing.
"Bad," was the one-word reply he got back.
"Can you repair it?" he returned the obvious question.
"No," Luther stated, half turning to underline his apparent annoyance. "I can't fix it. But I might be able to rig something up if you give me some space and quiet and let me work."
"Well, then let's get out of here," Brandt put in, maybe a bit too enthusiastically, already starting for the door with Skye not far behind.
"Wait!" Ethan stopped them. "We shouldn't split up. By now they know that we are around, probably they are looking for us already. We have lost the element of surprise and we can't blend in with them anymore either. And since Ms. Ferret is not lying in front of that door anymore, I think they are going to show up here sooner rather than later, while we are severely outnumbered and out-gunned. If we want to get out of this, we've got to stick together."
"What about Benji?" Skye asked, visibly concerned, but her boyfriend chimed in immediately.
"I'm alright," he said, astonishingly cheerful. "I got the door locked. They're not gonna surprise me if they get in, and I'd be in the better position. Besides I don't think they'll figure out I'm here."
"Alright," Ethan decided that it would have to suffice. "But you stay there and call for backup at the first sign of trouble." There was an affirmative reply from Benji, and the team leader continued: "Can you tap into the building's mainframe and give us a bit more control? Elevators, doors, anything?"
"We already have a connection for the cameras, but tapping into anything else would take time, which I think is better used on our main computer problem," the Brit explained, and defensively added: "It's not so much my work time, but the fact that after the damage you did down there I'm already overtaxing all the systems, so to implement, say, an elevator override quickly enough to be of any use, I'd have to shut down all the current upload processes completely and that would throw us back ages."
"OK, then I guess we'll do this the old fashioned way," Ethan announced. "Brandt, you'll monitor the security feeds of the elevators, it's the only warning we have of anyone approaching. Skye, we'll secure the hallway."
Grudgingly the analyst disappeared back behind the video screens, while the other two agents stepped out into the corridor.
"So, how does it look?" Benji asked, once the other radio-chatter had died.
"Not good," Luther replied with a frown. "The hard drive of the main server is busted. Everything else seems to be only cable damage that I can probably patch, but without the drive we can forget that computer. Maybe you can reroute our data somewhere?"
"I've already set up a secondary upload protocol," the Brit replied, but he didn't sound happy. "However I had to make that up with so many processes and sub-processes that this way it's going to take us forever, simply because it's taking up so much processing power."
"So you're telling me, without the main upload server we're screwed," Luther summed up their situation.
"Basically yes," Benji agreed. "But maybe you could rig one of the other computers to take over for the main server. I've got all the settings and server protocols in a backup right here."
"That might work," Luther replied and inspected the computer more closely. "Only someone would have to rewire the network connection, and that's not in here."
"I'll do it," Brandt volunteered immediately.
But Benji broke the analyst's enthusiasm: "You wouldn't know what to do."
"No, but you could tell me," Brandt replied, not giving up on his chance to get out of the server room just yet.
"It's not as easy as that," Benji sighed. "I won't even know what to do myself until I see it, so unless one of you happens to have a pair of visco-glasses lying around I'll have to do it myself."
"You shouldn't go alone," Ethan stated, but Skye didn't need that reminder.
"I'll go with you," she decided in a voice that made clear she wouldn't accept a no. "Where are you?"
"Tenth floor," Benji replied and couldn't quite keep the grin out of his voice. "There's an IT-room at the end of the corridor. Can't miss it."
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
The silent knock on the door didn't startle Benji, for he had been waiting for just that, yet he did take his gun when he went to open it, just in case. Outside, however, was only Skye. He suppressed the urge to hug her, knowing he was still fairly wet and sticky all over with theater blood, but washed away her worried look with a cheerful smile.
Still Holt noticed the fairly long stripe of formerly white band-aid, now shining in a washed-out pink thanks to the red paint, that covered the stitches along his neck. "What happened there?" she asked, softly running her finger over it, to see how far it was going.
"Long story. It's not that bad," he added, not wanting to spook her any more right now with the story of how he had come by that and carefully tilted away his head. "Let's get going, shall we?"
Skye nodded her approval and watched the hallway, while he locked the door, before they headed for the elevator. They didn't encounter anyone on their way there. In fact, Benji had a feeling that all the offices they passed were empty. "Where are we going?" Skye asked once they were inside the elevator.
"Ground floor," Benji replied, his finger already hovering millimeters away from the respective button, when Brandt's voice cut him short.
"Wait a moment. You're saying that whatever you have to do is in that entrance hall?"
"I guess so. Since there's not much else on that floor, the access panel has to be somewhere there," Benji replied, and Brandt suppressed a sigh.
"You might want to take a look at the cameras. From what I can tell the room is crawling with people."
Leaving the button where it was for now, Benji pulled the phone out of his jacket's inner pocket, where it had mysteriously stayed dry together with his gun. Opening the feed that tapped into the security cameras, he immediately saw what Brandt was referring to. The camera in front of the elevator had a relatively small pickup area, but there alone he could make out five people and it was a safe guess that there were more in the large part of the room they couldn't see.
"What now?" Skye asked, leaning over his arm to get a glimpse of the picture. But when she looked at Benji's face, the glimmer in his eyes told her that he already had an idea.
"Did Ethan give you one of those spray cans?" he asked, and his smile grew even brighter when she nodded affirmatively.
Still Skye did not yet comprehend his plan. "Yes, why?"
"Back when I was working in the tech lab, we had this ongoing thing about coming up with new non-lethal weapons, and there was a sort of contest about knocking out as many people as possible at once. Most of them never made it past planning stage. My favorite managed to make it into prototype stage, but then was ruled out as being too impractical. Too bad actually, because the principle is quite simple," he explained, while sealing the cap of the spray-can she had given him with a piece of tape. Then he started shaking it vigorously, while Skye was still puzzled. With his best little-child-on-Christmas-eve-grin, he finished: "We called it a glue grenade."
"So you want to make this explode?" she asked, just to be clear and Benji nodded.
"The glue in the can is under pressure, which compresses it to a gas. Additionally there's a propellant mixed in, like for example in hair-spray, which usually is highly inflammable. Subjected to normal pressure, the combination should make a nice aerosol," he continued his explanation. "I'll throw the can straight into the middle of the room, you give it your best shot, and with a little luck the stuff will spread through most of the hall before it's dry."
"Sounds like a plan," she replied, mainly because she didn't have a better one. They both only had their nine-millimeter guns, and even if her clip had still been full, they probably wouldn't have had much more than one bullet for each goon waiting on the other side of those elevator doors. Without knowing exactly how many there were and where each of them was, taking all of them down fast enough would have been impossible. This way at least they had a chance of avoiding a bloody mayhem.
After counting the bullets she still had left, Skye shoved the clip back in with an audible click, releasing the security and loading the chamber in the same motion. "Ready when you are."