My heart sank the moment we walked in to see the place was packed with cops. “Happy Birthday Mike” was plastered on a back wall in a loosely hung up banner. Of all the damn days, it had to be this one. One of the cops approached us, he was tall and rather muscular with a bushy mustache and a fake tan. “Hi, how can we help ya’.” He said with a tone that I couldn’t tell if it was pleasant or fake. “Just here to see Mike, thought we should stop by.” Red improvised. “Really?” The cop sarcastically muttered, “And how do you know him, then?” “Just some old family friends, I knew him back in high school.” Red lied, I could tell he was already running out of ideas. “I’ll go get him then.” The cop concluded, getting up from his chair. I began panicking, and so did Lorenzo. Red seemed completely calm, though. I pulled out my phone and texted him to avoid suspicion. “What’s the plan? Do we book it? They’re clearly onto us.” I typed nervously. “Nah, I got this.” He responded. I looked at him, with a look on my face attempting to convey a “What the hell is wrong with you?” He looked back with his classic dumb grin. I hate that look. He always gives it when he has a terrible plan.

The cop came back with who I assume is Mike, A shorter Latino man with a buzz cut, coffee stains on his uniform shirt and that same damn look in his eyes like Lorenzo. He looked at us quizzically before saying in a cheerful tone. “You wanted to see me.” Red took the opportunity to continue matching Mike’s tone, but with a slight overconfidence, “Mike! Good to see ya’. Thought I’d see you while I was in town. Mind if we stick around?” He said while pulling out a card from his back pocket. Mike looked confused and hesitantly took it. Where the hell did he get that card? I thought to myself. The card itself had some crass, low-brow joke on it. Mike opened it and began reading to himself. His eyes went wide. He shuddered out a breath before saying, “Yeah, I don’t see why not. Never a bad thing to have old friends here.”

He led us out of the entry room and back to the break room. Mike looked at Red “Look, I don’t know what you want, just leave me out of it, please.” He pleaded. What the hell did Red write on that card? Me and Lorenzo looked at each other for a moment, we shared a look and non-verbally agreed (which we don’t typically agree with each other) that Red definitely took it too far with whatever he wrote.

Mike entered the room after taking a breath in. Red grabbed my arm as I was about to enter, and said, “You crazy? We’re not going in there. It's a pigtopia in there!” “Then where the hell are we going?” I asked, frustrated. “You’re going to the security room to plant the data bomb. Me and Lorenzo are going to wait in the bathroom for your signal. We’ll be waiting on comms, tune into 167.4.” I did and began walking towards where I assumed the security room was. I wandered through a few hallways as inconspicuous as I could manage, trying to stay in the blind spots of cameras. I eventually found a room with a keypad next to it. The door was made of a thick metal. To no surprise at all, there was a camera pointed directly at this room. I had to get somewhere away from the cameras to work my magic without alerting the entire place.

I walked into the nearest empty room. It looked like some sort of debrief room, a podium in the front, with rows, and rows of chairs going to the back of the room. I sat in a chair and rolled up my right sleeve to expose my arm. Similar to my ears I got it replaced, it acts as both my shooting arm, and has a miniature computer built into it. It runs an operating system my “mentor” (so to speak) made for me. The plates in my arm separated, showing a keyboard and a holographic screen on top. I began working my magic. I began frantically typing. I was scrolling past the police database maps, camera systems, security protocols, and finally managed to crack into the camera outside the security door. I couldn’t just shut it off, so I had to think of something else. I recorded a loop of the camera feed and edited the file from the camera to play for 15 minutes, which should be enough time to do my thing.

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I walked back to the door and plugged in my data jack from my arm to the keypad. I ran a couple programs to see what I was looking at. Heavily encrypted. This might take longer than I’d like. I started trying to crack the keypad, I started off going into its setup file, changed the number of tries to a number so large that it’s not worth mentioning, deleted the files that link to the alarm system, and then ran a program to run every key combination. Was it efficient? Hell no! But it’s safe.

To my dismay, I began hearing footsteps from down the hallway. I just had to sit and watch this damn program run keypad codes while some cop was about to catch me? I started breathing heavily, I had my hand on my gun in my pocket, all while watching “Code Cracker 4th edition”, some hunk of terrible code I revised four times, running much slower than I’d like it to. It clearly needs more than four. 3046, red light. 3047, red light. 3048, red light. The footsteps were getting louder. My hands started shaking. 3098, red light. 3099 red light. They were getting closer, I cocked the hammer on my revolver in my pocket, I could feel my heart beating in my chest. 4156, red. 4157, red. I took out my gun and pointed it down the hallway. 4189, green. Thank the stars! I opened the door and closed it quickly, trying not to slam it.

I had my ear to the door. The footsteps got louder, louder. Then quieter, and quieter, and quieter. Then stopped. I didn’t hear them anymore. I took a deep breath in, and let it out. I tried to calm my nerves while plugging in the data chip to the main computer. The computer flashed a few screens of programs opening before the entire computer crashed. It wasn’t supposed to crash, but hey, if it works, it works. I tuned into the station Red mentioned. Static. Son of a bitch! Either the guys left me here, or my ears were bugging out again. Either way, it was bad.

I started adjusting the antennas on my ears, static, some commercial radio, then I started hearing voices. It wasn’t Red’s, and it wasn’t Lorenzo’s. It was that cop Red gave the card to. Mike I think. I also heard someone else, a voice I didn’t recognize. I heard Mike say, “They just came in and-” Static for a few seconds, I kept adjusting. “We’ll handle it, just take the day off and cool down.” said a monotone female voice. Then a pause followed by static. I couldn’t text Red or Lorenzo, or we might be compromised, but I couldn’t just stay here. I opened the door and started running down the hallway back to the guys. As I was running, lights on the walls began flashing red and white, and a siren started blaring through the entire building. Shit! Our cover’s blown.