Max Freeman looked at the rain-drenched city streets through the side window of the nondescript black van. The wet sheen on the asphalt glittered under the street lamps overhead. Light spilled from a late-night bar as a drunk flung the door open and then, taking one look at the rain outside, changed his mind and retreated back to the bar overflowing with beer rather than endure the streets overflowing with rain.

There would be no such retreat for Max.

In the raindrops on the window, Max could make out little rainbows caused by the aurora dancing in the dark sky. Strange and powerful solar activity meant the city’s rainy night sky was alive with blue-and-purple swirling lights. It was the first time in Max’s lifetime that the aurora had been seen in the sky over the city and was caused by unusually intense solar activity. Solar flares and mass coronal ejections were terms suddenly familiar to anyone who watched the evening news. Intermittent cell phone reception and disrupted electrical service were becoming all too frequent, but the scientists who appeared on the evening news assured the public that the solar activity would soon pass. For some, it was a source of frustration or fear while to others, it was a magical celestial light show. To Max, it was a distraction he could do without.

Tonight’s climb would be tricky. Not that it was ever easy, but tonight he would have to make a conscious effort to block out the added distraction of the light show dancing across the sky. The dangerous act of scaling the side of a slippery, rain-soaked building would require all his attention.

The overly large mobster next to him laid a heavy hand on the back of his neck. Max could feel the heavy gold jewelry on the fat hairy hand. He could smell the cigar smoke as the big man growled in his ear.

He called this one Corpi—at least in his head.

And once under his breath, just loud enough to almost cost Max his life.

“You are one talented climber,” the corpulent man cooed. “The boss says you’re his best little burglar, so go in, get the loot, and get out. I’ll be waiting for you. Don’t let us down, boy.”

Max felt the heavy pressure from the mobster’s hand release, and he continued to stare out at the rain-flooded streets. He knew why the man would be waiting for him. Not to get him out of the rain, wrap a blanket around him, and offer him a hot drink after his climb, but to take possession of the loot Max was about to steal and make sure it got into the hands of the boss. If Max fell to his death, the only thing the organization would grieve for would be the loss of a burglar and a source of income. Neither the boss nor any of his minions would even remember his name in a week.

Outside the van, city lights shimmered in the rain, orange sodium lamps against the purple aurora. The lights reflecting in puddles on the side of the road were suddenly obliterated as the van’s tires splashed through them. The vehicle took a sharp turn down a side street and then into a dark alley where the driver cut the headlights. Corpi grabbed Max by the neck again and growled in his ear, soft and gentle but with a deep, chilling menace that the diminutive thief had come to know so well.

“Don’t mess this one up, Max. You grab those black diamonds and get back here quick. Don’t even think about leaving your old friends out in the cold.”

Max’s head was shoved hard up against the cold window, and the large mobster directed his view, pointing up with stumpy fingers bristling with thick black hairs that erupted from his knuckles. “There. That’s your way in.” He spun Max around and squeezed his face between his thick, calloused hands.

The smell of cigar smoke was strong on the man’s thick mustache. The stench seemed to linger in the deep wrinkles on the mobster’s face. Hairs burst out of his nostrils, and his beady eyes were filled with a permanent glint of malice. Corpi’s smile was never reassuring, but it was even less so at that moment.

Max feared he would never be able to escape this lifestyle, being Freeman in name only.

He had tried to leave once but had been dragged back—forcefully and painfully brought back into the fold. They had tempered punishment with praise, trying to make him feel good about himself and the organization after beating him senseless. They tried to make him feel like he belonged, like he was one of them, that his only life was with them. But he knew he wasn’t one of them and that they didn’t think of him as being one of them. He was always going to be an outsider. He was useful to the boss, quick and nimble and able to break into virtually anywhere short of Fort Knox. He could climb the sheer face of any building and could creep through the tightest of spaces and crawlways. No building was truly secure to him. There were always voids and cavities, crawlways and passageways, and Max could navigate them with ease. His boss knew this made him a perfect burglar. He was just another tool, though, no different than the polished, sawed-off shotgun his boss carried with him everywhere.

Only a few days before, Max had almost walked away. After all, he’d learned from his mistake during the previous attempt at escaping. That time, he’d contacted someone he’d thought was a friend, someone who might help him get away. Unfortunately, that person had been more committed to the boss and the organization than to Max, and they’d double-crossed him.

Max knew how to do it now: disappear into the night, out of the city, out of the state, clear across the country, north, south, east, or west. It didn’t matter where, as long as he got as far away from the boss and the organization as he could. This job had landed in their laps just as Max was making his final preparations to flee, and with the money involved, it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.

A laboratory in the city had just received a large shipment of diamonds. They weren’t jewelry grade, but they were still worth a small fortune. It was an easy job, at least on paper. One that was just too good for Max to ignore. After tonight, he would be free from the mafia—and rich.

The fat man shoved a bag into his hand.

“You fill this bag with every last diamond you can find, my boy.” Corpi grabbed his ear and pulled him close. He chuckled as he stuck his finger in Max’s ear. “And don’t think about keeping any of them jewels from your old friends. I will check every last hiding place in your skinny little body if I get even a whiff of you trying to steal from us. You just bring me those diamonds, and the boss will give you whatever you want. I know you like that girl in the club. You can have her. Just get me those diamonds.”

Max had to admit that the new waitress in his boss’s club was pretty, but he knew that she wasn’t interested in him. Few girls were. He’d had a few girlfriends after school, but they had been short-lived, casual relationships that never got serious. He hoped to find someone special one day, but he knew he had to get away from the mob first.

The driver got out, opened the side door of the van, and pulled the thief out. Max tucked the bag in the back of his tight climbing pants. His climbing shoes were stiff with rough toes for extra grip. He powdered his hands as he looked up at the wet side of the building. The lower stories were built from slabs of concrete, but further up, it was all chrome, steel, and glass. It was going to be a long climb. He needed to get to the twentieth floor to access the laboratory where the diamonds had been delivered that very morning.

Lightning stabbed down from the cloud-filled sky and struck the tower on a building a block away. It was quickly followed by a crack of thunder, growling like the roar of a huge beast.

“Get on with it.” Corpi shoved Max toward the building and then stepped back inside the van, sliding the door shut with a thud.

Max approached the building, mumbling obscenities to himself, and began to climb. He easily found gaps between slabs of concrete and panes of glass. To a casual observer, the side of the building was virtually smooth, but the skilled climber could find purchase on even the narrowest of cracks.

He made it up the concrete slabs with ease. The higher he climbed and the more the rain fell, the job grew increasingly treacherous. This was especially true when he encountered two floors where the exteriors were almost entirely made up of glass.

“Keep looking up, Max,” he said to himself as he paused to wipe the rain from his fingers. The thief knew looking down would surely lead to a fall, and because he was now twelve stories up, any slip would be fatal. Climbing down at this stage would be even more treacherous than continuing onward and upward.

The stinging cold rain bit his face and fingers, but Max ignored it—and the pull of gravity. When he finally reached his targeted floor, he began to work his way sideways until he found the small ventilation duct where he would enter the building.

Max carefully took out the only tool he carried, a customized Swiss Army knife. He used his teeth to pull out the screwdriver bit and began unscrewing the cover of the duct. He let it fall away, fantasizing about it landing on Corpi’s fat head and killing him dead. The wind took hold of the cover and whipped it away down the alley. He heard it clattering somewhere in the distance just as he started to squeeze into the narrow opening.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The air duct was less than two feet across. The aluminum tube was warm and grew hotter as he inched forward into the building. Once he felt he was far enough in, Max pulled the blade out of his Swiss Army knife and stabbed through the thin aluminum in front of him. The blade punched through as easily as if he was stabbing a soda can. He switched over to a small set of metal sheers which had replaced the original scissors and started to clip away. The sheers were small and cutting a hole was a slow and tedious job, but he soon cut a hole big enough to slip through.

Once the hole in the duct was complete, the thief could see soft white ceiling tiles below. He carefully reached down and removed one.

Max poked his head through the opening and looked down into an empty office right next to his target. The room he was targeting was partitioned from the central laboratory with simple dividing walls that only rose up six or seven feet from the floor. The thief nimbly dropped down into the office and crept toward the door. He slowly and quietly pushed it open and peered inside for a moment to make sure it was empty. Then he stepped into the laboratory.

The lab looked more like a huge engineering workshop than a sterile house of science, and Max wondered whether he’d broken into the wrong floor. The area was vast and dimly lit by the small lights on the banks of computers and equipment that stood at the outer edge. The center of the room was dominated by a large, dark structure. It looked like two six-foot donuts standing upright, both made of a dark metal. They stood about twelve feet apart, mounted on a wide, elevated platform. Cables ran chaotically between them and from each of the donuts to banks of equipment at the edge of the lab. In the dim light, Max could see the glint of diamonds scattered over the surfaces of both donuts.

The thief moved slowly and quietly, all the while alert to any sounds of movement. There were security guards somewhere in the building who would certainly be patrolling this room from time to time.

The facets of the diamonds on the machine glinted in the low light. All that mattered to the thief’s boss was if Max stole them, he could sell them, and the small bag Max carried could potentially hold hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of profit. Not bad for a single night’s work.

Max knew what it meant to steal from the mafia, though. It meant he would have to get as far away from them as possible and never be found, or the rest of his life would prove to be very short and very painful. He pulled the bag out from the back of his pants and started prying diamonds off the large donut now in front of him, using his knife blade. He moved quickly around the entire machine, and soon the bag was heavy with diamonds.

Then he heard a noise.

Max ducked behind a tangle of cables connected to a large silver box covered in lights, buttons, and display panels. His eyes darted around the room, and adrenaline coursed through his veins as the sound of footsteps approached. In the low light, he could make out the form of a feminine figure walking toward the large donuts in the center of the lab. She was heading right toward him.

The lab abruptly lit up as a flash of lightning ripped through the dark sky outside. Max clearly saw the woman approaching in that moment of brilliance as she turned her head toward the window to look outside. He saw her thick red hair dancing in the electric blue light. She was wearing a white lab coat and carrying a tablet computer.

As the light faded, the woman returned her attention to the machine controls and began tapping on the tablet, walking from one screen to the next, working her way around the laboratory. Max crept silently up onto the platform and between the two donuts, trying to keep as much distance between them as possible.

The thief stopped at the sound of her voice, soft and sweet, confident and intelligent.

“It is currently two a.m. The machine is powered down. No sign that the unusual solar activity and the lightning storm are interacting with the experiment in any way.” She checked a display readout on a large power unit. “All power is drained from the system. The transport portal will be ready for the next test run as soon as the storm and solar activity have passed.”

The young woman spoke into the tablet computer as she walked toward Max’s hiding place. Even in the low light, the thief could see she was beautiful. Max had never believed in love at first sight, but as his cheeks flushed, he thought the red-haired beauty just might change his mind on that subject. He had to fight down the urge to step from his hiding place and introduce himself with a smile. It would make a great story to tell in the future about how they first met, after all.

Another flash of lightning lit up the sky, and Max’s shadow flickered over the platform between the two dark donuts.

The young lady gasped as she saw the shadow and then looked right at his hiding place. The thief looked out at her from the shadows, frozen as he took in her pale lips, blue eyes, and wild red hair.

So beautiful! Max thought.

“Who are you? Are you with maintenance? Security?” He could see her eyes darting around nervously, instinctively knowing he was an intruder with no legitimate reason for being there. “No one is allowed access to the lab. You can’t be in here. Get away from the experiment! It’s dangerous.”

Max stood up. He looked around the lab and identified his escape route. If he climbed one of the donuts, he could leap across to the partition wall of the nearest side office, and he could be back out the way he came in moments. Then all he needed to do was get back to the ground without slipping and falling, which would be no easy task. That had always been the riskiest part of his plan since he had no intention of returning to the van and the mobsters waiting for him. He was going to escape with this haul of black diamonds.

“Are you here to steal information about the experiment? I promise you, no one else has the equipment to achieve our results. You will just have to wait until we publish.” Then she saw the bag in Max’s hand, and her eyes went wide. “You’re not here to steal our research! You’re her to steal the diamonds!”

The young woman’s expression turned haughty. “You’re just a thief,” she said with contempt, but then her expression changed again.

“Those diamonds are worthless to you,” she insisted. “They were custom created to have a very specific molecular resonance, and we can’t run this experiment without them.”

Max continued to back away, but the young woman was so beautiful and her voice so sweet. He couldn’t keep a smile from his lips, knowing he was in no danger and could escape at any time. His eyes were drawn to her chest and he noticed the badge pinned to her coat. Her name was Janet.

“We are on the verge of a breakthrough,” the woman went on, pleading with Max. “This portal will revolutionize transportation. No more burning fossil fuels. We will be able to shrink space between two points and step from one portal to the other as if stepping through a doorway. If you take even one of those diamonds, you will set us back months. Think about the greater good!”

“It’s nothing personal,” Max said, attempting to put on a charming smile. “I just do as my boss tells me. I’m sure you know what that’s like, telling people what to do.”

She scoffed. “I am nobody’s boss. Do you think I would be here at two in the morning running basic checks on the power for the experiment if I was in charge?” She shook her head and lowered her eyes. “I’m just a lab assistant. And if you run off with those diamonds, I will be lucky if I am still a lab assistant in the morning. If I let you get away with them, they will fire me for sure. Please, give me the diamonds back.”

The beautiful lab technician stepped up onto the platform with Max just as another flash of lightning lit up the dark laboratory, followed by a deep rumble of thunder that shook the windows. Max glanced at one of the dark donuts. The same purple swirling aurora he’d seen in the sky now seemed to dance around the outer edge of the circular structure.

Lightning burst through a window and struck the bundle of cables he had once hidden behind. The two donuts instantly lit up with dark purple-and-blue light, strands of purple lightning crackling from one donut to the other.

The lab assistant reached out and grabbed the bag of diamonds in Max’s hands, but he held onto the bag and pulled it toward himself. Her grip was firm, and she stumbled toward him. They locked eyes for a brief instant. The thief was impressed with how beautiful and fierce her eyes were, even though he could see she was afraid. She was brave and strong, and Max found it all a little bit exciting and very alluring. As the lights danced around the two huge donuts, her hair stood up like a wild red mane. He felt his skin tingle, not sure if it was the strange purple light or the thrill of being so close to the beautiful woman.

Max had a job to do, though. The thief was not an overly powerful man, but he was a match for the beautiful lab tech. He yanked on the bag of diamonds, but she refused to let go, and they tugged back and forth.

The lab technician suddenly looked up as the lights danced between the two dark donuts. Pulses of electricity raced back and forth, increasing in speed.

“We need to get away from here!” she said, eyes wide. “The experiment. It’s activating!”

Again, lightning flashed into the laboratory and hit one of the donuts. Max felt the hairs stand up on his neck. He really wanted to let the girl have the bag of diamonds, and if he could have afforded to part with them, he would have given it to her. But he couldn’t. This was his only chance to escape, and he would need every diamond in that bag—and probably a lot more.

Max felt the high-grip toes of his climbing shoes bite into the deck beneath his feet as the lab tech pulled with an almighty tug on the bag. Then she gave up and let go.

“Get away from the experiment. It’s going to activate, and you’re going to be caught in the portal!” A truly terrified look came over her face as she yelled. “We’ve only sent small inanimate objects through the transit field so far. It’s too dangerous for living beings. We were going to experiment on a mouse for our first live test, but it’s not calibrated for anything as large as a person.”

She turned to step away from Max, but then she looked down in frustration to see that her small gold bracelet had snagged on the diamond bag. Max tugged the bag hard to pull it from her but only succeeded in dragging her toward him. She reached out with her free hand and tried to detach her bracelet from the bag, panic starting to take hold of her.

The thief knew that the sooner she freed her bracelet, the sooner he could be away into the dark, his new future ahead of him. He stepped toward her and let her pick away at the clasp that was snagged on the bag of diamonds. She glanced up from the bracelet to the pulsing lights on the two donuts. Her red hair was standing up in fine singular strands all around her head, purple lights flickering from the tips of her hair.

Max felt all his hair standing up too.

Then the lights on the sides of both donuts started flashing on and off. Lightning shot from the face of each black diamond still in place on the apparatus. The girl gasped and let out a small whimper of panic. The lightning flickered in strands between the donuts like fine electric hairs. Then all the bright strands of light were drawn to the bag of diamonds in the center of the platform.

The beautiful lab technician looked at Max with terror on her face. He tried to let go of the bag, but he was stuck, frozen to the spot. A loud buzzing started somewhere in the lab, building to a crescendo, and then all was quiet. The girl looked at him, her lip quivering, and then the laboratory plunged into darkness, falling away on all sides, falling away into silent nothingness.