When she approached the equipment room Tasìa heard a clanging noise just before the sound of the familiar voice of Felicité. The blonde cursed at something in her grasp.
While waiting for her, the Argentinian disassembled a broken piece of equipment that possessed an assembly of twelve infrared lasers set in tightly configured nodes across its surface. A motion tracker, of all things.
Felicité shook her head as she put a makeshift tool of her own design made of several copper wires enjambed together back into the pocket of her long green coat.
"If I was even half the mad genius I imagine myself to be, I could reassemble this and fly out of here. It mocks me. They say only men can be emasculated, but I believe that is exactly how I feel right now."
"You are trying to make a flying machine?"
"Not so much trying to make one, but with the kind of trouble my ass is in, needing to make one."
Felicité chattered away with her mood improved. "We only need something that can lift two hundred pounds of weight a mere five hundred yards up in the air, and then with a paraglide sail we could float beyond the fence."
"It would have to be something that did not blow our legs off," Tasìa retorted.
The Argentinean grimaced as she stood up.
"There-in lies the rub," she answered. Felicité cleared her throat before she changed the subject. "So, how did she react? Did the bitch lose her shit?"
Tasìa shook her head as a little grin formed above her tiny chin.
"I lost so much sleep waiting for Castro to wake up. When I heard her stirring, I put on my sweetest, most innocent face, batting my eyes all big and doe-like. 'Kae-Kae,' I said, 'COs, three of them, came through here last night. They stopped at your cell, and they took some things; it looked like they took a lot of things.'
"Felicité, that woman turned white as a ghost which I gathered from her muttering, she thinks she will soon be. There was a point where she kept trying to stand back up from a crouched position in front of her locker, but she couldn't manage it.
"I had to lead her back to her bed. She kept repeating over and over, 'I'm dead, I am dead, I am dead! I was holding onto something really valuable for somebody. Those fucking crooks must have fucking found out about it.'"
The Argentinian laughed as she mounted a battery pack onto their equipment
"They will never suspect you. Who but a CO could know the combinations? That is the beauty of it. Hop on the vac. We have somewhere to go."
"That we do," Tasha answered, as she complied with her hands gripped on the steering bar. "From my estimation," she continued, "that vent in the break room is the one furthest away from both the blower coils and the pulse lasers used for the ultraviolet air treatment."
UV filtering was necessary for all indoor settings where mold could form now that the nano-spores were ubiquitous. The increase in spore density, if they were not sufficiently scrubbed, made them extremely potent.
Tasìa heard a moaning sound that came from below them. It reminded her that she had not heard the Shrill of the Banshees as of yet that evening.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
"The hell is that," she asked.
"The Wailing From Below," Felicité answered.
"From the Disappeared? Is that why the Manifested have not been screaming?"
"Yeah, there is an entire hierarchy of social behavior with the Manifested that is observable, but damned if you can understand what it is that squirms in their heads in the place of human intelligence now."
They reached the break room. No correctional officers were around. Expectation of the Shrill kept the area cleared for at least another fifteen minutes.
Tasha took a moment to examine the vent ensconced on the ceiling near the middle of the break room. They began to clear out a few tables that would be in the way.
"All I need to do is get up into that vent, crawl through it to the southwest side. There is surely an outer grill on that side where I can get a better view of that tower.
"While I'm there, I'll find out what kind of bolt assembly it has. There must be a set of tools in the tool cache to disassemble whatever they used to mount the vent."
"Have you ever tried opening that big ass lock hooked on the cache door," Felicité asked.
"Of course. Wherever they have foolishly allowed me twenty seconds to myself beside any lock in the IMCQ I have tried it."
"You really believe you can pull this off? At this very hour?"
Tasìa shrugged off the question as being irrelevant. She asked one of her own.
"What can you tell me about those cameras?"
"Before it's spliced, the lead cable pulls in three hundred and sixty watts. That is enough to power eight of the cameras they have all over this facility.
"There are two cameras positioned at each of the two doors. Another two cover the interior stairwell. There are two placed in the adjacent corridors on the first level, both are offline."
"Interesting," Tasìa commented. "When did you first notice the pair went offline?"
Felicité sat on a break room tabletop. She looked off into the adjoining corridor. When she turned her head back around the Argentinian nodded decisively.
"As of Wednesday."
With a casual side glance, Tasìa gazed searchingly at the Argentinian.
"There is a story there, then. What are your 'friends' looking for, Felicité," Tasìa asked.
"They want a full array of the data in storage."
"If they can make barriers go away for us when we attempt our escape, then why can't they retrieve it themselves?"
"I tend not to go nosing around my employer's business; it attracts attention to myself."
Tasìa gave the Argentinian a well-practiced detached cool look to this answer as her own rejoinder.
As Felicité scratched her elbows with pointy black polished fingernails, she continued her explanation with a shrug.
"That I am not certain. I believe they have more influence over staff here than they do over some unidentified spooks. They even have an operational name for the tower, my clients call it the Sore Thumb."
"Makes sense. Felicité, what I want you to do is help get this table lengthwise-vertical, then hold it in place for me. Once I'm up there, you can put it back in place. I should have no problem dropping back down."
With the table in place beneath the vent, Tasìa was ready to begin her ascent.
"Hey, Del Alma-Gris," Felicité said, getting her attention before she passed her a slip of paper. "If you reach a terminal, or any wireless transmitter and receiver, dial me in, okay?"
Tasìa scrunched her brows and wrinkled her nose.
"This is recognizance," Felicité continued, "to find out what we need, just in case the opportunity presents itself use this sequence to dial me in."
Tasìa nodded as she put the note in her back pocket. She shot up the table. Removing the vent cover proved not to be a problem. Whoever used it last, decided to keep the fasteners loose.
She pushed on both sides with her hands as she inched against the metal surface. Once inside the lip, she needed to close the vent.
For Tasìa, this was only a little tricky. She pushed up against the sides of the duct interior with her knees. While her knees held her firmly in place, she doubled her limber torso over and rotated upside down. She grabbed the vent handle with both hands. This feat caused Felicité to guffaw a 'holy shit' as she stared with her mouth open.
As she she shut the vent door below her, Tasìa smiled back and waved to the gawking Argentinian.