Orion took two steps, pushed himself off the asphalt, scrambled up the wall and heaved himself through the window. He tried to avoid landing on his face on the other side. His hands whipped out in front of him and his outstretched fingertips met the counter next to the sink. Crumbs and droplets of water became trapped between a thin layer of synthetic leather and a much thicker layer of cheap wood-optic plastic. Orion’s gloved hands bore the brunt of the impact and he balanced precariously on them while drawing the rest of his body inside through the window.
While his body fell downward, Orion’s span of attention widened again, like a camera’s lens focus depth. The crumbs beneath his fingertips faded in favour of taking in the room in a much broader swathe of details.
The door to the kitchen was open, and the slice of room visible on the other side was devoid of activity. Orion had checked that with the help of a small mirror before he climbed in, but now time was ticking again. Someone could walk by any second and spot him. He had to move.
Orion slid off the counter and wiped a gloved hand over the surface to take care of any dirt that might have stuck to the soles of his shoes. He crossed the room in two quick, silent strides and placed himself behind the open door, wedged against a wall. If the door had opened outward, he would have been hard pressed for a place to hide. Of course, that had been checked beforehand, too. Nevertheless, it was a bit of luck to ease his job, and he wasn’t about to complain.
His heart slowly regained a more usual, calm pace. Orion breathed through widely flared nostrils to avoid audible pants from the seconds of exertion. The last of his sharp focus faded, no longer seeking out the lone smudge along a cabinet’s lower edge, or the quiet hum of the refrigerator. Orion breathed, concentrating on the big things, loud noises, large obvious stuff, the position of rooms.
Now to waiting. Sounds wandered in from the next room. Creaking chairs, fingers rapidly tapping on desks, the occasional sigh. It all blended into a soothing flow of background noise. Orion put the next room’s occupants at four people. Maybe more. No less than three.
‘Orion, you in?’, Lilly’s voice hissed through his earpiece.
Orion tightened his neck muscles beneath the small metal disk pressed up against his throat. He didn’t make a sound, but the microphone picked up on the shift of skin and sent a bout of static through their connection. The microphone registered vibrations of his skin rather than the air, cutting the amount of background noise in the transmission. Still, the building was quiet enough that Orion didn’t want to risk even a quiet hum. His brief flexing seemed to be enough, though.
‘I’ll take that as a yes. Push the volume button on your transmitter if you’re all right.’
Orion wormed a hand into his pocket and pressed the button twice.
‘Oookay. You good, Poison?’
A small pause, a small moment of holding their breaths, before the third and final member of their group answered.
‘Yeah. Wait a sec.’
Orion released his breath. He prepared to move once more, another quick shuffle of activity, timed perfectly if they were to succeed. As soon as Poison was in position, he would have to be fast. The evidence storage was one room over. He would have to cross from the kitchen through the main workspace of the station and then into the storage from there. It was a short way to go, but he had the additional handicap of four police officers on night shift duty in his path, and the personal challenge of not being seen at all. He always bet with Poison on whether he’d make it through a job unseen.
Quiet conversation drifted through the door, distinct in its suddenness and reverberating through the otherwise silent room. Orion started at the sudden noise, but then the all too short conversation was over, and in his surprise he hadn’t caught any of it. He did, however, catch the sound of a chair creaking and steps coming his way.
Orion froze against the wall at his back, forcing himself to keep breathing, albeit shallowly. He relaxed his muscles as best he could. Cramping would not be helpful right now, especially since he didn’t know how long he would be caught in this position.
Someone entered the kitchen. Walked to the counter below the window. Unhurried steps. A tired sigh. Not hectic, not with urgent purpose. A click, running water, cutlery shifting around in a jar. After what felt like hours to Orion, the coffee machine sputtered to life, drowning out the stray sounds of traffic from outside and the errant tapping from the workroom.
Orion closed his eyes. He hadn’t checked the counter after climbing in. He could kick himself for it. How could he miss something so obvious?
No, he hadn’t missed it. The spike of adrenalin calmed as he reminded himself. He hadn’t left any signs of disturbance, nothing that betrayed his presence. He had wiped down the counter before hiding. Stupid adrenalin making him forget stuff and believe the worst was about to happen.
The coffee machine kept up its inconsistent dribble and gurgle, and Orion strained to hear any footsteps leaving the kitchen again. Instead, the officer seemed determined to wait for the coffee machine to run through completely, shifting around every few seconds, stretching to relieve muscles strained from hours of desk work.
This was not part of the plan. Well, nothing much was part of the plan, because night shifts were too damned unpredictable. As much as cops liked their routines, they deviated from them far too often. Made it harder to plan runs like this. Orion was supposed to signal when he had a clear path, or as much of it as he could get. Not going to happen now, at least not in the set time frame.
The coffee hissed and spat, stopped for a second, then resumed trickling into the pot. Orion felt around in a pocket of his pants and flicked the button on a small transmitter. At least the distraction would help him out of his pinch.
For a few more seconds, all was quiet, and then there was a low thump, and a crash, and shouts arose in the next room. The officer in the kitchen cursed and stomped out, adding another voice to the rising shouts. A clatter of footsteps, leaving, and doors opening and clicking shut again.
Orion waited another few seconds, waited for the silence to settle, for the steps to get further away. When he was reasonably sure the officers had all cleared out, he checked around the door with his mirror, then rounded it and quickly swept his gaze over the rest of the area. Nothing. No time to loose. Orion rushed around the door and into the open space of the next room.
Desks stood strewn around the room in groups of four. A string of indoor windows opened the view into a corridor, for atmosphere or for keeping an eye on people, Orion didn’t care. He’d use them for the latter.
To his left, a row of shelves ran the length of the room up to the storage door. He raced along them, ducking low enough to just peek over the edge of the desks, through the windows and into the corridor.
Two of the night shifters stood on the other side of the glass panes, hands on hips, facing the station’s main entrance. The others were nowhere to be seen. Probably outside. Possible somewhere else. No matter. They weren’t here. Orion briefly wondered that he ought to be warier of sneaking about a building full of cops. He dismissed the thought on continued on.
He reached the far side of the room and examined the door. Electronic lock. Oh well. He pulled a small, square box from another pocket. He pressed it against the door next to the ID card reader, crouching down. The Opener engaged immediately and whirred softly. It was more of a vibration against Orion’s hand than an actual sound, and it didn’t carry far. A yellow light started blinking. Orion moved his lips, not daring to so much as whisper even though he was alone in the room, and the Opener was probably louder than any whisper. Still, paranoia had saved him more than once.
He glanced over his shoulder. He could see the corridor from here, meaning he was visible from there in turn. One officer was still standing in the hall, in Orion’s line of sight. The other one was gone.
Come on, come on …
The Opener’s whirring stopped and the light switched to red. Orion held his breath.
The light switched to green and the number ‘three’ appeared on the screen. Orion retrieved the Opener and slowly, gently, pushed the door’s handle. The latch retracted and the door swung open. He slipped through and eased it shut.
No whirring from the locking system. No security engaging. Orion took two deep, long breaths. Three minutes before the door’s alarm would go off.
The usual ID cards prompted the systems to re-engage as soon as the door closed. Orion’s little device had disengaged the circuits and done the equivalent of wedging a piece of paper between contacts to keep it open. The security system set off an alarm if the circuit was disconnected like that for more than three minutes. Smart, really. Keeping a door wedged open for later use was not an option.
Orion’s opener had started its own countdown to keep track and notify him in time to get out. Now to work.
Flash drive, flash drive, gotta find the flash drive …
Orion went through rows of tightly packed shelves, shining a small torch through the windowless room. He was pretty sure there was camera surveillance in the entire building, including this room. He’d try to erase the footage before leaving, but just in case he wouldn’t get around to it, he would like to minimize the amount of time he spent on-screens. He made sure the torch’s beam was erratic, never reflecting back onto his face for too long. The records would show flashes of light illuminating bits of a hooded, masked figure. They shouldn’t be able to make out even his eye colour from that. If he wasn’t mistaken, they even had that already, in some file about him.
A quick electronics scan revealed two items, one of which was a cellphone. The other was the computer at a desk in one corner of the room. Filing system, probably. The Opener hummed briefly, giving him twenty seconds to get out. No time to get into the computer and check the records.
‘It’s not here,’ he rumbled against the metal disk at his throat.
‘Shit,’ Lilly answered immediately. ‘Maybe in one of the offices? Poison’s got a phone camera going. There’s two cops in the hall, facing the main entrance. You can slip by behind them, at least to one of the offices.’
Orion cursed and inched the door open once more. He could spot both of the two cops in the hall, and they seemed about to return to their desks. Slipping through the door and easing it shut, Orion crept back towards the kitchen, crouching behind a desk for cover.
Voices and footsteps coming closer. A door opening. He held his breath. Only a few more seconds …
The door’s security protocol kicked in, emitting a low whining sound. Orion could almost hear the two cops flinch. He himself only kept still because he’d known the timing down to the second.
‘Gods, Jim. Forgot to close the door properly, again?’, one of the cops said, laughing nervously to relieve her surprise. Orion recognized the voice from the kitchen. He could hear the cop slip her ID card through the scanner and the alarm cut off.
‘I didn’t go into evidence tonight,’ the other guy, Jim, replied. ‘You think it got something to do with those kids?’
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
‘Couldn’t, right? They didn’t get inside, and none of them came from in here.’
This could go a number of ways. The worst was for the cops to acknowledge the distraction outside for what it was and go searching for an intruder. Thankfully, it was the night shift, and nobody was on alert all the time.
‘The alarm goes off for no reason all the time,’ the cop dismissed her colleague’s concern. ‘I’ll check either way, but I bet you it’s a malfunction.’
The perils of acting on Murphy’s law. The simplest explanation might be the most likely, but police officers really shouldn’t act on that principle. Maybe they should take a statistics seminar or something.
The first cop disappeared into the storage room, and Orion took that as an invitation. He glanced over the edge of the desk and scurried through one of the doors into the hall, across it, towards the single offices. Jim didn’t see him.
Three offices in total, sitting for Orion to choose and sift through them. Three divisions; administrative, tactical, information. Administrative was interesting, but not necessarily vital. Tactical was of no use right now. Information, now that was something. The head of the division, Ryan Silas, had been after Orion’s group for a little over three years now. He was a brilliant strategist, and he took care of the police force’s informant network. If the flash drive wasn’t in evidence storage, chances were high it could be found in Silas’ office.
Orion produced another Opener, a different kind this time for a different lock. He stuck it next to the number pad, punched in six random digits, and waited. The yellow light blinked and rapidly turned green. The pad flashed and Orion opened the door.
Silas’ office. This was going to be fun. Orion stood for a second and let it sink in. It was his first time here. So much potential. So much he wanted to do, to look for, and so little time. He wondered whether he should leave a present.
Orion had made the habit of calling Silas on his private phone after a successful job and chatting a bit. It had become a game over the last few years, made ever more enjoyable by the fact that Silas never managed to trace the call. They had talked a lot in those years, and by now the conversations weren’t all that hostile any more. Orion thought Silas might even like him. He himself certainly admired the man for his strategic talent.
Despite all of their conversation, this was the first time Orion was anywhere near Silas or his workspace. He’d been to other police stations, yes. But not this one. Until now. It was risky, which made it a lot of fun.
He took a long look around the office to get a better feeling for the man he was taunting. Meeting face-to-face might be out of the question, but this was close enough. It was a long way from reading things in a file, and most importantly, it was more than Silas had managed yet. Orion would be sure to remind him of that.
The office’s decoration was sparse. Shelves to either side, desk almost centric, if a little towards the back. The shelves were filled with books and large binders and a single potted plant that managed to simultaneously look like plastic and as if it was dying. No pictures, nor any other personal items or decorations. The desk was bare save for a computer, a binder full of papers, and a cup filled with pens. Tidy and neat.
Well, this didn’t tell much. If he wanted more he would have to visit Silas’ home, and he wasn’t quite that daring. Yet. And that would cross a certain line and shatter the tentative contact he had with the man. Might push his group up the priority list and make their lives a lot harder. Maybe in a few years, if he ever decided to leave the country and needed an idea for a last-minute prank.
Time to look for something less personal, then. The electronics scanner threw up a far too big and scattered amount of matches. Any one of those could have been the flash drive Orion was looking for, and it would take hours to hunt for and check them all. Sadly, he didn’t have hours. Manual search, then. Time for a bit of luck.
The shelves yielded nothing, and neither did the desk.
In theory, Orion didn’t have a time limit, as long as nobody thought to check the live security feed. The controls for that would be in another office, the administrative one. The transition from live to saved records, and those records themselves, could be manipulated from elsewhere, though. Somewhere like the Head of Information’s computer, for example.
Orion plugged one of his thumb drives into the computer at the desk and started it up. He huffed when the screen lit up, his own program welcoming him to sift through any and all kind of data he could wish for.
No hard disk password, he thought. Careless. That might change after tonight, if anyone figured out how he’d gained access in the first place. The fact that he had gotten into the system was going to be obvious, Orion planned to make sure of that. Though anyone who hadn’t installed that kind of security yet obviously had a bigger problem than a bit of a weak memory. Maybe they wanted him to steal their things. Orion doubted his visit would be enough to help with that.
He pressed a key and let the program run through its tasks. Erasing accessible security footage, which, with Silas’ authorization, was all of it. Stealing some files. Leaving a small present. Enough time for another leisurely search of the office. His main objective was still finding the flash drive. Getting access to Ryan Silas’ personal computer was a bonus because he hadn’t been discovered yet. Might turn up something pretty.
Orion let the program do its thing and wandered back over to the shelves, looking through them once more. Book, book, degree, binder, book, plant … wooden box. Huh.
He examined it from all sides, checked the position with his scanner, and then carefully lifted it. No trigger alarm. He turned it around. Turned it over. There was a keyhole at the bottom. Mechanical. Orion grinned and pulled his tools out of their forearm sheath. Few people knew how to pick locks any more. Most entrance experts focused on electronic security and how to circumvent it. Funnily enough, that made mechanical locks a bit safer in the mean, and Orion’s job a bit easier. Silas may have braced himself against a large part of people, but not Orion. Keeping him out wasn’t that simple.
Three attempts – the blasted gloves leeched the skill from his usually light fingers – and a minute of work later, the tension gave way and the cylinder sprang forward and turned. Orion rotated it gently until the lock came around and the box lid popped open. Inside lay a single item. The flash drive.
Orion pocketed it with a grin and a glint in his eyes and set the box back into its place on the shelf. He checked the computer. Almost done.
‘I got the drive,’ he murmured. ‘How’s the corridor looking?’
----------------------------------------
Four gruelling hours later, Orion unlocked the door to their flat, kicked it shut behind him, and flopped face-down onto the couch. He was so, so tired. There was a lump in the cushion beneath him, pushing into his ribs. He should shift a bit to get more comfortable. Not worth it.
A door somewhere to his right opened. Soft steps on the cheap linoleum flooring. He groaned into the cushion and wiggled out of his backpack straps, twisting onto his back.
‘Wow. You don’t look tired at all,’ Poison commented above him. She was leaning over the couch back and grinning down at him.
Orion sat up, hugged both arms around her, and let himself fall back, pulling her down with him. Poison yelped as she tipped over, landing face-first on his chest.
‘You want coffee?’, she laughed.
He grunted in agreement. Her chuckle was muffled against him.
‘You’ll have to let me go then.’
Orion sighed dramatically and released her. Poison rolled off the couch and disappeared behind the kitchen counter.
‘When did you get in?’, he called out, struggling half-heartedly to sit up.
‘Dunno. Two hours ago? Already got some shut-eye.’
She returned with two steaming mugs and handed him one, settling beside him on the couch. ‘I heard most of your part of the night from Lilly, but not all of it. Just the parts where you got in trouble, not how you got out of it. Tell.’
Orion took a sip of his coffee. Strong, black. Bit of sugar. Perfect. Where’d she gotten that so fast?
‘I got the flash drive. Got all the security footage, too, plus a bit extra for good measure. When I left the office, I made eye contact with the night staff and had to make a run for it. Straight through the front door, you should have seen it.’
He took another, longer sip, sighed contently. ‘Shook ‘em off, hid for a few hours, walked back here,’ he finished.
‘Aww,’ Poison mock-pouted, ‘I was hoping for a cool fight scene.’
Orion snorted. ‘Did you have one of those tonight? And I sincerely hope the answer is no.’
Poison huffed. ‘No, I didn’t. I just wish I had. How’d the new Opener work?’
‘Like a charm.’ His face lit up with a grin. ‘The new design ran without a hitch. I’ll have to compliment Eliah on her work when I see her next, she followed my schematics to the letter.’
‘Did the alarm go off?’
‘Yeah, sadly. I have to work on a relock-sequence next. And a log wiper for that one, the doors record every instance of the lock disengaging. Always convenient if nobody knew you were there, or at least not when. How about you?’
Poison shrugged into her mug. ‘I got a few people into a brawl. Mostly teens on pot. Mostly scrammed when the cops came running. Some got more aggressive, rage against the system and all that. In the end, they all ran, not sure whether they all got away. Don’t care, either. It’s their own fault, really. I was just accelerating things.’
‘So instead of getting into a fight, you made other people fight each other?’
She gave him a sly grin.
Orion sighed. ‘School-kids-throwing-eggs-plan wasn’t an option this time?’
‘Nope. Not at three in the morning. And it doesn’t work on cops, especially not on the night shift. They only leave the building for something serious. Plus, in a brawl, I don’t have to pay each of the little rats five bucks, and I don’t have to bring eggs.’
‘Yay for our fridge, then. How’d you start the brawl?’
Poison snickered. ‘I started a discussion on homophobia.’
Orion groaned, growing more exasperated the longer Poison’s story got. ‘Gods, people will fight each other over that?’
Her grin widened. ‘Oh no, they all agree on tolerance and shit. What they don’t agree on is whether it’s still necessary to go for equal rights and awareness. Because they all think sexuality doesn’t matter, so obviously homophobia is not a problem any more, right? That’s what half of them think.’
‘You seriously got a bunch of people who agree on a topic to fight each other over that same topic? You got a group of seriously tolerant people to beat each other with their fists?’
‘I’m a genius.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, one of them used a bottle, but it was plastic, so no one was hurt. Much.’
Orion sighed, trying to suppress a chuckle. ‘Is Lilly back yet?’
‘He was in his room when I got here, and he hasn’t come out yet. Probably sleeping.’
Despite working the computer side of things, Lilly had to go out for their jobs, too. They set up their communications and hacking outside the flat, just in case the tracking scramblers didn’t do their job and someone managed to pinpoint the source location. If that ever happened, a random nondescript warehouse was a far better cover than their apartment building. Precautions like that were only overkill until you left them off, that’s when the special forces kicked down your door. Each of them had learned that on their own, and each of them had done it the hard way.
Poison ran a hand through her bright red hair, combing out a few snarls and knots. ‘What’s next?’
Orion sat up straighter, careful not to spill his coffee. The couch had enough stains as it was. ‘We see what we can get from the flash drive. Take a look at what the cops managed to dig up. If they’ve got surveillance on Michael, we’ll know where he is, but we’ll have to be more careful in our approach, too.’
Poison drained her cup and stood. ‘I’d better wake up Lilly. He can make some French toast and we can go through our next steps.’
‘Kinda harsh to wake him up and make him cook breakfast, don’t you think?’
‘Do you want to make toast? Do you want me to make it?’
‘Gods, no! Point made.’
Orion leant back and closed his eyes. The cushion on the couch’s back sagged beneath his head, stuffing worn down with use. It moulded itself around his head, soft and warm and familiar. The mug was warm against his palms and the apartment was quiet and calm and safe. Just the faint sounds of traffic and muffled voices of other tenants and the occasional hum and clang of the heating system.
The sounds of home. He wondered how long it would stay home. If they found out that Michael was off somewhere else, another city, even another country, would they pack up and leave? In their five years of searching, they’d never gotten so close to their goal. It was strange, in a way. Michael had always been a prize in the distance, something they worked towards but wouldn’t reach anytime soon. And now, he might be close enough to grasp. Close enough to mess up, too. So close…
He must have dozed off, because when he opened his eyes again, the coffee in his hands was cold and there was a pile of steaming, golden toast on the low table in front of him, along with shakers of salt and pepper and a jar of honey. Poison was busy with her own pile of breakfast on his left and on the other side, Lilly sat in his armchair, laptop balanced on his knees. He smiled at Orion.
‘Morning. Any scratches?’
Orion failed to suppress a yawn and shook his head. He was exhausted, but it was just that. No injuries this time. ‘Got you something to play with.’ He tossed the flash drive over and turned his attention to the toast and getting some fresh coffee. Lilly immediately got to work, and by the time Poison had cleared her second plate, he made a triumphant sound and handed over the laptop.
Eagerly, Orion glanced over the assorted files. His smile quickly dissipated as he made progress down the list. ‘Damn it,’ he muttered.
‘What’s wrong?’ Poison leaned over and liberated Orion’s leftover breakfast.
‘There’s nothing in here about Michael, at least not directly. I got the wrong flash drive. Or they didn’t have anything on him to start with. What I can see here is about some woman called… Sarah Pike.’
‘Lemme see that.’ There was a hint of dread in Lilly’s voice as he reclaimed his laptop and sat up straighter, face serious. He typed for a few seconds. ‘Huh. Wow.’
‘What is it?’ Poison had started fidgeting, the only information she got being grunts and serious expressions.
‘I know that woman,’ Lilly said wearily. ‘Here’s files on her and her work for the cops.’
‘And how does that help us, exactly?’
Lilly grinned, a rare, wolfish glint in his eyes. ‘Well, you were right about one thing, there’s nothing directly about Michael in here. But this woman is in charge of the investigation on one Michael Runner. She’s an Intelligence Agent. And she kind of arrested me once.’