Dec 22, 2018 13:11:59 GMT
Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2018 13:11:59 GMT
s h a t t e r e d
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Easy easy easy.
The past two months, Lennon had found out everything they’d needed to know about Teracorp; each changing shift, the surprisingly lax security, even the supervisor’s – Margaret, age thirty-five, no children, two cats – favorite order from the nearby coffee shop before starting her night shift: half a cup of black coffee with whipped cream to fill the rest.
Most of what they knew wasn’t important. It almost never was, but it didn’t mean it couldn’t be. Always better to be over prepared and all that.
Royal didn’t really care either way, as long as when they did the job they were successful. They’d had their bumps - and he’d gotten his fair share of fractures and splinters – along the way, but, for the most part, they’d been uncomfortably successful. When they set out to take something from the greasy, greedy fingers of the fat fucks who felt inclined to step on the backs of the people who did all the work for them to reap their ridiculous profit, they almost always left with it in hand.
Teracorp wasn’t any different. If anything, it was closer to “normal” than anything else in their double lives. The CEO – Clifford Hayes, fifty-three, married three times, six children, infatuated with Scarlett Johansson – was the typical loop-hole finding, employee screwing, tight-wadded bastard that companies were so fond of keeping on salary.
According to Denise – one of their many contacts within the company’s middle management –, all employee files were kept on an external hard drive in Hayes’ office. The “why” had amounted to a fancy “because”; all that really mattered was that it contained all of the account information for every employee in the company – Hayes and the other useless executives included.
The plan was simple: waltz in, grab the drive, and walk out.
At night, there were three security guards, their supervisor, and a janitor. That night, however, there was a scheduled maintenance for the building’s air conditioning units on the fifth floor. One quick bludgeon to the back of a head later, Royal was dressed to impress in a business casual suit with a plastic embossed name card that read “Rick Wickam”.
He’d walked in, waved a hand to the man at the front desk – Greg Walters, twenty-six, severe gambling addiction, no girlfriend and plenty of lonely weekends spent hunched over his laptop with nothing but Vaseline and a headset – who hadn’t even looked up as he’d buzzed him in. From there, it had been an elevator ride to the fifth floor – two under where he needed to be – and a brief interaction with Margaret who met him in front of the maintenance room to let him in.
“Hey, Rick,” she started, voice a - practised and polished “we’ve never met, but I’m going to treat you as if we’ve been friends for years” sort of tone. “Thanks for coming in; I know you’ve probably got better things to do than fiddle around with some out of date hardware.” She chuckled – that kind of half-hearted breathy rasp that forced itself out to linger awkwardly in the air.
“It’s my job, ma’am.”
“M-ma’am?” Margaret shook her head, “Please, call me Margaret. I’m not that old.” Another chuckle, almost identical to the one before.
Royal raised a brow and nodded. “Margaret.”
“Uhm, anyway,” she pulled a key card attached to one of the loops in her trousers by a retractable string and swiped it across the electronic locks’ pad. A sharp trill followed by the dull thwick of the door unlocking signalled their time together was coming to an end. “Let me know if you have any problems; not that I’m really that useful with this kind of stuff.” That laugh again.
This time, Royal offered a sympathetic smile. “S’what I’m here for, Margaret.”
“Y-yeah. Right, okay.” She stepped back out of his way. “Have a- have a good night, Rick.”
“Yep. You too.”
He waited until she finally left before making his way over to the large window on the east side of the room. He’d taken care to keep his face down and away from the cameras – there had only been two in the lobby, one in the hallway he’d waited in and one in the elevator he’d taken up. The actual maintenance room had been an office at one point, according to Malcolm – another contact, one who’d recently worked for Teracorp in the very same office before he was laid off – and that was why there were even windows in the first place.
All the better for Royal.
Opening up his duffle bag which had, at one point, contained a mix of cables and tools, there was now only an impressive collection of marbles – the only thing Royal ever really needed. Over the course of the past odd year, he’d become quite adept at controlling his ability; like riding a bike or swimming in a pool, it barely took any conscious effort to draw the glass up and out and around him, moulding around him until he was completely covered.
Gently – almost tenderly – he pressed his glassy fingers to the cool window’s pane. It rippled as if it had been a still pond’s surface, before it languidly slid up and over his arm, wrapping around his chest and expanding out behind him into two thin, fluid tendrils. The cool night air drifted in through the now empty hole in the building where the window had been, rustling through the dusty leafs of the fake potted plants that had been left in the corner of the room.
Without a moment of hesitation, he stepped out into the open air.
The glass tendrils behind him immediately latched onto the glass above him, suspending him in a moment of weightlessness before drawing him upwards towards the next level and the level above that. He moved quickly, taking care to use the glass of the other windows to help pull himself upward without removing it – there was no need to make the building any more drafty than he already had.
And, as quickly as he’d exited the building, he slipped through the seventh floor’s window like sliding through water, leaving behind no trace of his passing behind him. The maintenance room was directly below Hayes’ office – another convenience that had worked out exceptionally well for him – and even in the half-light of the room illuminated by Los Angeles’ ever-present pollution, he had no difficulty locating the filing cabinet on the northern wall, next to a large mahogany bookshelf that was filled with, according to Terrance, fake books.
He didn’t stop to verify if the books were, indeed, fake or not – though the thought did cross his mind – and instead made directly for the cabinet itself. It was an old-school, metallic eye-sore: sharp edges, somewhere between brown and grey, a mechanical lock in the upper right-hand corner.
He liked locks like that.
The glass tendrils on his back receded into the cool, dark surface of his form-fitting armour, and as he pressed his finger to the face of the lock, the glass instead crept into the crevices, pressing into the tumblers and solidifying into the proper shape in a matter of seconds before he twisted and turned.
Click.
Easy easy ea-
Masked as he was, his face was little more than an expressionless mirror to the empty, dark room that watched him, but behind the thin veneer, his brows raised and eyes widened in reflexive surprise.
The middle drawer – the one Joyce had been certain housed the drive – had exactly what he was looking for.
With a little extra.
Curiosity burning bright in eyes obscured by his featureless mask, Royal reached down into the drawer and pulled out the drive and… a card. At first, by the thickness of it alone, he assumed it was a credit card – or something like it – but as he stepped back into the hazy, iridescent patch of light that filtered in through the window, pressing the drive against his chest and absorbing it into the mass of dark, liquid-like glass, the shiny glean of a spade beamed up at him.
It seemed almost amused - if a faceless symbol had had the capability to be so.
Without wasting another second, Royal turned to leave. He didn’t know what the card meant, exactly, but it was clear someone had beaten him to the punch. Whoever it was, he didn’t want to stick around to find out.
The shrill tone of an electrical lock being opened, immediately followed by the same metallic thwick as before was all the warning he had before a humming Margaret stepped into the room.
Right as he jumped soundlessly through the window.
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