6
I bolted down the stairwell to the
sub-basement. Fortunately I’d only been
on the second floor. Everyone on both
teams – except the Alpha’s – was at that moment rocketing to my position. I didn’t know where the other Close Security
team had been, but I was kissing my luck over the fact that they hadn’t been in
the hall. Which meant they were
Bernerd’s people. If Sashe had been in
charge of both teams, all four of them would’ve been closing in on me instead
of two hanging back to provide rear security.
Bernerd’s always been more of a “layers” guy than Sashe. Of course if Bernerd had been in charge they
probably would’ve used a tranq grenade in the hotel room and then shot me while
I was out.
I had no illusions as to whether or not the door
would be locked. Once they’d seen my
pissy little show on the vid – and there was no way that Sashe and Bernerd
weren’t hooked into the hotel’s vid link – they’d ratchet up the fuckery.
I’d been right about how the first steps would
go. Sashe and her people were good, but
they weren’t the best and they were used to going after Demos. The company hadn’t terminated a Security
contract in over a decade. No one in
any of the current ops teams had been around for longer than eight.
Because of that, none of them were cranked enough to
deal with me. None of them had ever had
to deal with a trained target with nothing to lose. That ended with my little show.
They now had some idea of what they were dealing with. Hell, at that point they had a better idea
of it than I did. I was making it up as
I went along.
I jumped the last few stairs and ran for the
sub-basement. I went ahead and checked
the door, because you never know. Sure
enough, the magnetic seal was engaged.
I let out a snarling grunt as I pulled the bag around in front of me and
opened it up. After a few seconds of
digging I pulled out the splice-card and turned back to the door.
The card’s jack protruded from the narrow gray
rectangle at the corner of the narrow end.
I plugged it into the door-scanner’s maintenance port and let it do its
techy magic. We called them “cards”
because they weren’t much bigger than playing cards. Plug the card in and it scrambles the lock open. I didn’t comprehend the tech behind it and
didn’t care. Security teams used the
cards all the time. Mine was a
free-lance model out of the Diggs and it had cost a full week’s pay. But it was worth every cred. I was confident it would work because I’d
tested it. I’m not completely stupid.
But popping the door was where the resemblance
between the official cards and my independently contracted toy ended. The official cards erased the fact that the
door had been opened from the lock’s internal memory. Mine couldn’t do that. My
card would keep alarms from going off, but that was about it.
After two heart-constricting seconds the door popped
and I pulled the card free, shouldering my way past the door as I did. Spinning on my heel, I slammed the door shut
and re-engaged the lock. Then I pointed
my new pistol at the lock assembly and shot the hell out of it, emptying the
magazine. Hopefully it would cause a
short somewhere and prevent the door from being opened. For a while at least. I slid the card into one of the bag’s
zippered pockets and secured it. I
wasn’t too worried about the card getting broken. Its case may have been made out of plastic, but it was ballistic
grade. On top of that, every one of the
bag’s many pockets was padded. The card
was as safe as I could make it.
The next step was to pull out my comp-shades and to
get them on and working. They were
another free-lance widget that had been worth their cost, which had been less
than the card’s. The frames were some
sort of bitchin’ alloy and hollow.
Inside were crammed all sorts of cool electronics I’d never know the
names of. Those electronics turned the
shades into a mini-comp and among other things gave the benefit of light-amp
and anti-glare. I turned my shades on
and took a look around the room.
The room thankfully offered no surprises. There were a couple of work stations and a
few racks of tools. Near the work stations
were the frames of cleaning and maintenance bots. None of that interested me.
What I was looking for was on the far wall and the floor beside it. The floor held a hatch leading down into the
maintenance tunnels. That hatch was the
reason I had run for the sub-basement in the first place, I’d half-remembered
that the hotel had access to the tunnels.
The wall held the other thing I needed – a medical kit.
I snatched the med-kit from the wall, sat in a chair
by a work station and set the med-kit on the station’s work table. Opening the kit assured me that it had the
immediate necessities – gauze, disinfectant, antibiotic cream and a stitch
gun. Then I pulled out one of my pretty
new knives and started cutting into the skin on my left forearm.
Blood welled up and spilled over as I pulled the tip
of the blade through the top bit of flesh.
I started the incision six centimeters above my wrist and cut for two
before giving myself another just like it.
They made a “L” in my skin, right above my chip.
Everyone
on Roach has a chip in them. They’re
just under the skin on the fore-arm.
They aren’t implanted any deeper because they need to be replaced
sometimes. But that’s something you got
to the docs for. Removing the chip on
your own is against corporate law.
The
chip keeps track of you. It’s stated
purpose is medical. You get sick, you
go to the doc’s. The doc scans your
chip and can tell exactly what’s wrong with you. But the chip also lets Security keep tabs on you, a little beacon
telling them exactly where you are.
It’s how Sashe and Bernerd knew I was actually in my hotel room instead
of getting drunk at a bar. Oh, and if
you remove the chip it let’s out an inaudible scream to the cops filling them
in on your new development.
If
I didn’t get rid of my chip, the hatch in the floor wouldn’t do me much good.
Gritting
my teeth, I probed into my self-inflicted wound with the point of the knife
until I found the chip. Hooking it with
the knife’s point, I flicked the chip out of my arm and onto the table. Then I smashed the damn thing into as many
little pieces as I could. Then it was
time to set the knife down on and get to work on my new incisions.
Disinfectant
got sprayed on, around and into the wound.
Then the antibiotics got put through the same drill. After that I grabbed the stitch gun and
plugged my little “L” wound with four pulls of the trigger. Last was the gauze, to keep crap out of my
hide. After putting everything back
into the kit and stashing it in my bag, I retrieved my knife and turned to the
hatch in the floor.
The tunnels were my means to getting the next thing
I needed – a way of getting to a part of the dome that security didn’t have
monitored all the way to hell and back.
What I’d said earlier about “every stairwell and hallway under the dome”
being bugged? That was an
exaggeration. I needed to get to the
Diggs and I needed to do it unseen.
That’s where the tunnels came in.
Ironically, the entirety of my time as a Contract
Specialist had been spent bitching about how small the Security Division’s
budget was. My argument was logical –
with a better budget, we’d have better equipment and the job would be that much
more survivable. I’d also interpreted
the Company’s stinginess as a lack of regard for our safety and hadn’t always
been quiet about it. Now the Company’s
unwillingness to spend credits on anything that didn’t magically multiply them
was going to work in my favor.
The maintenance tunnels were unmonitored.
You see, there are miles of tunnels beneath
and between the domes and Syrch didn’t see the need to spend money on watching
empty tunnels. Especially miles and
miles of empty tunnels. And that would
be my ticket to the Diggs. As long as I
could avoid the bots and crews, I could get to a place where I could hide and
plot. At least for a little while.
I ran across the room and popped the unlocked hatch
open. I took a quick inventory of my
gear, making sure everything was secure before starting down the ladder and
pulling the hatch shut behind me. The
moment the hatch was settled I threw the lock-bar and jumped to the tunnel
floor.
A quick glance assured me that I was alone. I raised my right index finger to the
comp-shades and toggled the compass. A
notched green line appeared across the top of the left lens, scrolling as I
turned my head left and then right.
When I was facing a cardinal direction, an indicator would pop up
beneath the appropriate notch in the little green line, telling me which
direction I was facing. Once I had
myself pointed in the right direction I started jogging.
