Icarus

Part 12

In the tunnels under the city, Roger was thinking almost exactly the same thing as he hopped up and down, trying to see out of the storm drain that was their entrance point to the gardens of the Elite Towers.
“Use your periscope, dummy!” Taylee hissed from below him on the rickety ladder. “And quit acting like a crazed kangaroo!”
“Sorry.” Roger muttered sheepishly. “My bad.”
He slipped the tiny periscope out of one of his many pockets and looked around.
“All clear except for a couple camera drones over that way. I can knock them out with the sprinkler system, make it look like an accident to buy us some time.”
“Good. Do it.”
That was the Marshal. Roger nodded, got to work and in a matter of minutes they were in the Towers’ grounds, completely undetected.
“Are you sure we’re clear?” Maysha asked. “That felt way too easy.”
Roger snorted.
“Rich people waste all their security on the outer layers. They assume if you can’t get through those, you won’t bother trying to find your way around. They leave the wrong half of everything unguarded, whether it’s jewelry boxes or a whole mansion complex. Or from our perspective, the right half.”
The stocky dark-haired woman nodded. “Sounds plausible. Lets go.”
They split into two groups, one heading for the Copper Tower, the other targeting the Platinum Tower directly opposite it. As they raced through the grounds, a uniformed guard poked his head out of a doorway, saw Maysha, and tried to push an alarm button. His hand froze halfway to the keypad as he felt the edge of a knife against his neck and an invisible hand on his shoulder.
“Hi.” Roger whispered, trying to sound scary. “You’re going to walk us in there and unlock all these doors, nice and quiet, or we’re going to chop off the parts we need to work the bio-locks and leave you here to bleed out.”
The guard gulped. “Don’t hurt me!”
Roger gave an internal sigh of relief. His bluff had worked. He wasn’t sure if he’d really be able to do something quite that brutal. “No promises, dude. Now unlock that door.”
Maysha, now invisible too, followed the two of them inside as the trembling guard led them to an elevator.
“Now listen up, buster.” She said flatly. “Sometime around your lunch break, probably, a guy named Toral delivered a girl to this building. Where is she now?”
“If you mean Miss Thaniels, she’s having dinner with her Grandfather. Third floor from the top. That’s all I know, honest.”
“Good. Take us there.”
“But, I can’t just . . . you know what, maybe I can, on second thought. Just don’t dismember me!”
Pretty soon they got to the banquet room Lyr had only recently left.
“There’s nobody here?”
The guard looked just as confused as they felt.
“Well, that was helpful.” Maysha grumbled sarcastically.
Out of patience, Roger knocked the older man out with a quick punch, trussed him up in a tablecloth, and ran over to the second elevator.
“Come on. They must have left this way.”
He tapped his wireless earbud communicator and asked, “Marshal, how’s the diversion going?”
“Not good! You need to hurry, they’ve got us surrounded.”
“Who’s “they”? Guards?”
“No, Toral’s special mercenaries. We’re outnumbered three to one at least. Get Lyr and get out before you can’t!”
The communication cut off in a rush of static. Roger turned to Maysha, knowing she’d heard every word.
“You’re more experienced here, what now?”
“We do exactly what the Marshal said. Stealth can go out the window, we need to be fast and vicious.”
“Got it.”
They jumped out as the elevator doors opened, sprinting out into an impossibly long hallway lined with doors. Roger scanned them quickly with a handheld device he’d recently made. Only one room had anybody in it, and it was at the far end of the hall. Lyr had to be there.