Chapter 5 #2
“I will go into the house alone. Alisa on front, Javier on back. Hel and Miss Piccolo stay in the van. The handoff is in exactly one hour. Our transport is two blocks over. We expect minor CO resistance inside and perhaps Force doing rounds on street level. Go nonlethal, but use your judgment. Our intel suggests Lightbringers have been sighted as far north as the edge of the park, which means it is likely that if we attract attention, they will come.” Taylor pauses to let the information settle with her comrades.
“No one is to engage a Lightbringer under any circumstances. A high-frequency pitch in our radios will signal their approach, a fortunate flaw in the design. If anyone picks up on it, we abandon mission immediately. Understood?”
Yes, but I don’t like it.
Skulking down darkened avenues, we arrive at an unmarked van that screams “kidnapping.” Except I know flying through a glass ceiling in the arms of a gun-wielding femme fatale is what actually screams “kidnapping.”
Exponentially more sophisticated on the inside, one side is full of expensive surveillance equipment with a sleek black sheen. Parallel is one independent chair and a bench. We cram onto the bench while Mason climbs into the unseen front seat and turns the engine over.
Taylor unpacks a duffel bag, inserts an electronic button in her ear, and pulls out a short stick to hook around her belt loop.
“Are you going to be armed?” None of her items would do more than lightly incapacitate, if that. “Lightbringers are outfitted to detect gunfire.”
“I am armed, should the need arise. I will be primarily using this.” From within the duffel bag she withdraws a bracer. Around forearm-length, the conical band of leather gets wrapped around her wrist and over her hand. Inlaid into the top are metal divots, which she loads with syringes.
“What’s that?”
“A gauntlet wristbow. Sort of like a crossbow for my arm.” A mini-syringe is held up in front of my face for inspection before she loads it. “These are tranquilizer darts. They incapacitate an enemy for two to three hours, depending on age and weight.”
Next out of her bag of tricks is a bandana, and her attempts to tie it around her neck are thwarted by the bumping and careening of the van. “Gimme. At least one of us has re-dressed in a moving vehicle before.”
With an eye roll she lets go of the bandana and I take it up, tying it behind her neck with a steady hand and pulling her hair out from underneath it.
I skim the edges of the gray material until I have it resting comfortably around her neck.
My fingers drift over to hold her chin and I use this as leverage to move her head and inspect her cut.
“That’s looking better, at least.”
“Of course it is,” she says, gently pushing my hand off her face.
We bump a curb as Mason parks the van, jostling us in our seats.
Alisa and Javier arm themselves with rifles, place earpieces in their ears, and put on green-tinted sunglasses.
Everyone exits out the back doors and listens to Taylor’s hushed instructions with bowed heads.
Mason ducks into the van with me and sits in the master seat to my right.
Taylor peers back inside. “Do not leave the van. Do not cause trouble.” The bandana goes up over her face, hood over her head, and she closes the back doors on us.
I turn to Mason. “Was that warning for me or you?”
Mason chuckles, donning a headset and switching on screens.
Taylor reappears on the center screen, but the camera is behind her, above her head.
It hovers near her but swivels around to record the surroundings.
The van, the street, a stop sign. It spins around again and I watch her skillfully scale a wrought iron fence, peeling white paint falling like snow in her wake.
The building is old—one of those ostentatious mansions left over from the industry magnates of the early twentieth century—squished between two other mansions.
Many of these city mansions are abandoned, but some lucky blocks stayed in money if my ancestors allowed it.
I press my finger against the convex glass screen. “How am I seeing this?”
“It’s a hummingbird camera,” Mason says. “It floats above and behind her, watching her back. Smaller than a golf ball, and follows whoever’s got the remote. T’s got it in her pocket.”
Taylor taps her ear twice and Mason clicks on his earpiece, pulling down the microphone. Her voice crackles through the speaker and I lean in.
“You there, Hel?”
“I got you, Eos, loud and clear.” I’m leaning close to him to get a better look, and his glare prompts me to back off. He hands me another set of headphones. “Don’t talk into your mic.”
I smile apologetically. Alisa and Javier take up on the other screens, scoping the front and back entrances.
Their cameras must be embedded in their sunglasses, which I realize are not sunglasses, but night vision goggles.
With Javier watching from below, Taylor crawls like a shadow up the building’s facade, slithering in through a jimmied-open window and landing noiselessly in a darkened hallway.
“Oh my God, you’re robbing the place,” I whisper, glancing at Mason with a shock that is perhaps foolish. So much for their altruistic purpose.
Mason shrugs his hulking shoulders. “Eos calls the shots.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Apparently.”
We turn back to the screens and watch Taylor as she tiptoes through the house.
The camera catches a shadow crossing near her and I take in a sharp breath.
Taylor goes flat against a wall. The shadow stops, and then moves in the opposite direction.
She winds down a staircase and onto the next floor, keeping close to the walls, slowly but confidently stalking toward another door.
Every so often she halts abruptly, giving me mini heart attacks.
Someone enters the room behind her and she slides underneath a coffee table to hide.
Two boots appear in the camera, directly next to her head.
I hold my breath. They retreat, and arm over arm she commando-crawls out from beneath the table—just like we practiced on the obstacle course.
Upon reaching the far wall, she runs her fingers over the divots in the wood panels, searching without sight.
Suddenly she digs her nails in and yanks the wood to the left, sliding open a secret wall.
It reveals a square dumbwaiter, empty of serving trays and food but chock-full of dust and spiderwebs and probably spiders. She slinks inside, clearly unperturbed by the potential for eight-legged pests, and closes the wall behind her, swallowing the feed in darkness.
Creak. Creak. Creak. Clunk.
Grainy video fizzes back in as Taylor crawls out and brushes herself off. With a click, her palm-sized flashlight shines a bright blue light across a dank basement stacked with furniture and other abandoned home décor draped in white cloth. Ghosts of furniture past.
“Gee, wonder what she’s looking for. Maybe the big, honking safe in the middle of the room?” I say, shaking my head.
Static rumbles in our headsets as Taylor spins the lock. Mason perks up in his seat. “Eos, got voices on our channel. Make it quick.”
Deft hands spring the safe open, unveiling a shocking amount of currency.
Papa always says it’s poor form to keep your money in one place.
Of course, he does exactly that by keeping the lion’s share of our fortune in the Bank of New York to prove no one steals from the leader.
The bank is protected by Flashmen, the human-sized version of Lightbringers.
They require ID to enter the bank or any other protected building, and if the ID is not presented, they are programmed to shoot to kill.
Few of them remain operational, because they’re known to malfunction.
In any case, it’s ballsy and stupid to keep your money in your house.
Taylor wastes no time stuffing as many green stacks as possible into the duffel bag until it’s practically bursting at the seams. She zips it up and hustles toward the dumbwaiter, engulfing herself and the screen in darkness with a flick of her flashlight.
Suddenly, footsteps stomp down the stairs.
Video is dark, but the audio of Taylor grunting and struggling is clear. My heart batters my ribs. “Mason, what’s happening?”
Mason puts his fingers to his lips and stares intently at the screen. Silence drags on for an eternity when, finally, Taylor’s flashlight flicks on and off twice. Mason smiles and exhales heavily. “She’s all right.”
Bounding up the stairs, Taylor is garish and exposed in the main room to which she hastily returns.
Across the parlor room and up the second flight of stairs, the camera sees it before she does: a man leaning out the window, finger on his earpiece.
Taylor raises her arm, steadies it with her other hand beneath her wrist, and fires off a tranquilizer dart.
It strikes him in the neck, and the guard has only enough time to grab the dart before he hits the floor with a loud, boneless thump.
The doors next to us burst open and Alisa and Javier scramble inside. “Guards are hot,” Javier whispers urgently.
Mason nods and chucks down his headset, hurrying out of the van to return to the driver’s seat. My eyes dart frantically between everyone, totally bewildered. In a panic, I throw off my headset and snatch his, yanking it over my head. “Hey, you there?”
“Where’s Hel?” Taylor leans out the window and peers down at armed men patrolling the grass. The camera spins around and looks up. With a sigh Taylor slides herself out of the window and climbs toward the roof. “Did he give you his headset?”
“No, I killed and ate him for it,” I snap. “He’s driving. Guards are hot. Not Force, COs by the look of it.”
“Good eye,” Taylor replies, grunting with effort as she scales to the top of the building. “Tell Hel to meet me at rendezvous point C.”