Chapter 24 #3
As soon as I activated the snitch, a red light on it blinked until it turned blue.
The cabin immediately started moving to the lowest floor where the security control room was located.
Before the doors opened, I reassessed the people that I could detect nearby on that floor and stopped my disruption on those who were no longer likely to run into me.
Thankfully, I could only sense three people, one of them with their brain waves dimmed in a way that indicated a solid wall separated us.
Not wanting to take chances, I send a small dose to them with just enough psionic waves that they would enter a state where they were daydreaming or appearing to be.
Once I released them, they would just resume whatever they had been up to prior to that disruption.
I removed the snitch from the control panel seconds before stepping out of the elevator.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the door opened on an empty hallway.
The two people I was picking up were walking in a connecting corridor to my right.
Lucky for me, my destination lay straight ahead.
I strolled casually through the pristine white corridor with only a handful of doors scattered down its length, aside from another connecting hallway halfway down.
Two cameras on the ceiling made certain no one could come and go without being detected.
That the alarm hadn’t gone off confirmed that Maeve had tapped into their feed through the snitch. That woman was truly a wizard when it came to technology. I didn’t know how long she could fool them, but I planned on being gone in the next five minutes.
Although I expected it, my stomach dropped when I closed in on the third door on the left side of the main hallway where the security control room was located.
Three people were inside, two of them fairly close to the door, the third farther back.
There would be no way for me to enter without walking in their path.
As if she read the thoughts crossing my mind, Maeve spoke into my earpiece.
“Two guards, three meters in, facing the door. A third guard in the backroom located at nine o’clock. No line of sight. Servers at three o’clock.”
She didn’t need to go into further details, keeping to the strict minimum to limit the length of our communications.
I blasted the two guards with a strong enough disruptive wave that they would literally freeze, and I swiftly entered the room.
Despite knowing the guards were sitting at their desk, only three meters away from the door, finding them staring blindly at each other, their eyes empty, still freaked me out.
There was something uncanny about breathing people frozen into wax statues.
Ignoring the knot twisting my insides, I made a beeline towards the tall racks of machinery with blinking lights which lined the sidewall.
I crouched behind one of the massive servers and released the two human guards from my thrall.
Although it would have been safer for me to keep them in this frozen state while I finished my task, the longer the disruption, and the greater the chance they would realize something abnormal had happened.
I also didn’t want to risk the third guard wandering into the room and finding their colleagues in that state.
The two guards resumed chatting as if nothing occurred.
As I plugged the scrambling device into one of the appropriate slots of one of the servers, I absentmindedly listened to them for any signs that they might be onto me.
But one of the males was discussing a financial investment he’d been considering venturing into.
Heart pounding, I watched the five solid red lights on the device. The first one started blinking, indicating that it was starting to work. After fifteen seconds—that felt like twenty years—that first light turned a solid blue, and the second red one started blinking.
My heart skipped a beat when the third male exited the backroom and approached the desk where his two colleagues were chatting away.
“I’m going to grab a drink,” one of the voices said—which I presumed belonged to the newcomer. “You guys want something?”
They both declined, and the man started walking away before one of the other two suddenly changed his mind and requested a candy bar. The third guard acquiesced with a grunt and walked out of the room.
I peered back at the device, my heart soaring upon seeing four solid blue lights with the final red light blinking. Seconds later, it switched to blue, then all five lights blinked before turning green and then shutting off.
“All done,” Maeve said in my earpiece with a triumphant tone. “You can remove the device. Hang tight. There’s a group of six people hanging by the elevator on the main floor. If they don’t move quickly, I will create a diversion.”
As I unplugged the scrambler, I fought the urge to tell Maeve a diversion wasn’t necessary.
Despite being informed of my powers, she didn’t fully understand their extent.
But maybe she was seeing something through the cameras that I couldn’t.
Anyway, arguing wasn’t an option with the two guards sitting inside the room.
I wanted to limit the use of my disruption to only when it was necessary.
“Go!” Maeve suddenly said.
She didn’t have to repeat. I froze the two guards and hurried out of the room, before immediately releasing them.
I forced myself to cross the hallway back to the elevator at a brisk enough pace without being too quick it would raise suspicion.
It wasn’t the people that worried me, but the motion detectors that could trigger an alarm if they picked up abnormal activity, such as people running in the secured areas.
As soon as I stepped inside the cabin, I made to place the snitch onto the control panel, but the door instantly closed, and the cabin flew up to the lobby.
At first, I feared someone on a different floor had called the elevator, but I couldn’t feel anyone close enough to have done so.
I realized then that Maeve had worked so damn quickly, she no longer needed the snitch to control the elevators.
I stepped out of the cabin to find the place deserted.
As I approached the end of the hallway leading to the staff quarters, I noticed a group of people congregating around a refreshment table.
Making sure not to draw attention to myself as I entered the main hall, I took on the typical curious bystander expression as I stretched my neck to see what was happening.
Water was pooling at the foot of the table while the maintenance staff was frantically cleaning the mess.
By the way a couple of them were scratching their heads, they were baffled as to what had caused the issue. And then I spotted the burnt spot against the wall where an electric surge apparently occurred, frying the electrical outlet and the cool beverage distributor.
I didn’t have to ask whose handiwork caused it.
“There you are!” Linsea exclaimed, behind me.
I turned around to see her strutting towards me with her usual graceful gait. A human I didn’t know was accompanying her.
“Here I am,” I said warmly, broadcasting loudly the successful outcome of our mission through our bond.
Her smile broadened, and she hooked her arm around mine, resting her other hand on my upper arm. To the random observer, the gentle squeeze she gave it would only be an affectionate gesture from a female to her husband. But this was my mate congratulating me for a job well done.
I smiled back.