part0108

Savage looked up at the rearview mirror of his car. He’d chosen to obtain this one legally since having a vehicle he drove reported stolen would end the mission before it started. For now, things were simple and under control. They wouldn’t have to look at the more difficult aspects of the mission until he was inside and actually had a better view of what was happening and what could be done.

All that they needed to focus on was getting him in without incident.

"What can't be easy?" he asked and scrutinized the mostly deserted streets.

It was past ten in the evening, and while there was still activity this late in the world, people mostly headed home for the night since it was a regular workday the next day.

"You know...spending time with and talking to your ex," she said. He guessed that she’d clearly noted that he wasn't doing much other than driving and wanted to strike up a conversation.

He had missed her. "Well, considering that we're not technically exes, it's not too bad."

"Don't bullshit me, Jer," she grumbled.

"No bullshit," he assured her. "Everything we could have said or done was said or done. It’s time for both of us to move on."

"Would you feel that way if she was already seeing someone else?"

"That sounds like you trying to trap me," he retorted. "Like you're trying to get me to jump on that with a 'what, who is she seeing' and show that I care."

"Psh, people do that?" the hacker said weakly.

"Sadly, they do," he confirmed. "For the record, if she was seeing someone, I would think that was great. She deserves all kinds of happiness, even if I couldn't deliver on it."

"You know that she's not plugged into this conversation, right?" Anja asked.

"Oh." He grunted, unaffected even though he hadn’t realized—although it made sense. "Well, the sentiment still stands. I don't have any right to be jealous in any way."

"Sure, it does," she said, her chuckle low in the background. "Well, anyway, everything's set up. You have the badge for the security company and the uniform. You'll drive in the same way you approached when you had that chat with the guard booth. If the gents in there recognize you, get ready to run. Just in case you want me to change the subject away from your ex."

"They won't recognize me," he insisted with more confidence than he actually felt.

The real truth was that he really didn't like heading into a mission like this with so little prep time.

Savage scowled suddenly. "Wait...come on, she's not my ex."

"You keep saying that," the hacker replied. "But I simply don’t believe you. You need to put more feeling into it."

He narrowed his eyes. "She joined the chat, didn't she?"

"How did you know?" Jessica asked.

"Anja seemed a little too insistent." He growled his annoyance, then thrust it aside. "Are we all clear on your side of things?"

"I have everything set up for them to think I'm still in my room," she assured him. "In the meantime, the computers are ready for the transfer of data. All we need now is data to transfer."

"And that's where I come in," Savage stated as he approached the lab in question.

"Most definitely," she agreed.

The facility didn't look much different at night than it did during the day. It wasn't like he expected it to since most of the afternoon and evening had been spent studying as much of the schematics as possible and committing them to memory. Some dissonance was expected since putting what was on paper to reality always came with that.

Maybe he was merely becoming better and better at this job.

"Okay, the moment of truth," Anja said through his earpiece.

He knew what she was talking about and leaned back a little in his seat when he pulled up at the booth.

Fortunately, it appeared that all their fears were for naught. The two men who manned the booth were not the guards he had encountered previously. These were a couple of overweight old-timers, from the looks of it and had the look of former law enforcement, either state or local police. He assumed that they probably needed the work to supplement their retirement income.

Savage retrieved the new ID card Anja had obtained directly from the office of the security company for him and handed it over to the man.

"You work for ICU Sec?" the older man asked and narrowed his eyes.

"Yes, sir. I’m a recent addition to the team," he explained calmly. "They said that Perkins was taking time off so I needed to cover for his shift."

"Military man, are you?" the guard asked and leaned over the edge of the booth to try to match the picture to the face.

"Yes, sir. Three tours with the Corps."

"Yeah, well, your service is appreciated," he grumbled but sounded less than enthusiastic about it. "Head down into the garage. There's a locker room to the right. It’s clearly marked. That's where we all get changed for the shift."

"I appreciate it," he said politely and took his badge.

He parked in the first underground parking garage where, as the old man had said, the locker room was clearly marked. Quickly, he changed into the black-and-blue uniform he'd been given before he moved to the first floor where his shift team already waited for him.

"Well, it may not be the usual kind of nine-to-five job, but hey, in this economy, you have to take what you can get, right?" Anja asked through his earpiece. "Even if it is the graveyard shift."

Savage didn't answer. He couldn't since most of his shift-mates would think he was weird for talking to himself. Of course, Anja knew that. It simply made it fun for her.

"Well, boys." The shift leader of the group of five called them into the common work area. "It looks like we have a new face joining us since Perkins has apparently taken time off, the lucky bastard. Anyway, introduce yourself, fresh meat."

Fresh meat? Could the guys not have come up with something a little more creative than that? Then again, he reminded himself, they were on the graveyard shift for a reason.

"Lawrence Palmer," he said and introduced himself by the name on his ID card. "It's my first day with ICU Sec and they said they needed extra bodies here."

"Palmer, nice to have you with us," the man replied. "I'm Matt Guy, these are Hisako, Brown, and Cutter. I'll be honest, we usually only have four guys here, even though the recommendation is six, so it's nice to have someone extra to work with us. Brown will show you the ropes. There really isn’t that much to do. Two guys will hold the fort down in the booth, but that's for me and the vets. The rest of you need to scan the grounds and check all the doors and the building, so it means you three have to stay on your feet for most of the night. This place ain't that big, but for three guys patrolling the whole area, it damn well feels big."

Savage nodded. He was the new guy, so most of the work would be dropped on his shoulders. He didn't much mind that, however. If this were his real job, he would want to work his way to sitting down for a living. But he needed to be unsupervised in order to get to the back office of the man in charge of running the facility to access the information he was there for.

"See?" Anja asked. "Nothing to worry about. Okay, sure, there would have been if the two you met before were still on duty, but since they weren't, you had nothing to worry about. I love living in a time when everything's computerized. It's like people are begging someone like me to step in and appropriate all the knowledge they have."

She almost sounded like she didn't know that Jeff and Harry wouldn't be on duty but he wasn’t able to process that thought. Brown was talking him through the hallways he'd committed to memory barely a couple of hours before.

He would have time to himself while he patrolled the hallways and made sure nothing unexpected or untoward happened between the third and fourth floor as well as the rooftop. That was the job the newbie got, he was told since they were closing in on winter and it would be cold out.

"It’s not too bad if you're a smoker, though," his partner explained as they began the walk through the third floor for the first time.

Most of the work appeared to be delegated to the newcomers since it lay on him to check the alarms deeper inside the facility. They weren't allowed in there and most of the security for those areas was delegated to the closed-circuit systems, which made their job easier.

Brown appeared to know that they were being phased out of the security division, which was why they had to deal with a lack of personnel. ICU Sec didn't want to over-commit to a contract they would probably lose in the next few weeks.

The people working at the lab appeared to have already left for the day. When he began to patrol the hallways, he was able to see that most of the offices and testing rooms were locked and closed for the evening. He would need to plan his way around any of the people who had stuck around for longer hours than they needed to.

"Are you clear on what you need to do?" Brown asked. "It's simple. But make sure you're at each of the checkpoints at least once every hour. We have a little time off at around three in the morning, but it will be staggered and you'll be the last one, since—"

"Since I'm the new guy, I get it," Savage said with a chuckle. "Believe it or not, I have done this kind of shit before."

"In the Marines, right. Greg told us about it," the other man said.

"Yeah, patrolling the bases had a similar set of duties, and I was paid about a quarter of the hourly I get with ICU Sec. I guess I might get tired of being the new guy eventually, but for now, I'm only happy to have a job."

"Well, I do know our bosses like that kind of thinking, so keep at it, I guess." The guard laughed wryly. "For now, though, I need to get to my sections of the building, so...have fun, I guess."

Savage nodded. He doubted there was much he could do if someone planned to break in. While he was equipped with a radio and an alarm button should something go wrong, the people running the facility had apparently not gone for the full security package. ICU Sec supposedly had packages where their security people were armed, but not in this case.

Brown was right. They were being phased out.

"So, what's your next step in there, Savage?" Jessica asked. She’d obviously noticed the silence that now surrounded him and assumed he was on his own.

"I've made my peace with the fact that Anja will be a voice in my head for the foreseeable future," he quipped and kept his voice low as he began his rounds. "I guess I never thought I would have a second voice as well. People will begin to think I'm crazy."

"They're only starting to think you're crazy now?" Anja snarked. "Come on, you've charged head-first into life-threatening situations for a while now, so you have to assume that people have known you're nuts for much longer than you pretend."

"True," he admitted. "But the voice—singular—in my head kind of crazy. Not the voices plural kind."

"Well, we all know you are all kinds of nuts, Jer," she retorted and he thought he heard her quiet chuckle in the background.

"Can we get back to the mission, please?" Jessica sounded a little annoyed.

"Sure thing," Savage replied.

"Now, what kind of plan do you have?" she said and repeated her previous question.

"Nothing much in the way of plans," he said with a casual shrug. "I'm here to find evidence and to do so, I need access to one of the computers. It's a game of patience. My cover is still good and no one suspects a thing. The more suspiciously I act, the more they'll suspect me and the more my cover will be in jeopardy."

He had no idea why the woman was being this overbearing about the mission, but he could guess. It seemed logical that word of Carlson's death had reached Monroe and she was able to put two and two together and realized that he had killed the man.

She wouldn't say he shouldn't have done it since she had to know that the ex CEO was still a threat, even while in custody.

Monroe merely wouldn’t like that he had gone off-schedule and had probably called and told Jessica to be as on top of the mission as she could be. And Jessica, not used to being that kind of person, would overcompensate and carry it over onto him.

The only question was whether or not Monroe had told Jessica about what he'd done. Still, that was a thought for another day. For now, there were other more important things to focus on.

He headed into the lab and moved quickly through his checkpoints to give himself time to move around the lab areas in his search to find any of the areas where they might use the materials he was supposed to obtain pictures of.

And, surprisingly, he found evidence in a handful of them. They were out in the open, and while he couldn't get into the labs themselves without triggering any alarms, Jessica's directions were enough for him to make out which devices he was there to locate.

A couple of these even still displayed the Pegasus logo on their sides.

"Well, it’s safe to say they have the devices here," Savage said and made a note of where the third one was on the fourth floor. "I don't think there will be any on the roof, so how do I get to the other devices?"

"From the paperwork we have from the inspectors, the other two devices we are looking for are in a storage area in the back," Jessica said. "Unfortunately, it is in the first basement, so you’ll likely have a little difficulty getting there without alerting the other people working security."

"It’s not really necessary either," Anja interjected. "There should be many cameras in the storage areas since this place does seem like the kind of place that would make sure their employees can’t steal the smaller, more expensive items. If you can get me into the camera streams, I should be able to find them myself."