131.

  I didn’t have a chance to air my misgivings with Hex as I was now crawling through an air duct that was barely wider than my narrow shoulders. It’s not like the films. Movie air ducts always seem to be clean and spacious, whereas the one I was dragging myself through was thickly coated in dust and grime. I didn’t want to think about the several thousands of people’s worth of dead skin cells I was inhaling right now.

  “How much further?” I grunted.

  “Another 7 feet,” Hex replied.

  I grunted again and wormed my way forward. The air duct was so narrow that all I could do was wriggle and kick my feet to propel myself forward. I felt like the shaft was constipated and I was the turd.

  “Come on, work that narrow little booty,” Hex said.

  “I’m trying!” I snapped.

  I had done many indecorous things in my life, but squeezing myself through this vent felt like a real low point. I kicked, grunted, and squeaked the next 7 feet, until I was red in the face and pouring sweat but finally I managed to get to the next hatch. Luckily, the hatches weren’t screwed in. They had these weird plastic latches that snapped the grill into place. I wriggled around until one of my arms was free and punched the grill. It took 3 attempts before the grill flew off. I wriggled harder, squeezing myself out of the shaft until my upper body flopped out, followed by my legs. I lay on the floor breathing deeply, grateful to be free.

  “Don’t move!” Hex hissed in my ear.

  “What?”

  “Don’t move!”

  “I’m not!”

  “Good. Stay there, something’s wrong.”

  “What?”

  Swat dripped down my temple. The server room was dim, barely illuminated by the weak green glow of the fire exit lights. There was a low hum of electricity but it was completely silent otherwise.

  “Something’s different,” Hex murmured, and I could hear the furious clack of keys in the background.

  “From when you were here last week?” I said.

  “What?” Hex snapped.

  “Last week, when you hacked into the servers here,” I said.

  There was silence. I could still hear Hex’s keyboard clicking though.

  “They’ve set up infrared thermals,” Hex said, ignoring my question. “This is going to complicate things.”

  “Like lasers?” I asked, thinking about every spy film I’d ever seen. They all had rooms full of dancing lasers.

  “No,” Hex said incredulously. “Well… I guess… kind of.”

  “Cool,” I replied, still laid on the cold floor.

  “Not cool,” Hex said. “They’re invisible to the naked eye and they react to heat. If the heat signature changes in the room at all they’ll give off an alert.”

  “So I don’t even have to walk through them to trip them?”

  “Nope. Even if you get close they’ll go off,” Hex replied.

  “Well… can’t you do some hacky stuff and turn ‘em off?” I said.

  “Hacky stuff?” Hex said sarcastically.

  “You know… with the keyboard and the green numbers and stuff?” I said.

  “Oh brother,” Hex sighed. “I’m not in the system and even if I was and I was able to remotely turn off the sensors, don’t you think someone would notice? They have a team of 3 guards whose entire job is to watch the cameras and monitor the sensors. They would see if they were suddenly deactivated.”

  “So what do you suggest?” I asked, still staring up at the dark ceiling, wondering how close I was to one of the invisible lasers.

  “Give me a second,” Hex said.

  “Sure, take all the time you need, I’ll just lay here while you think.”

  I heard more furious clicking and Hex’s aggravated breathing. Then a thought occurred to me.

  “You said these things are thermal right?”

  “Don’t distract me,” Hex snapped.

  “Will they activate if they’re physically interrupted?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Like if something passes through the laser will it go off?”

  “No, if it isn’t picked up as having a heat signature the lasers won’t activate. That’s the point of them. Why?”

  “I’m gonna try something,” I said.

  “No! You just lay there and let me do the thinking!” Hex ordered.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I ignored him. I reached up and bit my thumb. I winced as blood welled up on my thumb.

  “What are you doing?” Hex said.

  I didn’t respond. I closed my eyes for a moment and focused my mind before wiping my bloody thumb across the Rune on my belt. Darkness misted up around me. It was time to test a theory I had about the Cloaking Charm.

  “What’s going on?” Hex said.

  I slowly stood up, channeling as much energy as I could through the Cloaking Charm.

  “Stop!” Hex shouted. “You’re going to trip the sensors!”

  I unfurled my body and stood up straight, holding my breath. No alarm sounded.

  “Have the sensors gone off?” I whispered.

  There was a pause.

  “No,” Hex replied. “How did you do that?”

  “Magic,” I replied facetiously.

  “Ha ha,” Hex said mirthlessly. “Seriously, how have you masked your heat signature?”

  “Just a little trick I learned,” I muttered.

  Through studying the Cloaking Charm, I had found interesting patterns with the matrix that referenced hot and cold. I was sure the Charm masked more than just my physical appearance and my escape from Gas all but confirmed that. I was sure Gas had some sort of thermal augmentation, that’s how he was able to track me in near darkness, but he had completely lost track of me when I threw up my Cloaking Charm. Now, as I tiptoed through the thermal sensor ridden server room, I was certain there was more to the Cloaking Charm than I had first believed. Even with my greater energy stores and increased focus, keeping up the Cloaking Charm was still draining.

  “You need to get to the main server,” Hex hissed in my ear. “It should be in the room opposite you.”

  I crossed the floor to the door and then tried the handle but it was locked.

  “Damn it!” Hex said, his tinny mechanical voice still betraying his growing frustration.

  “The lock new too?” I said.

  “Yes,” Hex replied.

  “Seriously? You broke into this place a week ago and didn’t think they would put in new security measures? And why were you sniffing around their bank accounts?”

  “Not now!” Hex snapped at me. “Focus on getting through that door!”

  I looked around in the darkness but saw nothing that could help me.

  “Is it alarmed?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Hex said. “It looks like it’s just a key card access.”

  “Will my one work?”

  “No, you don’t have clearance to be in here,” Hex said. “Maybe I could try something…” His voice trailed off and I heard furious clicking in my ear again.

  I waited a few seconds, feeling my energy ebbing away. I didn’t have time for Hex to be clever. If the Cloak failed then I was done for.

  "Will the alarm go off if I blow it?" I asked.

  "Blow it? What are you talking about?”

  "Too late," I said as I reached into my messenger bag and pulled out my Wrist Rocket and a Bang Rock.

  "Wait, hold on a second," Hex began, but then I turned and fired. The Bang Rock exploded, blowing open the key card panel, and the door clicked ominously.

  "Did that work?" I asked, exhausted, as I walked towards the door and pulled it open.

  "It worked," Hex said. "I must admit, you're unorthodox but effective."

  "Yeah, yeah, let's just get this done. Are there any more lasers in here?”

  “No, they might interfere with the servers,” Hex replied.

  “Good.” I sighed and dropped the Cloaking Charm, the vacuum effect on my energy stores disappeared and it felt like I dropped a 50 pound weight off my shoulders. “What do I need to do in here?" I asked as I walked into a cool, well-lit room.

  Lights flickered on as I stepped in. There was a massive computer array in front of me. I couldn't even really tell what I was looking at. There were server boxes lined up around the walls and a computer terminal in the middle of the room, but no terminal like I had ever seen before. It looked like the engine of one of the old muscle-head cars from back in the day.

  "Take the card reader that I gave you and all you've gotta do is place it down on top of the terminal.”

  "What, here?" I said, pointing.

  "Yeah, just there. Place it down and I'll do the rest.”

  "Okay," I said, placing down the little black box card reader that Hex had given me and heard more furious typing.

  The terminal suddenly flickered to life in front of me. It seemed like Hex had somehow gained remote access to the system. Code whirred in front of my eyes, and suddenly files began appearing at breakneck speed, flashing before me. There were hundreds, no, thousands of them. Hex seemed to be downloading them all.

  As I watched the files flutter past me, I realized what I was looking at. These weren't Syndicate files; these were files from a dozen different multinational corporations. I recognized some of the names, while the rest were a mystery to me. I saw banks with locations in Geneva, Moscow, Hong Kong, the US, all over the world. I saw Sable Systems' name flicker past my eyes. I saw trading routes, shipping routes, bank details, and more spreadsheets than I could even comprehend. They were all rapidly appearing and disappearing until finally, I saw a bank account. The screen stopped on it for perhaps five seconds, and I saw numbers suddenly drop to zero.

  "What are you doing?" I said. All I could hear was the maniacal clicking and clacking of a keyboard. "Hex, what are you doing?" I said more firmly.

  "Mind your own business, gutter boy, I'm working," Hex said.

  "It looks like you're thieving," I replied hotly.

  "I'm just skimming a little bit off the top for operational costs, nothing for you to concern yourself with," Hex retorted.

  "You said we were here to get files on the Syndicate," I said.

  "Amongst other things," Hex replied. "Listen, don't worry. I've got your trading and shipping routes. I'm just taking care of a bit of extra business. Don't get your little moral whities in a bunch.”

  "I didn't agree to do any stealing. You said we were just here to…”

  Hex cut me off.

  "Steal data, right? What's it matter if we steal a little bit of money on top? I mean what is money really? Just a bunch of numbers on a screen.”

  Then I saw more names flash across my eyes, and I didn’t recognise the names but I had a vague idea of what ‘pension funds’ meant.

  "What are you doing?" I said again. "Stop it! We're here to get the information on those missing people, not plunder people's private data.”

  Hex didn't respond, and I saw more files flashing by my eyes until finally, and I'm sure Hex did it deliberately, I saw a file on the screen, and it had my name on it: "The Gutter Mage." Then it disappeared.

  "What was that?" I said. "Do they have a file on me?”

  "Oh, you'd be shocked what they have on you, Mister Gutter Mage," Hex replied. "And if you want to know all about it, let me get on with my work.”

  I gnashed my teeth in anger, my jaw clenching. That sinking feeling that I was a puppet on a string was growing deeper. Then suddenly, an alarm started blaring above me.

  "Shit!" Hex hissed in my ear. "They know I'm in their system. They're onto us.”

  "How did you get caught so quickly?" I snapped.

  "People tend to notice when you download a whole bunch of data off their secure systems," Hex said testily.

  "You didn't see this coming?” I snapped.

  "I did," Hex replied.

  "What?" I said.

  "I suggest you start running. Security are on their way."

  "Son of a bitch!”