Chapter 7: The Mission Part II
Salt water…wow. It's like breathing in fresh air after spending a lifetime in city covered in smog and gas fumes. Yeah that doesn't paint a good picture of the Broad River, but that's how I feel right now.
Sunlight cuts through the surface of the blue sea water. It reminds me of the stained glass that was in my childhood church…Man I wish I had the time to just stare at this stuff.
As I swim past the odd fish, my speed increasing by the second, my thoughts wander to the blueprints of the Cruciform building.
I remember, vaguely, that I read something about this building a few years ago. It's officially called The Crux. The Crux was introduced to the public in a very…public way. They drove the damn thing up the coast of California and docked it next to a bunch of ocean liners. The news coverage that thing got was astounding. The thing's basically a giant boat, kept buoyant by a set of turbines powered solar panels that line the entire building. It moves wherever the company wants it to go, which right now is ten miles off the east coast and one mile away from me.
My ears pick up the sound of the turbines before I even see the building.
"Wow."
To put it bluntly, they're huge. I don't know a lot about boats but I know for a fact that the turbines that are pushing the Crux are at least three times the size of what are on a cruise ship. As soon as I see them I can feel the current that they're giving off start to lightly push me back. I keep my distance from them and dive down deeper into the ocean.
My body's biology is different since I was infected during the Great Impact. Aside from the obvious gills present on my neck, I'm also able to adapt to increasing pressures on my body, meaning I can go down as far as I want to into the ocean and not get crumbled up like a soda can. My strength and speed increase along with my durability as well. The only problem is it only lasts for about eight minutes.
I swim down until the darkness of the ocean begins to blind me. I look back up, and see the slow movement of the Crux as it pushes its way through the ocean. I take a deep breath of the ocean water, hold it in for what seems like a life time, and shoot myself upward with a powerful thrust of my arms.
The Crux becomes bigger and bigger as I'm propelled upward, the ocean blue blurring around me in a wall of bubbles. The instructions of the plan coming flooding into my brain: get to the loading bay of the Crux, find service elevator and ride it up to the twentieth floor-
"Screw that!" I yell, thrusting my arms down again, propelling myself faster than before. The surface of the water comes at me and I break through, my momentum shooting me out of the water and into the sky! I smile wide, practically high on the power flowing through me as I fly past floors one through fifteen of the building. I tuck into a ball and crash through a window on the sixteenth floor, rolling into an office hallway.
Eight minutes and counting.
I sit up with a big idiot grin on my face, saying, "Well, that was fun."
"Hey!"
Three guards come barreling towards me, guns trained on me. I get up from the floor with my hands raised, grin still plastered on my face.
"I'll pay for the damages guys, I pro-"
"Shut up!" the head guard says. He points his gun at my head and then looks behind me at the busted window. "How'd you get up here?"
"The same way I'm about to do this-"
I grab his gun with lightning speed, twisting it around in his hands. He drops it with a shout of surprise and I quickly sweep his legs out from under him. He lands hard on the ground and I knock him out with a punch to the face.
His friends barely have time to register what I just did when I pull my night sticks out from my holsters. I knock the next one out with a quick strike to the head and with a kick to the gut and a knee to the face, the last one goes out just as easily.
Seven minutes and thirty seconds left.
Office workers peer out from the doors to see what the commotions about. When they see me and the three guards lining on the ground, they quickly step back into their offices. I quickly run down the hallway and find the elevator.
- - - - -
The elevator dings on the twentieth floor with six minutes and 30 seconds left.
I walk into another hallway like the one I just came from (shattered window excluded of course). The two guards guarding the elevator door look at me for a split second in confusion before I use my gloves to shock them to sleep.
"Night, night, guys."
The doors lining the hallway are all marked with different lab signs. I turn the corner and keep on walking until I see the sign that reads 'Lab 12: Applied Computer Technology'.
"Bingo."
I break the lock as silently as possible and walk into the lab. The walls are lined with computer equipment with motherboards and blank computer chips littering tables around the room.
"How am I supposed to find the chip in all this mess?" I think out loud, picking up what looks like a half baked computer monitor from one of the tables.
Beep!
I turn to see a USB drive in a computer port across the room, its key ring still jingling against it.
"You got here faster than I thought, Ed."
The air around the drive moves for a second and Malcolm materializes in front of me, gun pointed at me. He laughs, "Then again, jumping fifteen stories can help with time management."
"What're you doing here, Malcolm," I ask, looking more at the gun than at my friend.
"I'm finishing my mission, Ed," he says confidently. The light on the drive flashes from red to green and Malcolm quickly pulls it out from the port and pockets it.
"You mean MY mission."
He shrugs, "No, no I mean mine."
Malcolm presses a button on his belt and I hear the sound of water hitting the floor. I take a quick, strained breath only to find that my water tank's completely empty. I try in vain to get some water into my system as I crumble to the ground in a heap.
"If you had stuck to the plan," Malcolm says, keeping his gun trained on my body, "your powers would've run out by the time you got up here and this process would've been so much less painful. I could've just shot you and put you out of your misery…now you're gonna have to flop like a fish."
"W-w-why," I get out, trying to inch my way out of the room.
"There is no new computer chip, Ed." Malcolm explains, circling my body. "You were supposed to be what I like to call the wrecking crew, coming in here to clear the way for me so I could copy all of Cruciform's files. Then I would've shot you, left you here to take the fall and no one would've been the wiser."
He crouches down next to me and whispers into my ear, "After all, you would suspect an invisible man?"
He laughs, "I mean, no one even knew that I was coming and going from Temper for months before I met you. Do you know how long it took me to carry all of those explosives into that building and hide them without anyone noticing?"
Explosives?!
Malcolm stands up and starts to walk out of the room.
"Yesterday I got the last of the C4 that I needed to blow Temper Industries sky high. And when I get back there, I'm going to watch Sinclair's smug little face burn while his company literally explodes around him." He stops at the doorway.
"I'm sorry about Jane."
I stare at him in shock and disbelief as he disappears from my view and I'm left to die.
To be continued
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