Chapter 12 - Mind the gap

Posted on https://books.clockworkcaracal.com/dragons-heart/old-beginnings/ch12 - if you aren't there, this is a pirated copy!

"Ah-HA!"

Fang jolted upright at the sudden exclamation - not that he'd actually been asleep, anyway, but if he had... "Trace," he started, trying to sound patient, but didn't manage to get further before his erstwhile roommate spun their chair around to face him in excitement.

"Fang! I finally found it!"

"...what time is it?"

"It's, uh, oh." Trace looked back at their screens, then cleared their throat. "Two fifty six. AM. Whoops."

"Right." Fang rubbed at his eyes and sighed. "Well, whatever, I'm awake anyway. What'd you find?"

"What did I find? Only the thing I've been looking for the entire time we've been here. You know, the super-secret corp base hiding the super-secret info that we travelled all this way to get? That thing. And it's right..." Trace pushed their chair back to give Fang a clear view of the main computer screen, pointing at it. "There."

Fang squinted at the screen - it was obviously a 3-D map of a building, but it took him a minute to identify which building. "The shopping mall? Seriously? I'm breaking into the shopping mall?"

"Yes, and no, and also yes. Okay, let me explain."

"Please." Fang settled himself more comfortably on the edge of his bed, making sure he had a good view of the screens.

"We already know that there's this big shielded gap area in the middle here," they pointed at a few floors about two-thirds up the tower, marked in yellow, "for the black market stuff, right?"

"Right," Fang agreed. "I went in and bugged it for you and you said it's all just your everyday illegal goods and smuggling."

"And it is! But. You remember I set up a new scan analysis routine a couple days ago."

Fang nodded.

"Since I wasn't finding any tells or leaks or any of the usual signs of secret corp business," Trace continued, "I figured I needed something more thorough - a full cross-analysis of all the scan data I could get on all the buildings, flagging anything that looked even a little suspicious. I got a whole bunch of red herrings, of course, you always do when you're doing a fine sieve search like that, but one of those flags led me to this." They tapped out a few key clicks and, right in the middle of the building, an empty vertical column highlighted itself red, starting at the ground and stopping right in the middle of the shielded floors.

"...what am I looking at?"

"You're looking at the invisible," Trace intoned melodramatically. "If you extrapolate all the internal and external data on the floor plans, layout, all that stuff, this part of the building just isn't there. Not an empty space - it's just gone. You go right from here," they tapped one side of the column, then the opposite, "to here, no transition, no gaps, nada. The anomaly didn't pop up until the routine was lining up all the maps and records with my own scans, when it found this whole space of... space, that supposedly isn't there, except it is."

Fang looked at the highlighted column again, bemused, before the realization abruptly clicked. "It's an elevator shaft."

"It sure looks that way. But even I can't crack into it - whatever it is, it might as well not exist. I wanna know how they're doing it," Trace added at a mutter, frowning at the screen again. "Maybe I can set you up with some scanners to study when you go in...."

"As long as they won't get in the way," Fang allowed. "You think our target's at the bottom of that elevator?"

"It's gotta be. It's either that or we're in the wrong city, and I am pretty damn sure about the city part."

"A hole in the maps isn't a lot to go on," Fang said, doubtfully. "I'm not a big fan of flying entirely by the seat of my pants on these things, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, you like to be prepared for everything so the corps don't catch you, don't worry. It's only three and I'm not gonna wake up the boss early to start planning. If I can't get even a little more data in five hours work, I'll hand in my resignation and go take up knitting or something."

Fang coughed, covering a laugh. "All right. I'll be... trying to sleep," he said, sounding as convincing about it as he could - which turned out to be "not very".

"Want me to play you a lullaby?"

"No thanks, I'm good." Fang lay back down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling for a moment before closing his eyes. An invisible, non-existant elevator: this job was definitely proving more than interesting enough to justify how much the contract was worth.

To his surprise, Fang found himself waking up a few hours later, feeling slightly better rested than he had before - the first unbroken sleep he'd gotten in days. Not being the type to look a gift horse in the mouth, he took a moment to relax and stretch before pushing himself out of bed and glancing over to Trace.

The tech wizard was nowhere to be seen. Fang frowned at the empty chair before grabbing his phone and checking the time - just past nine o'clock.

They must have decided to let me sleep in. He smiled a little, then gave himself a shake and quickly pulled on a shirt before heading out into the living area.

The rest of the team was all seated around the coffee table. Trace was talking to Vanessa around what looked like one of their last few bites of pancake, while Vanessa was sipping coffee and petting Felix, and Jade was reading her phone.

Vanessa was the only one to look up as he entered and gave him a nod. "Good morning, Fang. Trace mentioned you already heard some of their exciting news?"

"Fang! Hey!" Trace waved energetically with their fork. "We left you some breakfast. Go grab a plate and I'll get started."

"Fang's up?" Jade sat up abruptly - if she'd been shifted, her ears would have perked up in excitement. "Finally! Uhh, I mean, glad you got some sleep, good morning?"

"Good morning to you too," he replied, his tone dry. "Yeah, I already saw the first part, so you go ahead while I'm in the kitchen."

"Great!" Trace hastily shoved the rest of their pancake in their mouth and started setting up the 3-D projector on the coffee table. "So, you all know I set up a new scan analysis routine a few days ago...."

Fang made his way around into the kitchen, serving himself up a plate of slightly-cold pancakes and scrambled eggs as Trace walked their other two team-mates through the reveal. From what he could see over the island counter, they'd made some improvements on their "presentation", with additional colored highlights to show the separate maps and scans.

It might've taken longer to explain, that way, but at least it gave Fang plenty of time to get his food and reheat a mug of coffee. By the time he headed back into the living room, Vanessa had just identified the "invisible space" as looking like an elevator shaft and they were discussing where the entrance might be.

"There has to be enough space for the motor," Vanessa was musing. "So I doubt it's right at the top."

"The motor might be at the bottom," Fang countered as he sat down. "Especially if it's operating on a separate power source from the rest of the building."

"Which it most definitely is," Trace added. "There isn't even the tiniest bit of electricity unaccounted for in the other parts of the building. The whole thing has to be completely self-contained."

"Which means it'll be either this floor," Vanessa leaned over and pointed at the level just below the top of the shaft, "or this one right below it, and we don't know which."

"Fortunately for all of us, and thanks to Fang's paranoia, I already did some additional research on exactly this question." Trace adjusted the projection, zooming into the two floors in question around the shaft. "There's no security cams on the smuggler levels, of course, so I couldn't spy on them directly, but my little bugs can do a lot more than just hack into networks, you know. They're---"

"I know you're very proud of your technological inventions," Vanessa interrupted patiently, "but let's stay on topic."

"Right, right." Trace cleared their throat. "The big scan analysis I did wasn't just the maps - and one of the other things I got was tracking people, seeing the routes they followed, traffic patterns, you know? And I got this."

They clicked a button, bringing up an additional overlay in the projection - a sort of cloudy collection of trails, almost like a time-lapsed infrared photo.

It probably is a time-lapsed infrared photo, Fang realized in amusement.

"Most of it's pretty useless for us, of course, but if I crop out everything that's more than a certain distance from the empty space..." Another button click and most of the cloud disappeared - except for one faint, small blob leading right into the elevator shaft on the upper of the two floors. "Voila. The door."

Fang leaned forward intently, his breakfast temporarily forgotten. "Could you tell if it had any guards?"

"Based on the trace patterns? Nada. No guards at all. I'm guessing they don't wanna draw attention to their secret elevator that's not supposed to be there by doing something like posting guards at the door. There might be guards in the elevator," Trace allowed, "I can't tell who's going in or if they actually leave at the bottom."

"And it looks like the motor is at the bottom," Fang mused. "I'll assume there are bored guards on the elevator itself, to be safe."

"Is that a market floor or a storage floor?" Vanessa asked. "They have both kinds in that zone, correct?"

"Yeah, they do, and it's a market floor. Should be easy to get into."

"Good." Vanessa looked satisfied. "I'll tap the network to find out what kind of business they do there and if you need any special access to get in. You," she gestured at Fang with her mug, "will be going, of course, since you're on infiltration. Jade, I want you on the floor as well."

"All right." Jade fist-pumped triumphantly. "Do I get to punch anyone?"

"Only if absolutely necessary." Vanessa ignored her groan of disappointment. "I want you there as a contact relay, a potential distraction, and emergency back-up. I'll give you a shopping list once I know what they sell, you'll pass as a legitimate customer."

"Legitimate customer for illegitimate goods," Trace quipped with a grin. "And I'll be on comms, as usual."

Fang absently nibbled on his food, studying the projection while the other three went over their own plans for the rest of the day. It wasn't as much information as he'd been hoping Trace could get, but it was a lot better than nothing. He knew the location of the door, the probable existence of guards on the elevator, the fact that it was driven from the bottom of the shaft instead of the top, and that it ran entirely on its own power source.

The last two points seemed at first like they might make his life a lot more difficult, but after a moment's thought, he realized if the whole system was really self-contained, like Trace said, then the control panels to open and close the door had to be powered from below as well, which gave him an in to the system without having to draw on his own power too heavily.

There's most likely a camera in the elevator, also, he mused. Guards and a camera. If he was lucky, the elevator was typically kept parked on the upper floor and he could peek in without giving them advance warning.

"There's still a lot of unknowns in this job." Vanessa put her mug down with a sigh. "Especially with your role, Fang."

"I think I can work with what Trace found." Fang gestured at the projection. "It's not going to be easy, but we expected that from the price tag."

"We did," Vanessa agreed. "The one big unknown that's bothering me, however, is the actual target itself. We still don't know exactly what we're looking for. That's why it is vital that everyone," she emphasized, giving Fang a stern glare, "maintain communication channels the entire time. Understood?"

Fang ducked his head sheepishly - he did tend to go radio-silent on jobs, for reasons he couldn't exactly explain to them, so he took the chastising as deserved. "Yes, ma'am."

"Don't you ma'am me."

"Whatever you say, boss."

Trace cleared their throat. "On the topic of what we're looking for. I'm pretty sure it'll either be tech or software, so I'll give you the extra special bonus hacker package to download a copy."

"If it's tech, do we need to steal it?" Fang looked at Vanessa. "Or will the plans be good enough?"

"Just the plans," she confirmed. "Our client wants to know what it is they have, ideally without indicating that anyone has gained this information."

Fang grimaced. "I don't think I can pull off that level of stealth with this job. Was it a requirement?"

Vanessa shook her head. "No, just a consideration."

"If you need a big disruption to disguise your access, I can start a brawl?" Jade looked between them hopefully. "Or at least blow something up?"

"If we need a big disruption," Vanessa agreed. "If you stay on comms, we'll let you know."

"At least blow something up?" Trace gave Jade a look. "Jade, your sense of scale disturbs me."

"And I am completely okay with that," she retorted with a grin. "Okay, so, you'll get me a shopping list, I go in, I pretend to be shopping until it's either time to go or to fuck shit up."

"Correct. Fang, you'll go in separately and infiltrate the elevator, staying in contact, and we'll identify the target once you're all the way in." Vanessa stood. "If everyone's clear on what prep they need to do, I'll get started on my part."

"Thanks, Ness," Fang answered absently, studying the projection again. "I'm good."

"Me too!" Jade added.

"And me, of course," Trace said. "I'll leave the projection up for you two, if you want?"

"Yeah, please." Fang held out a hand, taking the controls as Trace handed it to him. "Thanks."

"No problem." Trace picked up their dishes with a sigh, wandering off to clean up. "I can't wait to be done and go back home to my own room, and my own kitchen...."

Fang paused, then frowned determinedly at the projection. Going back home wasn't the issue right now. Making a strategy to break into a high-security corp zone to retrieve some kind of unknown secret data was more than enough to worry about. Although, if he was being honest, he didn't think breaking in was going to be that much of a problem. He already had a solid strategy in mind, taking into account worst-case scenarios in terms of security measures.

He stabbed at his pancakes, zooming the projection back out to view the full building plan, and held back a sigh.

The real problem was going to be getting back out.