Chapter 7 - Casing the joint, take one

Posted on https://books.clockworkcaracal.com/dragons-heart/old-beginnings/ch7 - if you aren't there, this is a pirated copy!

Fang stood in front of the open refrigerator, wishing vainly for the third time in so many minutes that the contents of said refrigerator included eggs.

There were, however, no eggs. There were still no eggs. There had been no eggs in the refrigerator since they'd moved in, despite Jade having gone shopping three times.

Plenty of bacon, but no eggs. Fang sighed, trying not to think annoyed thoughts about carnivores.

"You're letting the cold air out." Vanessa's voice behind him was drily amused, and a moment later she reached around and nudged the fridge door closed.

"I just want an omelet," Fang grumbled. "At this rate, I'm just going to buy groceries myself."

"Just send Jade out again." Vanessa shrugged, peering into a cabinet before pulling out a box of dry cereal.

"She's already gone to the gym." He sighed, pulling open the fridge again and staring into it as Vanessa grabbed herself the milk. "Who doesn't keep around eggs?"

"This rooming situation has been full of surprises, hasn't it."

"Don't tell me you're going to complain, too." Fang cast an amused sideways glance her way. "Regretting your penny-pinching already?"

"I regret nothing," Vanessa replied with a smirk. "What about you?"

"Me?" Fang placed a hand over his heart, feigning a wounded expression. "Complain? I would never."

Vanessa chuckled. "All right, then. If it's not the living arrangements, then what is it?"

"What's what?" He didn't even need to pretend confusion, this time, giving her a puzzled look.

"You, my stoic friend," she declared, pouring cereal into a bowl, "have been brooding again."

"Oh come on." Fang pushed the refrigerated closed again, channeling his exasperation into it with an unnecessary slam. "Don't I get enough of that from the kids?"

"Usually. And I'm perfectly happy to let them get into your hair instead of mine... usually." She glanced sharply at him, that expression which always made Fang a little nervous. The two of them had been working together for twenty years, now - there was always a little bit of a question in his mind, how much did she know. And that expression was the one that suggested, maybe it was more than he wanted her to.

"Trace told me about the other day," she continued, adding milk to her cereal and sounding as matter-of-fact as discussing the weather forecast. "And before you ask 'which day': the one where you fled the apartment like the devil was on your heels."

"Ah." Fang grimaced. "Yes. That."

"Apparently you frightened all of his spirits, too." Vanessa picked up her breakfast and turned her full attention to him. "What's going on, Fang?"

"It's nothing." He winced - he didn't sound convincing even to himself.

She raised her eyebrows and waited.

"... Really."

"Fang. Really?" She looked unimpressed. "I know you better than that."

"It's nothing new," he amended, and that one came out much more convincing - probably due to having the benefit of being true. "I just remembered something and had to go deal with it." That also had the benefit of being true. "It's nothing that'll affect the job, I promise."

Vanessa studied him for a long moment, then nodded - a sharp, business-like gesture. "Very well. I don't want to pry, so I'll take your word on this."

"Thanks," he answered, letting a bit of rueful humor leak into his voice. "Want me to put the milk away for you?"

"Oh, please. By the way," she asked as she settled herself at the table, "did you have a chance---"

"Fang!" Trace's voice rang out across the apartment, followed by the rest of Trace scrambling out of their bedroom and into the living room. "Oh! good, you're still here."

"Still here," Fang agreed. Still trying to get breakfast, he thought, with another barely audible sigh as he put the milk away and closed the fridge yet again. "What's up?"

"I've got some leads, but the security is nuts." Trace waved around a small device. "No less than five buildings owned by Mirrotech have themselves locked down so hard even I can't wiggle my way in."

"Five?" Vanessa paused, putting her first spoonful of cereal back into the bowl with a frown. "Well. That certainly supports our suspicions."

"No one puts that much of their resources into some backyard subsidiary that barely pulls a profit," Trace declared. "Not unless there's something going on under the table."

"They can't all be hiding the same big secret our client wants," Fang mused aloud.

"I bet they could. But that's beside the point, and the point is I need an inside link." Trace waved the device in Fang's face and, that failing to get the desired result, shoved it into his hand. "And that's the inside link."

Fang looked down at the device, turning it around a couple of times between his fingers. It was fancifully designed like a small beetle - Trace really did like their devices being animal-shaped - with a few rune-spells he recognized from other bugs he'd had to plant in the past.

The obvious conclusion being, of course, that Fang was going to have to break into a corp building.

"Just one?" Fang gestured with the device. "You said there were five locations."

"I don't wanna run any bigger of a risk than we have to." Trace sidestepped around Fang, opening the fridge again. "We'll just do one at a time. If it's the right place, good, if not, retrieve the bug and put it in the next place. Do we seriously have no eggs?"

Vanessa abruptly coughed, nearly choking on her cereal.

"Are you cooking something?" Fang gave Trace his best hopeful expression.

"That's the idea." Trace glanced at him, then rolled his eyes. "All right, I'll make enough for you too."

"While you do that," Vanessa chimed in, pausing to clear her throat, "why don't you tell us your five targets? Then we can decide which one is first over breakfast."

"Yeah, sounds like a plan. We've got cheese, I can do something with that...."

Fang settled back against the island between the kitchen and the living room, letting Trace have the kitchen.

"So," Trace began as they started pulling out ingredients, "in the least surprising candidate, we've got the HQ. Big central office, but not any bigger than you'd expect for a corp subsid. Next up we got three satellite offices - some kind of import-export deal, a bank, and a software publisher. Lastly, in the most surprising candidate of them all, we have a shopping mall."

Vanessa's eyebrows shot up. "A shopping mall?"

"You heard right." Trace turned on the stove, whisking the contents of his bowl with the other hand. "A shopping mall. The Quill Building, or Quill Center. QBC if you're feeling fancy."

"What kind of secrets could a mall have?" Fang put in, sounding almost as doubtful as he felt.

"None of the possibilities I can think of would qualify as highly classified corp secrets." Vanessa frowned in thought, visibly mulling over the question. "Illegal, yes, or quasi-legal, but not the sort of thing you'd pay assassination prices to uncover."

"I can't think of anything at all," Fang admitted.

"Oh, you know." Vanessa waved her spoon dismissively. "Weapons dealers. Shiny tech sellers. Various types of illegal, black market dealings which a small corp branch might want to get its fingers into, for more cash and market dominance."

Fang could think of one contact they'd already made who would be likely to know about any corp-run magitech business. But since he was also trying very hard not to think about a large number of things, including that particular... contact, he determinedly refused to mention any of it, pretending he hadn't thought of anything at all.

Based on the look Vanessa was giving him, he'd done a spectacularly bad job at the pretending part.

"Whatever they might be hiding - or not hiding - there's a whole big chunk missing somewhere in the middle of the building." Trace poured batter into a skillet, pausing as the loud sizzling briefly made it hard to hear. "Upper floors security, completely normal. Bottom floors security, also completely normal. Between floors, say, thirty and sixty? A void of nothingness."

"...but a mall?" Fang protested. "It's impossible to lock down access somewhere that busy."

"Hey now." Trace grinned, the smug expression they always had when they thought they were about to make a very clever comeback. "Lots of people have great success with the whole hiding in plain sight strategy. Remember Tibbles?"

Fang rolled his eyes, hiding a wince behind the gesture - "hiding in plain sight" fit him a little too closely for comfort, too. "Yeah, okay. Super secret shopping mall zone."

"It's suspicious, but it's also pretty out there, as a theory." Vanessa hummed thoughtfully. "And the MT building seems too obvious of a hiding place. Of the other three...."

Fang considered the options. "The import-export security is probably just covering black market smuggling. Stolen corp tech. Human trafficking," he added with a grimace.

"I agree." Vanessa scraped the last of her cereal up from her bowl. "My instincts say the software publisher is more likely than the bank. Fewer face-to-face client meetings."

Fang nodded, toying absently with Trace's bug. "Software publisher it is. I'll need a day to scope the place out, but I'll have it planted tomorrow."

"Tomorrow." Trace sighed heavily. "Okay, okay. I'll take the day off. Maybe take a nap."

"Get some fresh air, buy some eggs?" Fang countered, grinning.

"Ugh! Fresh air." Trace grimaced with an exaggerated shudder. "You know I'm allergic to fresh air."

"That's all right." Vanessa smiled - smirked, really. "You can clean the bathroom."

"The things I put up with," Trace complained, "living with you three. Here's your breakfast, mister phantom thief." With the last sentence, he slapped a couple of cheesy-biscuit things and a couple slices of bacon down on a plate and held it out to Fang. "Don't forget, you promised me tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," Fang agreed as he took the plate. "Thanks for breakfast."

"Pay me back by buying some eggs on the way home."

Fang coughed, fighting back a grin. "It's a deal."

Fang didn't not like infiltration jobs. In fact, he usually preferred sneaking through security systems to the kind of jobs that involved punching or shooting people. No, what he didn't like was being on corp territory. Even on good days, being surrounded by all the high-security tech and stealth weaponry involved in any corp building worth its salt made his skin crawl.

This was not a good day.

Fang leaned against a wall by the back door of his target, projecting an aura of casual disinterest that belied the massive amount of effort and willpower required as he tried to settle his heartbeat down for the third time in as many hours. The security cameras and sensors were still happily oblivious to his presence, his magic whispering to them nothing to see here, but that didn't help any with the people. The kind of tricks he worked against electronics were useless against living beings, and he was even more on edge about being found out than usual.

He would've had some pretty solid theories about why exactly that was, if he'd thought it was safe enough to even think about. As it was, he settled for doing some subtle breathing exercises and projecting a confidence he didn't even remotely feel.

Finally, the delivery worker he was watching for came back out the door, climbing into their truck. A minute later, the truck trundled back out into the broken streets, leaving him once again alone in the dismal loading bay.

Taking a deep, slow breath, Fang pushed himself back out of his shadowy corner, making his way back to the street like he was supposed to be there. He'd been there a few hours, avoiding attention from shift-changing security guards and a couple deliveries, and had a few ideas of how to scope out the internal security.

From the ground level, at least.

He headed back the way he'd come, resisting the urge to look up at the criss-crossing ribbons of the skyways. There wasn't really a good reason for him to go up-city. Justifications for being thorough, maybe. A note that he hadn't driven up there yet and the layout could be useful if things started dragging out.

It's not like I have anywhere else to be right now. With that deciding factor, he stepped into the narrow alley where he'd tucked away his ride. A quick glance around as he wove around the antique dumpsters showed no one had followed him from the street, or parked themself in the alley while he was gone. Small blessings, or something like that.

With a quick movement, Fang pulled the enchanted canvas - spelled with some of Trace's anonymity and obscurity runes - off of his motorcycle, neatly folding the tough fabric before tucking it into one of the saddle bags. Based on the map he'd downloaded earlier - well, he'd gotten Trace to download it for him, but who was counting? - it shouldn't be too bad of a drive, all things considered. The sky was clear, the air was pleasantly cool - with a stiff breeze he was probably going to regret when he got onto the skyways, but the drive out of the city would be nice.

Fang sighed, fitting on his helmet, then his gloves. It was no good; all his positive reassurances fell flat, completely failing to convince himself that it was going to be fine.

So maybe it wouldn't be fine. He maneuvered the bike out of the alley, revving the engine a couple times. If it wasn't fine, he could at least make it fast.

Grinning sharply behind the tinted visor, he twisted the throttle and roared off.

The last time he'd driven through the outskirts of Neodelphia, Fang had been focused more on keeping up with Vanessa's truck than taking in the sights. Going back out, he was discovering that he hadn't missed out on much.

The dense urban housing making up the bulk of downcity didn't so much trail off as crumble away; shops and apartment buildings getting shorter and more dilapidated, driveable roads growing fewer and further between, until he found himself on what amounted to a long exit-entrance ramp through the scorched remnants of pre-war ruins.

Don't think about it, he reminded himself, gritting his teeth against the faint, imagined scent of burning and a sharp itch up the scar on his back. Cranking open the throttle again to full, he swerved, dodging around the cars ahead in an extremely illegal and equally dangerous passing maneuver that earned him several loud, angry honks.

"Honk you too," Fang muttered under his breath, managing a ghost of a smile at the sheer stupidity of the comeback, even through the edge of panic and despair threatening to overwhelm him again.

Ignoring the speedometer as well as the ruins, he wove indiscriminately between the shoulder and the opposite lane while speeding past everyone else heading out of the city, taking each angry honk like a badge of honor - until a sign pointing back into Neodelphia sent him veering sharply at a fork and back the way he came.

Almost back the way he came. In contrast to the well-worn, four-lane street that barely earned the name highway he'd just come off of, the main highway to upcity was as crisp as a new dollar bill - and wasn't that a metaphor that would get weird looks, these days. Even at the breakneck speed he was refusing to check, his bike hummed over the pavement as smooth as satin.

As the road climbed up into the skyways, Fang sighed and backed off the throttle, gradually slowing down until he matched the rest of the traffic. As much as he enjoyed the speeds and testing his reflexes, he would also draw the attention of every cop trying to reach a ticket quota. Normally he would just let that happen, scramble their sensors, and lead them on a high-speed chase until he lost them - but he was supposed to be on a recon job, today. Which meant avoiding attention - not, as Trace would put it, "drawing aggro".

After changing lanes a few times - just to keep his attention from wandering - Fang noted the first exit signs and settled himself just a little more securely. If it was anything like back home, the twists and tangles of ramps and roads looping around, over, and under each other were impossible to follow directly.

The traffic was maintaining the same speed from the highway, despite the increasingly sharp turns and claustrophobic headspace from the upper ramps, and keeping up with the constant back-and-forth of splitting lanes and merging traffic left him with barely enough attention to spare for navigating.

Veritas Software, he reminded himself, passing a sign for Newman Tower. Quill Center - he made a note of that one, in case he had to come back another day. Park Ave, which he doubted actually connected to the avenue itself. Another exit for Quill.

Several more exit signs went by, dismissed, until he curved around another corner and spotted one for Veritas - just what he was looking for.

To the left.

He was currently in the right lane.

Swearing, Fang slammed on the brakes, skidding a little and making the exit by only slightly more than he'd avoided the one car's bumper. A traffic drone buzzed overhead - a quick push of magic, with a whisper of I'm not here, and it continued past, oblivious to his borderline infraction.

A few bends of the road later, Fang found a small shoulder to pull over and did, idling his engine as he took in the area. The target building was within easy sight - enough that he could see the entrance, and what he saw didn't look promising. The garage entrance was at a dead-end ramp, complete with a full gate check restricting any access to the building. Another building nearby looked like it had more publicly accessible parking - but unlike Nexus, Upper Neodelphia had no walkways to speak of. The only entrances to the upper tiers of the buildings were the garages themselves.

As a third traffic drone zipped by overhead, sent on past with yet another whisper of magic, Fang decided he'd done enough upcity recon. If he was going to get into any of these buildings, it would have to be at ground level - and with no one else around, he didn't have to pretend he wasn't relieved.

That decided, he started driving slowly down the shoulder, watching the traffic pattern carefully, then slammed on the throttle to cut in between two cars, forcing his way in despite the lack of room. Based on the sunlight and traffic flow, rush hour was just starting - which meant traffic was about to get bad.

Fang grinned. Lanes? Where we're going, we don't need lanes. With that mental quip, he swerved onto the nearest lane line, flying past the dense traffic back towards down-city.