“Only as much as needed,” I grumbled, raising my hand to the wall. “If I knew when it would be needed, it wouldn’t be improvising, would it? It would be planning.”
She chuckled. “A foreign concept to you.”
“Foreign? Did you not see all the notebooks of plans I brought to the team? You know, the ones we all almost died retrieving?”
She turned away, not looking at me, and her posture grew stiff.
Sparking woman, I thought. Try making some sense for once. I shook my head, placing my hand against the wall.
One of the reasons that the city stations were considered impregnable was because of the security. Cameras in all of the hallways and stairwells; I had thought we’d hack into security and change the camera feeds. Prof said we’d certainly hack the feeds to watch them, but changing those feeds to cover sneaking rarely worked as well as it did in the old movies. Steelheart didn’t hire stupid security officers, and they’d notice if their video looped. Besides, soldiers patrolled the hallways.
However, there was a much simpler way to make sure we weren’t seen. We just had to stay out of the hallways. There weren’t cameras in most of the rooms, as the research and experiments done there were kept secret, even from the security watching the building. Besides, logically, if you kept really close watch on all the hallways, you could catch intruders. How else would people move from room to room?
I raised my hand and, with some concentration, vaporized a four-foot-wide hole in the wall. I glanced through it, shining my mobile. I’d ruined some computer equipment on the wall, and I had to shove a desk out of the way to get in, but there was nobody inside. At this hour of the night much of the station was unoccupied, and Tia had drawn up our path very carefully, with the goal of minimizing the chances that we’d run into anyone.
After we crawled through, Megan took something from the pack and placed it on the wall beside the hole I’d made. It had a small red light that blinked ominously. We were to place explosive charges beside each hole we created so that when we detonated the building, it would be impossible to find out about the tensors from the wreckage.
“Keep moving,” Cody said. “Every minute y’all are in there is a minute longer that someone might wander into a room and wonder where all those bloody holes came from.”
“I’m on it,” I said, sliding my finger across my mobile’s screen and bringing up Tia’s map. If we continued straight ahead through three rooms, we’d reach an emergency stairwell with fewer security cameras. We could avoid those, hopefully, by looping through some walls and moving up two floors. Then we needed to make our way into the main storage chamber for energy cells. We’d set the rest of our charges, steal a power cell or two, and bolt.
“Are you talking to yourself?” Megan asked, watching the door, her gun at chest level and arm straight and ready.
“Tell her you’re listening to ear demons,” Cody suggested. “Always works for me.”
“Cody is on the line,” I said, working on the next wall. “Giving me a delightful running commentary. And telling me about ear demons.”
That almost provoked a smile from her. I swore I saw one, for a moment at least.
“Ear demons are totally real,” Cody said. “They’re what make microphones like these ones work. They’re also what tell you to eat the last slice of pie when you know Tia wanted it. Hold for a second. I’m patched into the security system, and there’s someone coming down the hall. Hold.”
I froze, then hastily quieted the tensor.
“Yeah, they’re entering that room next to you,” Cody said. “Lights were already on. Might be someone else in it too—can’t tell from the security feed. Y’all might have just dodged a bullet. Or rather, dodged having to dodge quite a few of them.”
“What do we do?” I asked tensely.
“About Cody?” Megan asked, frowning.
“Cody, could you just patch her in too?” I asked, exasperated.
“You really want to talk about her cleavage when she’s on the line?” Cody asked innocently.
“No! I mean. Don’t talk about that at all.”
“Fine. Megan, there’s someone in the next room.”
“Options?” she asked, calm.
“We can wait, but the lights were already on. My guess is some late-night scientists still working.”
Megan raised her gun.
“Uh …,” I said.
“No, lass,” Cody said. “You know how Prof feels about that. Shoot guards if you have to. Nobody else.” The plan included pulling an alarm and evacuating the building before we detonated our charges.
“I wouldn’t have to shoot the people next door,” Megan said calmly.
“And what else would you do, lass?” Cody asked. “Knock them out, then leave them for when we blow up the building?”
Megan hesitated.
“Okay,” Cody said. “Tia says there’s another way. You’re going to have to go up an elevator shaft, though.”