Cold Hell - 26. Chapter 25

I took a deep breath and tried not to think about the time or what I was about to do.

So far everything had gone as planned. I had planned the heist - I couldn’t help but think of it as the heist - while my father was away on a business trip in London. He would be gone for a few days, leaving Uncle Charlie in charge of things. Uncle Charlie had left for home an hour ago. Against his wishes I’d insisted on staying a bit later to get ahead on paperwork. He’d smiled at me with something like pride and said, “You may look and act like your mother but you have the work ethics of your father.”

Like a bitter seed, his words had taken root in my belly. With each passing minute it grew. I thought about what Cookie had said when Juan took me to see the warehouse, about only being motivated by anger towards my father and getting cold feet. Getting revenge on my father was one thing, but what about Uncle Charlie who had shown me nothing but kindness and love? Who else would this endeavor I had volunteered to undertake effect?

It wasn’t too late - I could still back out of this. Fuck what Cookie thought of me. Better yet fuck what Juan thought. These were the things I tried to tell myself. But in the back of my mind I knew there was really no backing away. I had come too far already to turn around now. Just as the heavy weight of guilt was trying to stop me in my tracks, some unnameable force was propelling me forward.

I glanced at my watch. I had just a few minutes before the security shift would begin. I grabbed the bag I’d brought with me and unzipped it. Inside were a number of things Juan had given me which I would need to hack into the building’s mainframe. I slid a flesh-colored listening device into my ear so Tinkerbell could walk me through the process.

I stuck what TInkerbell simply called “the face scrambler” behind my ear where it wouldn’t be seen and slung the bag over my shoulders. “Tink, can you hear me?” I asked.

“Loud and clear,” Tinkerbell’s voice said, so loud and clear it was as if he was actually standing next to me. I found this strangely comforting.

“Can you see me?” I asked.

“Yes, I can see you. You’re standing in your office. Are you ready?”

“I’m scared shitless,” I said, wiping away the sweat from my forehead.

“I totally understand.” There was no condescension in Tinkerbell’s voice. “Just think, after this we’ll be out of your life. You’ll never have to worry about seeing us again.”

I tried to find something to say in response but couldn’t. With the exception of Cookie who I was starting to think would never come around, I wasn’t sure I wanted Juan and Tinkerbell to leave Roc City. For the first time in my life, despite my initial feelings of guilt and fear of being caught, I felt like I was doing what I was meant to do. Or at least I was doing something worthwhile. And of course there was the vivid memory of the night Juan and I had shared in my room. With the planning of the heist taking up our time we hadn’t been able to share such a moment a second time, but the passion between us was still there, shared in lingering glances.

I shook the thought from my head. There was no way our little moment of lustful passion could continue; it had been a mistake on both our parts. It was too perilous.

It was time to go.

I left the office, nodding politely at the security guard as he passed by. I stepped into the elevator. My body was so stiff it felt as if my insides had turned to wood. It was rumored the building’s mainframe was in the basement, where all the corporation’s important data was kept: receipts for business transactions, files for every employee that had been hired since Danni Aamodt Senior had founded the company; enough information, Juan assured me, to incur a strong investigation into the corporation’s affairs.

In order to be able to get into the basement you had to have a keycard and four digit access code. I’d snagged Uncle Charlie’s from his desk and memorized his access code. I slid his card into the slot and typed in the code: 4736. I pressed the button for the basement. The elevator began to make its descent to the bottom of the building.

“You doing okay?” Tinkerbell asked, voice crackling with concern in my ear.

I jerked with a start. I’d forgotten he was there, listening in. I could picture him sitting before his computers, face illuminated by the soft glow coming from the screens. “I’m in the elevator now, heading for the basement.”

“Good. You’re right on time.”

I resisted the urge to ask him what Juan and Cookie were doing. Were they listening as well? I would have felt better if they were here with me; they knew what they were doing better than I did. This whole operation seemed to rest on my shoulder.

The elevator came to a stop. The doors opened. I almost felt my jaw drop.

The room I stood in seemed to cover the whole bottom floor of the building. Before me were rows and columns of drives as tall as I was going back as far as the eye could see. Cool air was filtered into the room through vents. The hum of electricity coming from the harddrives reminded me of a buzzing hive of bees.

“I’m in the basement. There’s all these harddrives. This place is huge.”

“You’re looking for the main module. It would be in the very back.”

I gulped, walking past the harddrives. I spotted several video cameras as I headed towards the back of the building and hoped the device behind my ear was working to conceal my identity.

The module was in the very back of the basement just as Tinkerbell said it would be. It reminded me of a large rubix cube; the sides glowed with blue light. Wires the width of my wrist snaked from the cube, connecting to the harddrives. The cube hummed louder than the harddrives like a sovereign industrial god. A few feet away from it was a computer kiosk.

“Okay,” I muttered to myself. I slid the backpack off my shoulders and set it firmly on the ground. I pulled out the pad and approached the kiosk. Once the pad was connected to the kiosk via a cord, I said, “Alright Tink, I have the pad connected to the module.”

“All you have to do is pull up the files and download them all onto the pad. It should be easy peasy.”

Once again I typed in Uncle Charlie’s access code. After a few minutes the process of downloading the files began: a white bar popped up across the screen with the word DOWNLOADING blinking up above it. Beside that: EST. TIME 1 HR 15 MIN.

“You have to be fucking kidding me?” I said.

“What?” Tink said, sounding nervous.

“It says it’s going to take over an hour to download.”

“Well if it takes an hour then there’s nothing you can do but wait.”

I lifted my hand to slam it into the screen of the kiosk. I caught myself and curled it into a fist at my side instead. “You make it sound so easy, Tink. Right now I’m the one doing all the hard work. If someone comes in and catches me I’m going to be screwed.”

Tink sighed heavily. “I know it’s nerve wracking. But you have to remember how much information is on that thing. Centuries worth of data, since Danni Aamodt Sr. found the company. If anyone’s coming I’ll tell you in enough time to get out of there. But for now there’s simply nothing else you can do.”

I sighed. Might as well sit down and catch my breath. Fretting wasn’t going to help. I sat down, making sure I was out of sight should someone decide to come down - the chances of this happening, I told myself, were very unlikely; not even the security here had a pass to get in, so what the hell was I freaking out for? The basement was pleasantly cool. Air rattled from the vent above my head, onto the back of my sweaty neck.

“Why did you join ELF?” I asked Tink.

He laughed shortly. “Because life sucks...the world sucks, and I want to make it better.”

“That’s it?” I was unimpressed; I’d hoped there would be more.

“What, do you want me to tell you my whole life story?” Tinkerbell said wryly.

“I like stories. Besides I’m going to be a sitting duck for the next hour. I need something to make it go by faster.”

“Sorry, my life story isn’t that interesting - not like Juan’s. Hollywood needs to make a movie out of his life...” I noted the respect in Tinkerbell’s voice and found myself nodding in agreement even though he couldn’t see my face.

“You’re part of an eco-terrorist group. Something had to inspire you to join the cause.”

“I didn’t grow up as an orphan if that’s what you mean.” Tinkerbell was chomping on something, making the device in my ear pop and crackle. “In fact my life was pretty typical. I was the stereotypical nerd the jocks used to make fun of and the girls didn’t want. Sure, high school was traumatizing but I got through it unscathed...mostly. I never would have joined ELF if it wasn’t for Juan.”

“You mean he recruited you?” I asked, feeling jealous.

“Yes, same as you.”

I felt my lips curl into a smile. I was willing to bet our orientation into joining ELF’s mission had gone completely different. “Did he shock you with a taser and then tie your arms to the bedpost afterwards?”

“Uh, oh...That must have been very awkward.”

“I actually liked it.”

Twink made an exaggerated gagging sound. “Okay, bro, that’s just gross...way too much information. Don’t think I have an issue with gay people because I don’t...I’m just going to shut up now.”

An hour later the pad made a sound indicating the download process had finished. I got to my feet slowly, sore after so long of sitting on the hard tiled floor. I slid the data pad and other equipment back into the bag. Once outside I allowed myself a moment to breathe a sigh of relief. For the first time today it didn’t feel like my chest was trying to collapse onto itself.

Juan and Cookie were waiting for me across the street, the same spot where Juan and I had done our stakeout. I climbed into the backseat, feeling a euphoric sense of accomplishment. The heist had been easier than I expected. Far too easy.

“Did you get it?” Juan asked, glancing at me through the back seat.

“I did.” I managed to keep my face straight. I handed Cookie the bag. “Everything’s in there.”

The look of surprise on Cookie’s face made all of today’s trouble worth it.

…

The hush in the warehouse only made the uneasiness I felt more pronounced. What if I hadn’t succeeded? What if the downloading process had gone wrong? I wasn’t the only one feeling the pressure: Tink kept wiping beads of sweat from his forehead. “Okay,” he said, hooking the data pad up to the CPU. “Let’s see what we have here.”

He pulled up a window with thousands of files; he scrolled down endlessly for several minutes. He sighed, swivelled in his chair around to face Juan. “I think it’s safe to say this is everything we need.”

Juan, who had had his arms crossed the whole time, put them down at his side. I watched the tension in his forehead ease, like watching a hill turn into flatland. “This is a lot of fucking information,” he said. “Too much. It would take us months just to go through it all.”

“We don’t have months,” said Cookie. “At least not here. We’ve already taken enough risks as it is. But...” she looked at me with a small smile, “I would say some of those risks were worth it.”

“What are you going to do with the data?” I asked.

“Upload it for everyone to see,” Juan said. “Everyone will be able to access it...and then what they do with the information is up to them.”

“That’s it?” I said skeptically.

“As much as the public might like people to think, we’re not guerillas,” said Cookie. “Our main tactic is to air out the dirty laundry of companies we think are corrupt. Companies who work on projects like the one we saw at the warehouse in Tootulu and the bigger corporations who fund them like Aamodt Corporation. The thing is Aamodt Corporation just so happens to be the biggest of them all. Our organization’s hope is if we take your father’s company down then they all fall down. They like to present themselves as being this philanthropist corporation when really they have a lot of bullshit they keep locked away in the shadows. What would happen if we told people the truth?”

“So you’re giving people a choice?”

“Yes,” Juan said, not without a touch of pride. “If we didn’t, if we just made decisions for people, then how would we be any better than the people we’re up against, who censor the undesirable bits?”

It made a lot of sense; it reinforced my decision to help them. I only hoped they were telling the truth. I nodded. “Okay.”

Juan turned back to Tink to give an instruction when the lights went out, engulfing us in darkness. It was so sudden it took my mind a few seconds to register what had happened. I was blind; the blackness was so thick I couldn’t even see my hands in front of my face.

“What happened?” Juan’s voice, coming from somewhere to my right when he had been on my left just a second ago, sounded calm and authoritative but I could feel the tension in him. In all of them. The warehouse stunk with the smell of fear.

“The power’s gone out,” said Cookie.

“No shit!” Juan snapped impatiently. “But why?”

“Don’t piss your pants just yet,” Tinkerbell said. I think he was the calmest of us all. “The backup generator should be coming on any minute.”

Sure enough several flood lights came on with heavy clicks. I blinked against the sting in my eyes. Tinkerbell was still seated in front of the computers; Cookie stood over by the weapons rack: and Juan stood near the front of the warehouse, near the door.

The next thing I knew I was running towards Juan, telling him to get away from the door. I didn’t know how, but I knew something bad was getting ready to happen. It was like the feeling I’d had when being followed by the two men in the alley several years ago only much more powerful and immediate. “Get away from the door!” I grabbed a hold of him just as the door exploded outward, flying towards us.

The shockwave from the explosion sent us flying towards the ground. If it weren’t for pure luck the edge of the door would have decapitated the both of us. We fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs. I managed to rise on my hands and knees. My body hurt in a thousand places. Alarm bells were going off in my ears.

I looked over my shoulder. Cans of teargas were being thrown across the floor. Dark figures dressed in metal black armor were marching into the warehouse like wraiths through the noxious green fumes. Cookie and Tinkerbell crouched behind a wall. One of the soldiers aimed the muzzle of their assault rifle in Cookie’s and Tinkerbell’s direction. I had just enough time to throw myself over Juan, who had been in the process of standing up, before the cacophonous rattle of machine gun fire erupted. The wall where Cookie and Tink had been standing disintegrated like wet sand. Motes of plaster drifted through the chaos.

I grabbed Juan’s arm and yanked him to his feet. Cookie’s white face appeared briefly. She threw something through the air - a grenade. Less than two seconds later there was a blinding flash of light. Several of the men fell back, disoriented by the flash. It bought the four of us enough time to run through the back door.

Things were happening so fast there was no time to think. Adrenaline pumped through my body. I darted after Juan and the others, my feet leaving prints in clumps of soft, wet soil. I was vaguely aware of the thrup-thrup-thrup of helicopter blades. I was so consumed with running I wasn’t aware Juan and the others were hiding behind a rusty overturned truck until Juan grabbed my arm and yanked me into its shadow.

He looked at me, eyes wide with fear and suspicion - suspicion towards me. “You knew,” he said, voice tight; his fingers dug into the flesh of my arm. I could barely hear his voice over the racket happening around us, but I didn’t need to. His emotions dug into me like sharp spikes, drawing blood. “How the fuck did you know? Did you sell us out?”

Before I could answer Cookie shouted for us to move it. Cookie led the way to a battered pickup truck. Tinkerbell jumped in the passenger’s seat, Juan and I in the back. Cookie grabbed the keys from the visor above her head. A second later the engine sputtered into life; she slammed on the gas pedal and the truck jerked forward hard enough to throw me back against the seat.

There were lights and the sounds of sirens everywhere. It was all very disorienting. Twisting the steering wheel frantically, Cookie brought the truck around. No sooner were we zooming down the street, I felt cold metal press against the temple of my head.

A gun.

Juan was pressing a gun to my head.

“You sold us out,” he spat. Flecks of spit hit my face.

“No, Juan,” I said, wondering how my life had turned into such a nightmare. “I didn’t - ”

Before I could answer I felt the gun crash into the side of my skull. Then everything stopped.