Ninja Girl
Chapter Twenty Four

“Uh, where’s the security room?”

Fortunately, luckily, the key card Nick had taken from the German scientist had worked on the back door. Once inside the building, though, he realized he had no idea where to go or what he was looking for, so he decided on a big risk. If he could get into the security room, he could possibly use the building’s own camera system to locate Anya. From how quiet things were inside the building, he could only assume she either was still hiding somewhere, or she had already been captured.

Betting on the latter, Nick walked up to the security desk out front and decided to straight up ask the guards there what he needed to know. He was hoping that since he was approaching from the rear of the building, they would realize he already had a way into the building, which then would mean that he obviously belonged there.

The guards turned and looked at him, the same questioning gaze locked on each of their faces.

“The security room?” the one to his left asked. “Why?”

Nick motioned with the phone he had stolen from the clothing store. “They asked me to drop this phone off there.” He did his best to keep his tone and expression as bored as possible, as if this were just a normal day at the office and this just a regular, unremarkable task he was being asked to do.

“A phone?” asked the guard to the right.

“If you want, you could leave it with us,” said the first.

“I should probably take it.” Nick’s mind raced to come up with a casual reason as to why. He held the phone out to the first guard. “I mean, unless you know the proper cabling method for a TL-83 jack?”

Nick had no idea what he was saying, but he was riding all his money on the hope that the guard wouldn’t have any better idea. The guard took the bait.

“Uh, yeah, I guess you’re right. You should probably take it.” He pointed out behind Nick. “Take the elevators up to twenty-one. It’ll be down the hall to your right, fifth door on the left.”

Nick turned and waved over his shoulder, tossing out a dismissive, “Thanks,” as if it all meant nothing to him.

He stepped aboard the first elevator to open and pounded the button for twenty-one. When the doors closed he leaned his head back against the wall and breathed a sigh of relief.

Only one floor later the elevator stopped and a man in a business suit got on. He nodded in greeting to Nick, who nodded back in what he hoped looked like an absent manner. A couple floors later the man got off and a woman with short brown hair, golden brown skin, dark narrow glasses, and a long white lab coat over a short black skirt stepped on in his place. She smiled at Nick, who smiled back. She pressed the button for seventeen and then leaned against the far wall of the elevator.

As they started moving again, she cast a quick glance over her shoulder at Nick. A moment later, she cast a somewhat longer glance, first down at his lower body, and then her eyes made their way up to his face. An amused smile spread unwittingly across her lips and she quickly turned away.

Nick’s heart started beating a million miles a minute. He had no desire to interact with anyone, but suddenly he became incredibly worried that this woman knew something that he did not want her to know.

“What?” Nick asked, as casually as he could.

The woman looked slyly at him and shook her head. “It’s nothing,” she assured him. Silence for a moment, and then, “It’s just… It’s a nice ploy, really, but we don’t use that brand of phone in this building.”

Nick’s heart stopped. He could feel his knees turn to jelly and his arms go so weak that he nearly dropped the phone.

“I… w-what?”

The woman’s smile widened. “I take it you’re here for floor twenty-four?”

Nick stammered, “T-twenty o-one.”

The woman made a face like what he said made complete sense and nodded her head. “Oh, I see. Well, when you’re done there, I think you’ll replace something of great interest to you on floor twenty-four.” The elevator lurched to a halt.

“I’m… I’m just I.T.” Nick protested.

“Oh, no, I got that from the phone,” the woman said. “Doesn’t change what I said.”

The elevator doors opened and she stepped into the hallway beyond. She turned and waved at Nick, smiling warmly. “Good luck.”

The doors closed. Nick stood there, frozen in terror, unsure of what to do now. Was the woman going to expose him? Was she setting a trap for him up on twenty-four? Was she… helping him? If so… why?

The elevator lurched, starting up again, and Nick knew he didn’t have much time to think about it. If she was going to start an alarm then there was nothing he could do anyway. Judging from her attitude, it did not seem very likely that was her goal. If she was setting a trap for him, he might be able to get a sense for it from the security room. If she was helping him, he still would need to decide if he could trust her. Who the hell was she, anyway?

The elevator stopped at the twenty-first floor and Nick got off. He followed the directions he had been given to a door marked, “Security.” He knocked.

The door opened. Nick found himself face to face with a big, muscular bald man in a pressed, black uniform.

“Yeah?” The man asked, his voice as gruff and straight as his appearance.

Nick held up the phone he had stolen. “I was told to bring this here.”

“Here?” The man’s eyes narrowed, but he looked more suspicious than confused.

“Yeah,” Nick said, trying to look as bored and annoyed as he could manage. “Did they not call and tell you I was coming? They were supposed to call and tell you. They’re always doing that to me.”

“I’m gonna have to check on this,” the man said, starting to turn.

“Sure,” Nick said, and then raised the phone and smashed it across the man’s head. The man spun out, stumbling back into the room, but somehow managed to stay on his feet. Nick followed in quickly behind him and hit him again.

“What the hell?”

A second man who had remained in the room during this whole affair now rose from his chair. Nick wasted no time repeating the process on this guard while he was still too surprised to react. This guard took three hits to go down.

Nick stood over the two men, panting. The phone in his hand had broken during the scuffle and some of the casing was scattered here and there about the room and the handset and some wires were hanging down to the floor. Nick tossed the phone placidly aside and quickly stepped over to the room’s door and closed it. Looking around, he noticed a second door to the room. Nick opened it to replace a small maintenance closet.

He hurried over to the first man, hooked his arms under the man’s armpits, and dragged him into the closet. He then repeated the process with the second man. By the time he was done he was absolutely exhausted. He closed the door to the closet and collapsed against it, trying desperately to catch his breath. The past few days had been nearly nonstop exertion to an extent he had never really experienced before in his entire life. He felt like Sisyphus, constantly pushing a giant boulder up a hill.

“See Anya?” He said to the thin air. “I do know some Greek myths.”

The second he felt he was able, he pulled himself to his feet. He pushed a chair up under the door handle for the closet. It was doubtful that it would contain them in there for long, but he did not need forever. Just long enough.

He sat down in front of the monitors in the room and flicked through the security camera footage. Unfortunately, almost all the camera footage available was from exterior cameras, and what few screens he could replace of interior footage did not reveal much.

In frustration, Nick started clicking through some of the camera program’s options, just to see what he could replace. He managed to replace a screen that seemed to divide up all the feeds into little boxes on a page that he could scroll through. As he went through this screen, he started noticing that there were a number of camera screens that just appeared black with no image. Out of curiosity, Nick clicked on one of these to pull it up.

When the blank image filled the screen, a small dialogue box popped up warning him that he did not have the proper permissions to view this feed.

“Really?” Nick breathed, in shock. There were security feeds they were hiding even from security? That made no sense whatsoever. Under the warning message there was a button that said, “Proceed.” He clicked on it. A second dialogue box popped up asking him for a username and password. Nick shrugged and, on a whim, typed the username and password he had created at the Teller Communications building. He hit enter, and the dialogue box disappeared. The screen filled up with the feed from the security camera.

It had worked.

Nick could hardly believe it. He would expect an evil corporation that was so protective of its privacy to have at least slightly better network security than this. He shook his head and returned to the view showing all of the cameras. Now none of them were blacked out.

Now there were several boxes showing interior views, many of which were just images of men and women in lab coats standing around laboratories doing things that meant nothing to Nick. He was getting ready to give up on replaceing anything when he found a camera labeled for floor twenty-four.

Nick’s heart skipped a beat.

Leaning in, he squinted at the image. It was just another lab, this one empty, but he could see that several of the images near it were also for the same floor. He continued scrolling. Finally, one image seemed to be of a person strapped down to a chair. Nick clicked on the image to bring it up to full screen, and his breath caught in his throat.

The person strapped to the chair was Anya.

Nick could feel the blood drain from him. So it really had been a trap, and they had somehow managed to capture her. In the image, her eyes were closed and her head hung sideways. She appeared to be asleep. Maybe they had gassed her.

Nick rapidly clicked back through the other cameras labeled for the same floor. His heart was pounding against his chest, his pulse thundering in his temples. He could barely breathe, let alone see straight, but he knew he had to check for a trap. Why had that woman told him exactly where to look? What did she get out of helping him?

There were no visual signs of a trap, and Nick lowered his arms. He took several deep breaths, trying to steady himself. He had no other choice, he knew. Trap or not, he had to try and free Anya. Together, they might be able to make it out. If he could free her, they both stood a better chance, trap or not.

Nick stepped over to the door and peeked out. He glanced left and right, checking to make sure that nobody was in the corridor, and then stepped out. He was halfway back to the elevators when he heard the familiar “ding” indicating the elevator had arrived at that floor. Nick panicked, looking left and right for somewhere to hide. There was a door to his right, and he tried it. Locked. There was another nearby to his left. He tried this one as well. Unlocked.

Nick dove inside just as he started to hear the hum of a conversation from the direction of the elevator. As gently as he could he closed the door behind him, hearing the uncoordinated clatter of footsteps coming up the hall in his direction. Nick leaned against the door and held his breath.

The footsteps and conversation drew closer and closer, and then, without pausing, they drifted off further down the hallway. Nick let out a sigh of relief. He reached again for the door handle, but stopped. He had caught sight of a metallic glint out of the corner of his eye. Turning, he realized he was in some sort of storage closet, but more notable than that was what he saw stored on one of the shelves.

It was a rope, wound up, with one end tied off to a grappling hook.

Nick picked it up. He held it up to his face in awe. Could this be… the one Anya had bought? The one they had used to break into Teller Communications? What were the odds that it would end up here?

A smile spread across Nick’s lips. This meant… well, this meant very little yet. But, Nick realized, it just might be their best chance of escape. Nick hung the rope over his shoulder and then hurried back into the hallway.

Only a couple minutes later he was up on the twenty-fourth floor, and began searching for the room he had seen on the security monitor. It was difficult to know exactly what he was looking for, since he had really only seen the room from the inside, and he doubted that one of the hallway’s doors would open right up to the room. The floor was also noticeably empty, eerily even, which did not help set his mind at ease any about this being a trap.

He opened the door to one room, peaked in, frowned, and then closed the door and started down the hall. He stopped after only going a couple of steps and returned back to the previous room. Inside, there was a section of wall with a big plate of glass that looked somewhat like a two-way mirror. Nick hurried over and peaked through the pane.

He could see Anya on the other side.

Nick’s heart jumped into his throat. This was it. He had finally found her. He ran along the wall to where it ended, and followed it around the corner to the door. He stood in front of the door and tried the handle, but it was locked. Nick let out a groan of frustration. There was no key hole, and no card swipe like on other security doors. There was just a keypad, and Nick had no plan for getting past that.

“Ah, there you are,” came a voice to Nick’s side. He nearly jumped out of his skin as he turned to see the woman from the elevator. She crossed her arms and smiled. “I was wondering when you were going to show up.”