CHAPTER 31

The sound of the manual alarm echoed in the walls around us, a repeated noise, like an avalanche set off by the first ring of the alarm.

I checked on the guards, my stomach dropping.

They were all on the move, converging.

"We'd better get out of here quickly," I warned, pushing through the door. "Is there some gadget you guys can use to trick security into thinking that door opened on its own?

"Not until we get into the system. After that Caroline can edit a malfunction into the security system log." Aiden passed through after me, Darius followed. He studied the door and I could tell he was considering compromising it so that it would lock when it shut and not open again.

"There's no other exit from down here," I warned him. "Besides, if they think there's intruders they'll hit that kill switch before we even have a chance to get what we came for."

He looked at me. "Any other ideas?"

I considered.

The security room was emptying and the teams on the first two levels were still on the move. On the first floor five guards were moving toward the stairwell. On the second floor the team of two was heading to the east side of the building. I suspected another stairwell existed there. Since this basement stairwell didn't go up past the first floor, they would have to take a sort of round about route.

The third and fourth floor teams had spread out and were walking rapid perimeters of their floor.

I studied the sensor that had sounded the alarm. It was a simple switch in a slot that the door pushed against when opened, sliding it to one side.

I shook my head at Darius. "We're just going to have to hope that they assume the malfunction caused the door to open. If they find nothing amiss...but we've got to move fast."

The men nodded and Darius trotted down the stairs, using the distrupter to shut down the sensors along the wall.

I gave the manual sensor one last frustrated look, wishing it hadn't been quite so well oiled. If we'd met any resistance we might have caught its presence...

I suddenly had an idea.

"Hey Aiden?" I called. He was already most of the way down the stairs, but he turned to look at me.

"Raven, you said yourself we need to hurry," he gestured me forward, urgently.

I nodded, checking on the guards. We had time, I was fast.

"Do you have any sort of grease on you, for computer parts or anything really?"

He frowned, because it was a strange question, but I thought I could smell it on him earlier. He reached a hand into his front pocket and pulled out a small squeeze bottle of some sort of computer lubricant. He tossed it to me.

"Go," I told him. "I'll catch up."

I reached into my own pocket and pulled out as much pocket lint as I could manage, greased it with the lubricant and shoved it into the tube where the latch of the lock was housed. It was drawn in at the moment, due to the disrupter, so I shoved as much as I could in but made sure it was a mess around the faceplate. Hands shaking, I wiped any potential fingerprints off with the hem of my shirt then let the door close. It rubbed my mess along the other side of the door frame. Then I high-tailed it down the stairs and around the corner in the hall where the men had already turned. They must be able to scent the server room now as well, since they were headed in the right direction.

We reached the server room door just as voices could be heard at the top of the stairs.

"What the hell is going on with the system tonight?" An older sounding man wanted to know. "Fucking sensors turning off all over the place."

"They updated the system this week, I bet that fucked it up," someone else was saying.

Relief poured through me. As we'd hoped they were taking the interruption caused by the disrupter as a system malfunction.

"Makes no sense, the cameras have been fine...fuck, goddammit," the first man cursed. "Look at this fucking mess. What the fuck did maintenance do to this door?"

A snort. "Looks like they were trying to oil the latch, there's a bunch of shit in there though."

"That's what we get for cutting wages, remember Emiliano?"

"Yeah, never found this kind of shit when he was in charge..."

They didn't seem concerned about intruders, but they were still moving, coming down the stairs now.

"We need to get out of sight, now," I whispered.

"Found it," Darius replied from a set of doors well down the hallway from where I'd been keeping track of the security team. They weren't in a hurry but we had about sixty seconds before they turned the corner and saw us standing around in all our glory.

"Problem," Aiden whispered next.

Of course there was.

I considered my options. We'd found the server room, that was what I'd promised. It was Aiden that was truly useful now. I could create a distraction. I could even keep the guards from dashing back up the stairs and alerting the entire building, or kill switching our entire operation.

But I really, really didn't want to draw that kind of attention. It was one thing having some unkown entity after those I loved. It was an entirely different thing to make an enemy of the entire US military.

"What's the problem," I wanted to know before I made a decision I would regret.

"The lock is manual. I can calculate the combinations, but there's an old fashioned key lock, and I have nothing to get around that."

"I do," I told them, coming up to where they were crowded against a single metal door with a physical combination lock and a keyhole in the knob. I pulled my pack around my side and opened the front pocket, pulling out my lock picks. During my snooping for Rob, picking physical locks had become a bit of a skill-set of mine. I'd never thought it would come in handy in a place like this.

I got to work instantly, kneeling down so that the key hole was eye-level and inserting the tension wrench, breathing heavily. I knew this kind of lock, it was a Schlage B60 series. Six pins.

I turned the wrench to the right slightly, gently. Above me Aiden got to work on the combination.

The guards were getting closer, maybe forty seconds left. This would be fucking close.

Inserting my smallest pick, I pushed the first pin upward, slowly, listening carefully until there was a small click and the pressure lessened slightly. Carefully I lowered the pick. The pin stayed in place. I breathed a sigh of relief and moved onto the next one.

I had a little trouble with the fourth pin, my hands were shaking like leaves, but eventually I got them all, turning the plug just as Aiden successfully entered the combination.
I swung the door open without looking for another manual alarm. There was no time and we all slid inside, closing the door quickly behind us except for the last little bit where I held the knob and pushed the door softly back into its place.

My wolf concentrated. The guards rounded the corner seconds later. There was no time to turn the deadbolt, so we just had to pray that they didn't find anything about the hallway suspicious and decide to check the server room.

I gestured to the others for complete silence. Waiting with my heart in my throat. My body was strung with adrenaline and for some reason I suddenly really, really had to pee. But I sat perfectly still, barely breathing, sweat trickling down my neck, as the guards approached...and walked by the door, their soft murmured conversation continuing down the hallway.

With relief, I slumped against the door, allowing myself breath.

Aiden walked over to one wall with a computer terminal. It required an access code. He hooked up a small tablet to it and began typing rapidly.

"You're hacking the system?" I asked.

"Just the Faraday room. It is created using an active shielding system...I need to disable that." He tilted his tablet toward us where we could see it rapidly assessing the six digit access code.
In less than a minute he was typing on the tablet rapidly. Then he spoke into the headset.

"Caroline? We're in."