“
Three to go.”
Jen was sweating inside her black jacket. “Ground… and the junction
between the scaling-circuit and the projector.”
“
Exactly five
volts.” Samantha scrolled her fingernail down the sheet. “Perfect,”
she said, and gave it a tick with her pencil.
It was dangerous work.
Ever since ’59 and the big push against social dissidents the
lawmakers had sought to make an example of jammers. Hefty jail
terms, massive fines, years of repaying their debt to society – and
the distinct possibility of a terrorism conviction.
“
That’s it.”
Jen wiped her forehead with a sleeve.
“
My turn.”
Samantha heated the soldering iron and worked to fuse Cookie’s
custom circuit – a bird’s nest of colourful plastic-coated wires –
with the control circuit. She liked to chat while she
worked
,
keep
ing
her
mind occupied by something other than the threadlike tracks. The
harder Samantha concentrated on keeping her hands steady, the more
they trembled. It was a recipe for disaster when working on such a
tiny scale. “So is that the last time you’ll trust Cookie’s
judgement in men?”
“
I didn’t
really
trust
it
before.” A shudder ran the length of Jen’s spine. She made an
expression as if she’d tasted something particularly sour. “He
should stick to circuits and stay
well
clear of my
love-life.”
Samantha
pulled the soldering iron away to laugh. “You
should
’
ve seen him
when we first started dating.”
Jen snickered. “I did. I
was there, remember?”
Samantha
laughed again. Her vivacious appetite for laughter was why people
always thought she was merry. “Yeah, but you
should
’
ve seen how
sweet he was. He means well, he really does. He just doesn’t have a
clue what his friends are like. You can’t blame him really, he
spends more time with them online than he does in real life. Have
you seen the way he talks to them? They’re all nuts.”
“
Yeah well
Russell had an implant.”
Samantha stopped work for
long enough to gape. “No!”
“
Yep.” Jen
nodded, eyes wide. “He tried to comb over it for the date but you
can tell.”
Samantha giggled again.
“I wonder if Cookie knows. He probably hasn’t seen the guy for
months. Was it recent?”
“
Dunno. It’s
hard to tell. They do a neat job these days – have it done Friday
and be back at work Monday kind of thing. More chill-be-quick?” Jen
offered the bottle.
“
Yeah,
thanks.”
Jen squirted another
blast around the edge of the box, making sure the sensor would stay
frozen while Samantha finished soldering the new
circuit.
Samantha
dabbed the iron to the circuit and the smell of burning resin
tickling her nose. She loved that smell, it reminded her of Cookie
in his workshop and the time they
’d
made love on the bench, surrounded
by the seductive haze of solder resin.
“
Suction.”
Jen handed her a tube
that vacuumed the molten solder from the board. It had a mechanical
plunger, which squeaked when Samantha used it. Then she lifted the
small board clear of the circuit and the plasma screen went dark
mid-commercial.
“
Now
we’ve
gotta
hurry.”
Jen blasted a final jet of chill-be-quick across the circuit and
Samantha commenced work on the final piece of the
puzzle.
With the
billboard off, security was sure to notice. Jen figured they had 20
minutes as the best-case scenario, less than five as the worst. She
got the screwdrivers ready
while
a wallop of
adrenaline tingled her kidneys.
Samantha made a sloppy
connection on the final node and the jammed ads appeared on the
plasma screen, or so she imagined. “Go for it.” Jen stuffed some
protruding wires back into place and eased the case on as fast as
she dared. They worked with a screwdriver each, turning the screws
so fast their forearms and wrists began to seize up.
“
Hold it you
two!” The gruff voice sounded like the crunch of footsteps on
gravel.
Jen snapped her head
around, fear dilating her pupils and making the whites of her eyes
large. He was coming from their planned escape route, a great brute
of a man. He was close enough for her to see his moustache and the
thick stubble on his chin. The guard was barrel-chested, more
gorilla than man. His enormous hands hefted a nightstick in an
offensive position as he lumbered toward them.
Samantha and Jen
abandoned the final two screws and sprinted for the far end of the
hall, Jen’s rucksack flailing at her back.
Her heart
pounded in her ears as she darted down two flights of stairs,
taking them three at a time. They’d reached the basement. It was
dank and airless and an eerie quiet perforated the dark. Samantha’s
breathing was heavy with fear and Jen pulled on her elbow to
make her
follow into the
gloom. They shuffled forward as fast as they dared with arms
outstretched, probing the darkness ahead.
“
Where are
we?” Samantha’s whispered, unable to keep the hint of terror from
her tone.
Jen shrugged,
a useless gesture in the dark. “Dunno, I’ve never been down here
before.” She scraped her fingers along the wall.
Rough concrete.
They were
in the janitor’s realm, an intricate network of dead-ends and
loop-backs where more than a handful of wayward students had become
lost and disorientated in the past. She quietened her heaving
breath and strained her hearing to the limit.
Nothing.
Did we lose
him already?
Jen doubted it; the guard would
have difficulty explaining
to a
supervisor
how they’d escaped. He therefore
had ample interest in finding them and would probably search until
dawn.
“
This way.”
Jen trailed her fingers along the wall and penetrated deeper into
the dark.
Their
footfalls echoed down the corridor, deafening them with chills of
panic. They both understood the consequences if the guard caught
them.
He may be big but that doesn’t mean
he’s fast,
Jen thought.
Maybe we can stay ahead of him… as long as we know where he
is.
Another shiver stung her spine.
He’s calling backup.
And
that changed the game. They couldn’t hide in the maze
beneath
the
University
and wait
for the resumption of normal activity the next day. Within the
hour, the campus would be swarming with guards.
All looking for us.
Jen had difficulty
swallowing.
She groped in
the dark until she felt Samantha and drew her
clos
e enough
to
whisper in her ear, “We
need to
find a way out of here. Fast. Any
ideas?”
A frown creased
Samantha’s brow but the darkness shrouded it. “I know there’s an
exit at the back of 6b.” She smiled despite their predicament.
“James went down there once to see what it was.”
“
That’ll do,”
Jen said. “We’ll be close enough to reception to try and get out
there. Except that’s the first place they’ll station extra guards.”
It was decision time. Jen weighed up the risks of staying hidden
against the risks of slinking out now. Neither was the obvious
choice, neither looked appealing. She shuddered at the thought of
remaining in the dark all night, but then realised the guards would
turn on the lights as soon as they found the switch. That made
hiding somewhat pointless. “All right, let’s go.”
“
Which way?”
The turning in the stairwell and the pitch black had shattered
Samantha’s sense of direction.
“
I think we’re
under the Faculty of Applied Science.”
Samantha sounded dubious.
“What makes you think that?”
“
This tunnel
curves to the right.” Jen had been thinking about that while
they
’d been
stumbl
ing
through the dark
.
A
t first she thought the zero
visibility had distorted her sense of direction, but she eventually
came to trust her judgement – the tunnel curved. “If we keep going
this way we should be near 6b.”
“
Uh
huh.”
“
Ballpark
anyway.” Jen shuffled
forward
, her paces shortened by the
uncertainty of each footfall.
They’d been
walking for several minutes when the first wave of flickering
tickled the fluorescent lights above. Samantha and Jen squinted to
protect their eyes. After two more flickers, a searing light
flooded the tunnel and
briefly
blinded them.
They found
the switch.
Jen wired her mouth shut in case
they were nearby. She motioned
at
Samantha to hurry and jogged quietly
in what she still considered the ‘right’ direction.
With the lights on
it was
easier to
recognise
the curvature of the corridor
. They
could also see
the damp rising from the
concrete
floor,
which helped muffle their footfalls. And Jen
clenched
a
protective
fist
around her rucksack to squelch the muted jingle of
equipment.
From
s
omewhere behind, Jen heard voices. They
were hushed, urgent voices, and they triggered another wave of
adrenaline-induced panic. Suddenly the necessity for leaving the
main corridor exceeded her desire to reach the 6b
exit
.
S
he herded Samantha into an
antechamber and quietly closed the door, thankful it didn’t screech
on its rusty hinges.
Then
s
he pulled the catch that released the
lock, wincing when a clack echoed through the halls. She visualised
the guards trying to pinpoint the source of the sound, isolating
the direction and refining their search.
That won’t keep them out forever.
She swivelled just as
Samantha found the switch for the lights and a flickering
fluorescence illuminated their tomb.
Samantha gasped, “This is
it.”
“
What?”
“
I recognise
it. This is where James and I were.”
Jen raised an
eyebrow, “
You were here
too?
”
“
Come on, it’s
this way.” Samantha grabbed Jen’s hand and tugged her through a
room filled with so many pipes they could barely see the concrete
walls. Water had pooled on the floor from a leak and they splashed
across the puddle just as someone pounded on the door behind
them.
Twenty metres later they
arrived at a pair of solid steel doors. They swung ponderously
outward to more steps when Samantha pushed on a horizontal bar. Jen
touched a warning hand to Samantha’s shoulder and silently crept up
the stairs. Samantha had been right – the entrance to lecture
theatre 6b was to their left. Jen carefully scanned the area and
strained her hearing, trying to detect whether anybody was hiding
in the dark.
“
Okay, let’s
go,” she whispered.
They scuttled
stealthily across the carpeted floor and looped back to the same
glass doors they’d used to enter the complex. The screen caught
Jen’s attention and a smile tugged on her lips despite their
predicament. It depicted a gagged student sweating in frustration
at the cloth stuffed in his mouth. An evil-looking computer lurked
in the background, and underneath in nightmare-green were the
words, “Would you trust your education to a Global Integrated
Silence?” The jammed images would change every five minutes. Cookie
had said his alterations were so complex that it
would
take a technician half a day to
fix. That was half a day for students to sit in the quadrangle and
read the truth. Global Integrated Systems had knotted their own
noose by attempting to make their circuit hack-proof. They couldn’t
switch off an individual screen without affecting the network, and
they weren’t likely to shut down the entire system just to
disengage one
jammed
screen.
“
Let’s get out
of here,” Samantha said, stirring Jen from her reverie.
“
Okay.” She
felt pleased with herself. “Let’s go.”
They hurried around the
edge of the quadrangle, staying low and hunched over in case
security personnel were nearby, which seemed likely.
Five minutes
later they were clear of the University and had a leisurely stroll
to the nearest portal
station
. As usual, Samantha was
beaming. “We did it!”
Also as usual, Jen was
more subdued, though the thrill was burning inside her like an
intense flame. “I just hope they can’t undo it easily.”