The Neo-Metropol Heist

7: Edward

Edward stood among the rushing crowd and looked up at the steel-grey monolith that was Sharpe Tower, a twenty-storey block of rented accommodation for the more affluent members of the city.
Well out of the way of Midtown, this place catered less to those that had earned their affluence through legitimate means - or at least, means masquerading as legitimate, and more to those that preferred their privacy.
An overweight and distracted looking man thumped into his shoulder and continued walking without apologising. Edward looked after him but relaxed. Obnoxiousness abounded in the city these days and there was nothing to be done in chasing after the man, even if beating him with his cane would be so satisfying.
Edward stepped off of the sidewalk and onto the disused and pothole ridden street. Edward had noticed that even though the roads were rarely used anymore, nothing had been done with them. They hadn't been bought up and used as building space, they just sort of continued to exist.
Edward reached into his pocket and removed the slate of glass and plastic that was apparently worth a hundred credits from his pocket and it sprang to life, the logo of its maker - Tie-Kwan Tech, flashing momentarily before it opened up on a simple, practical desktop.
It had been the most inexpensive model in the store and the sales assistant, a young man with ginger hair and pock-marked skin had seemed surprised that he had no interest in the top of the range model that they had on a pedestal at the front of the store.
The shop had been awful, a loud place of white-plastic sheen, shimmering neon acting as a service station for shuffling people who seemed like sheep to Edward, following each other in and out, spending credits they didn't appreciate on things they didn't need.
He'd bought the first terminal he'd seen and left.
After that, he'd finally replaced his moth-eaten jacket and trousers with an updated and similar looking outfit from the first shop he saw that didn't immediately offend any of his senses. He'd also purchased a long, black synthetic wool coat and boots that didn't feel like they were about to crumble from age.
The only thing that remained was the trilby that he still wore on his thin white hair and the watch that sat nestled in his pocket.
Dan had contacted him the next day, his face a higher definition on the clearer, more compact terminal screen, which only served to highlight his age and imperfections, claiming that the IP address of SmoothFoxe had eventually led to this address through several mirror proxies.
Dan complained about how it had been difficult due to the encryption being, as he put it, 'very fucking impressive', and Edward had thanked him and promised to buy him a drink.
Edward limped across the street and to the glass-paned front door of the apartment building. He grasped the handle and pulled, but it refused to open. That would have been too easy, he thought to himself.
He turned to the tenant list, which was on a tired and pixel-worn screen set into the smooth tiled wall of the enclosure which covered the door.
He scanned the names. Matthews, Jevofov, Anton-Gamwell, Ashanwale.
There were a couple of dozen names - some greyed out to indicate that they had moved. Others had a flashing warning next to them that said 'no sales calls'.
Edward still had no name to follow, but the username, SmoothFoxe, still stood out in his minds. Foxe couldn't be a mistype, it didn't mean 'fox' as in the vulpine variety, it was 'Foxe' as a surname. He leaned in and checked the list again, the small type almost painful for him to read.
Nothing. There was no Foxe of any kind living in Sharpe Tower.
Edward frowned and scratched his head. Again, he was being too expectant, he was still sure that Foxe was his man, but if he was half the man he needed him to be, he wouldn't list his name for all to see. He filed it away as a positive and looked again.
The person he needed would do what he would have done, use an alias. A name to protect himself and deflect suspicion.
It was a time-honoured tradition of all manner of thieves, from amateur identity thieves to the most seasoned veteran, to pick a name to slip through society without suspicion.
They were never random, however, they always had a thought process behind them - nobody had ever picked a pseudonym out of thin air, it always had a basis in logic. Sometimes it was unhelpfully obscure to the point that it may well have been a random thought process, other times...
Fennec.
Edward saw the name and smiled.
He took out his terminal computer, admitting to nobody for a moment that it had its uses, and brought up the browser, tapping 'fennec' into the search bar, which immediately loaded images of a small dog creature with large ears, nestled in the desert sand.
He dropped the tablet back into his breast pocket and found Fennec on the list again - number 323, twelfth floor. Assured that this was his man, Edward grinned to himself and stepped away from the door.
That still left the matter of how to get into the building, but at least he was making progress.
He left the enclosure of the building and began to walk, following the stained-brick wall of the building until he found an opening between this building and the next. He ducked down into the alleyway and walked until he found a metal door set into the wall.
As he walked, it suddenly opened and a scruffy looking man in his mid-forties in a pair of oil-stained overalls stepped out and walked the other way. Almost tripping over himself, Edward grabbed the door before it closed and slipped inside.
The metal door shut behind him and he found himself in a huge empty room with a low concrete roof and support pillars. On the scarred and chipped floor, the same dirty beige as the roof, were faded painted lines. Edward realised he was most likely in the old car park underneath the building.
He followed the inside wall until he found a faded blue door of rotting wood that opened into a stone staircase that led up into the foyer of the building, the stairwell lit only by a dim, flickering light.
The foyer was empty, an almost soulless room of black faux-wood panelling, layered with dust, the only light from the tinted glass windows at the front of the building.
On the far side of the room was an unmanned security station with an out-dated camera setup that obviously hadn't been used in years, the screen gathering dust, the people apparently preferring to protect their own lot.
Edward spotted an elevator on the far wall and walked over to it, the panel screen next it flashing into life, he jabbed it with his finger and it asked him to request a floor.
He tapped 'f12', waited for the doors to open, and then stepped inside.
The doors hissed shut and the force of the lift pulled him downwards slightly as the elevator began to rise. He shifted his weight on his cane and tried to adjust himself so that he didn't fall over.
When the doors opened, Edward found himself in a corridor that was most likely plush once, but which now looked tired and worn.
The carpet was scuffed and the lights in the ceiling dim, Edward found the first door and followed the wall until he found 423, a deep black metal door with the number printed on it in embossed white lettering.
He knew then that whoever was inside knew he was there, even before he spotted the tiny camera set into the wall above the door, almost invisible. He could feel the gaze of whoever was watching the feed bearing down on him.
"My name is Edward Morton Helten," he spoke clearly into the camera, his face as plain and unthreatening as he could make it, trying to mute his scowl, "I am looking for the person who is responsible for the theft from the Astoria four days ago."
He waited a couple of moments in silence, looking up at the camera with an unwavering stare. He could completely understand the logic behind not letting him in, in fact, it went against everything this person most likely considered acceptable parameters if they were anything like he had envisioned them in his mind.
Any thief, even if they were cocky and had a need for recognition, valued their anonymity, because anonymity meant safety, anonymity essentially meant that they weren't going to prison.
And here Edward was, brazen as anything, forcing his way into another thief's comfort zone and demanding entry into their life with no introduction and with apparent knowledge of the person's criminal wrongdoings.
He had no right to do any of these things and if he had any respect for a fellow thief, he'd turn around right now and leave.
The door buzzed and slid open with a hiss.
Edward was almost shocked for a moment as he looked at the open door, a song with soft synths and a smooth male vocalist singing in a language he couldn't quite place but which could have been Italian trickled out into the hall.
Taking it as an invitation, Edward stepped inside, hearing the door hissing closed behind him.
The apartment was impressive, although that wasn't a hard feat for a room to accomplish seeing as his only surroundings for the previous week had been a rundown hovel, and for almost four decades before that an ageing jail cell.
On the one side, a brick wall supported an unnecessarily large flat-screen television, surrounded by abstract art of all shades and colours that had obviously been purchased and placed for their aesthetic value with no consideration for the artist's original intentions, whatever they had been.
A centre island kitchen sat in the middle of the room, illuminated by strip-lighting in the floor that only served to temper the light cast from the huge floor to ceiling windows along the far wall.
The place matched a lifestyle that very few people could afford, and Edward was suddenly assured that this was the place he was looking for.
"Can I help you?" Came a voice from across the room, Edward tracked it to a figure stood against the window, the man's features blacked out by the cloud-soaked white light cast across his back from the window.
Edward took two steps forward and then stopped when he recognised another figure stood in the kitchen area. This one he could make out more against the harsh light, he could see enough to identify the slim but somehow threatening frame of an android.
"I think you heard me at the door," Edward said, measuring his words carefully.
"Oh, I did, I just thought you were trying to make a really unfunny joke," the figure said, stepping forward, "you can't actually be Edward Helten, can you?"
Edward sized up the person in front of him.
Around six-two with untidy black hair, dressed in loose-fitting black and grey loungewear with a v-neck t-shirt, the man stood in front of him looked barely out of education. He couldn't help feeling unimpressed but he didn't let it show.
All the while he kept an eye on the robot stood in the corner. He didn't think things would get violent, not if his assumptions were in any way correct, but he hadn't factored in the android in his plan. At least I know how he cracked that security system now, though, he thought.
"Everything I said at the door was the truth," Edward said, "do you have a name?"
The man stood across from him laughed a surprised laugh.
"You get all the way here looking for me and you don't even know my name?" The man asked.
Edward shook his head. The man had just inadvertently confirmed that he was the person that he was looking for, but Edward didn't mention it.
"Despite being cocky, you're good at hiding yourself," the kid seemed offended and complimented at the same time, "nobody would find you unless they knew the kind of person they were looking for."
"And what kind of person is that?" The man he knew only 'Foxe' asked. A younger version of myself, Edward thought, but he didn't say it, skipping over the question.
"You don't have to tell me your name," Edward told him, "all you have to do is hear me out, and maybe see your way to telling your friend over there to stand down."
The man watched him carefully for a few moments and then gestured to the android. For an instant it stayed rigid, then on its blank faceplate images of an angry barking dog from a classic cartoon Edward had never seen appeared, and then it relaxed.
"You've got a minute."
Edward moved over to the TV screen and pulled the glass slate from his breast pocket and began tapping buttons clumsily.
"You, do you know how to work this thing?" Edward finally asked after seconds of pretending he had an idea how to make it work.
The man raised his eyebrow, but eventually came towards him warily and took the slate from him.
"Put this thing on that thing," Edward told him.
"Whatever you say, gramps," Foxe said, sarcasm lacing his voice.
Edward found himself frustrated by the kid's total disrespect, but knew he should've expected it. He had been much the same. The TV screen flickered to life, a picture he had saved to the tablet of the Neo-Metropol appearing on it.
Foxe just chuckled.
"So you're old and insane, huh?" He sneered.
Edward sighed.
"If you're half the person I think you are, you've thought about it," he said.
"There isn't a thief in this city that hasn't," Foxe laughed, "none of them would because it's insane! Nobody ever has, and nobody ever will."
Edward gave him a wry smile, an olive leaf.
"Maybe it's time that changed," he said, "that's why I came looking for you and your metal friend here," Edward tapped the screen, bringing up a picture of the Astoria, "nobody thought that somebody could hit this, but you did."
Foxe couldn't conceal a grin. Smugness plastered his face.
Edward tapped back to the image of the Neo-Metropol.
"You tell me that this isn't something that you've thought about," Edward rumbled, "you tell me that this isn't something that you've dreamt about, in your wildest dreams. You tell me that you have no desire to hit this place and become the most infamous criminal in the country, and I'll turn right around and leave you in peace. If you're half the man I think you are, you aren't going to let me leave."
There was a few quiet moments of silence as Foxe looked at the image that seemed to stare back at them. From across the room, Edward could feel the robot's gaze on their backs.
Then, Foxe nodded.
"All right," he said, "you're on."
Edward couldn't help enjoying the wave of relief that washed over his old body, his wild, stupid plan suddenly a reality. He held out his hand.
"I'm guessing your name isn't Fennec?" He said.
Foxe turned to him.
"Artem," he said, grasping his hand and shaking it firmly, "Artem Foxe. The robot is Citizen Assistance Droid 40. I call him Cad."
"Good to meet you, Artem Foxe," Edward replied.