The Neo-Metropol Heist

40: Jaeger

Jaeger glanced around the room desperately.
The crowds had dispersed, returning to their drinking, but the atmosphere of the room had changed after the interruption by the blonde man.
Now Daniel Dismas, or whatever his name was, had disappeared, using his friend's outburst as cover.
Jaeger wanted to find the other man, to question him and find out what the plan was, but in truth she had no idea where the building security would drag him off to, and right at that moment her main concern was the other man that she could no longer see.
Dismas had blended in with the crowds and simply vanished.
"Boss, you all right?" Stewart asked.
She should report it in to Garistag, to Castells. That was her job, not to go lone wolf when the whole job was at stake.
That's what she should have done.
Instead, her keen eyes moved to the back of the room, behind the bar. To anybody else, the slightly ajar maintenance door wouldn't have drawn their eye, but right now it was all she could see.
On a night like this, that door would have been sealed shut. Right then, she made a decision that she knew would have consequences.
"Stewart," she said, looking into the rookie's deep blue eyes, "I need you to cover for me."
"Boss?" He repeated, the term indicating deference but mainly concern. He was the best partner she'd ever had, she realised, "have you got something?"
Hunter, she reminded herself, that's what her name meant.
"Yeah," she replied, "no, I mean, I might have. I need you to stay here and give me time to check it out."
Stewart narrowed his eyes.
"Screw that," his deference steeled by dedication, "I'll come with you, if you think these guys are up to something, I'll..."
"No, we can't both go," she told him, regretting every word and knowing she was being heard somewhere else, probably in the same building, "you need to stay here, on the lookout. I'll keep you posted."
Stewart's mouth pursed for a moment, and then he nodded.
"Aye-aye," he said, giving her eyes spiked with frustration and worry. She put her hand on his arm and nodded, trying to reassure him, her skills rusty but well-received.
Stewart turned back to the bar as Jaeger walked across the room to the maintenance hatch.
The door itself was automatic, but only accessible by a security pad, which had been disabled. The door was only open an inch, though, and Jaeger had to force the hydraulics to open with her own two hands.
She squeezed into the dim maintenance corridor and the doors snapped shut behind her, muffling the noise of the party. Jaeger caught a glimpse of Stewart as the doors closed in front of her eyes.
The hatch wasn't heated, designed for maintenance bots, who would be slumbering inside the walls of the corridor. Jaeger hoped that her steps wouldn't awaken them.
Where now? She thought. Up, came her answer.
Any thief here would go up, because that's where they would find the prizes that Castells was hoarding at the top of his tower.
Finding the nearest maintenance ladder, she took a step onto the first rung and remembered the heels she was wearing, immediately slipping them off and casting them to one side. For a moment, she felt free.
At the top of the ladder, she found herself in an empty corridor, and followed the signs for the nearest staircase. They wouldn't use the elevators if they were smart.
Jaeger realised that she'd presumed that Dismas would be alone, which had been a mistake on her part. He'd had help in the form of a distraction, so it stood to reason that he had other support too.
She forced herself to stop and catch her breath at the top of the staircase. She had to calm herself, it was all well and good being the hunter, but not if she stumbled into a group of thieves who might react in any one of a dozen different ways.
Dismas had seemed mild at the bar, but every word from his mouth had been a lie, even his name, so she couldn't take any of it for granted.
"Boss?" Stewart chimed in as Jaeger found a board with directions on it, "I used clearance to check the manifesto with one of Castells' creepy angel servants."
Smart, Jaeger thought.
"And?" She asked, quietly, even though there was nobody in the empty rooms to hear her.
"Daniel Dismas arrived tonight with two 'business associates'," Jaeger could hear the quotes even over the commlink, "a Mr Francis Villon, who I think was the Soylent Green guy, and a woman, a Robina Hood."
Jaeger scoffed.
"Robina Hood?" She couldn't help but laugh, "well, say one thing for these guys, they're brazen."
"Just be careful, boss, Dismas isn't alone."
Jaeger nodded, even though she knew Stewart couldn't see, "thanks for the heads up, rookie."
"No problem," Stewart replied, "I'll see what else I can dig up, keep me updated."
Stewart clicked off the commlink and Jaeger traced her finger across the directions for the floor she was on.
Jaeger knew that most of the offices around her were a front - she didn't doubt that a lot of the activity that went on on the lower floors was legitimate business, but the bulk of the Neo-Metropol was reserved for R&D, on the floors above.
Any information she could find about the storeys above was classified, but she'd managed to find out some things about the research going on at CastellsTech national headquarters, which led her to imagine vast laboratories and experiments of a less than ethical caliber.
Security hub, she pinned her finger on the words, the way shown by a simple illuminated arrow.
Following the directions, Jaeger found herself in a long empty corridor with a single door set into the wall. Above the door, a lifeless video camera hung limply above it. So, she was heading in the right direction, then.
The door had been opened recently, but not forced - a guard should have been posted here with the biochip that matched with the scanner. Jaeger found herself wondering where he'd gone.
The door had a level four security clearance, which coincidentally, she was privileged with. Garistag had modified both her and Stewart's chips with a short, sharp shock from an electrode the previous morning.
"This will get you where you need to go, and nowhere else," he had said, in his gruff tone.
Lucky for me that this is where I need to go, then, she thought, reaching for the scanner.
She froze, her hand dangling over the scanner and her mind once again telling her that she should go back.
She was just the undercover, she'd discovered the plot and it was up to Garistag and his men to take it down. Why was she so determined to do it herself? What was she trying to prove?
For these questions, she didn't have answers, so she just pressed her palm against the door and stepped into the security office.
It was less an office and more of a long corridor, a couple of haphazardly arranged chairs, a few consoles and an unconscious security guard lying slumped against them.
"Shit," Jaeger said, kneeling next to the guard and checking his pulse.
His hands had been bound with wiring pulled from the console and his mouth gagged with the bow-tie that she recalled Dismas had been wearing at the bar. But he was alive, that said more for the thieves than she imagined they'd thought when they left him there.
There was nothing Jaeger could do for him whilst he slept though, and it would only complicate matters setting him free, so she switched back to hunter mode and looked down the long corridor.
It seemed such a waste of space to have an empty abyss between here and the console at the other end of the room, but even then she had a wary feeling.
She couldn't waste time, though, every second she took was another inch that Daniel Dismas and Robina Hood would use in their escape.
Jaeger strode out into the corridor, stepping carefully as though something was going to jump out at her like in one of the old funfair haunted houses her dad had taken her and Vikki to when they were kids.
Even back then, Vikki had cried at the animatronic ghouls as Jaeger had tried to tackle them.
There were no ghouls here though, and Jaeger was halfway through the corridor when she heard a groan from behind her. Turning to see what it was, she was blinded for a moment as a flash of red light came from nowhere, and she was surrounded by bars of crimson.
Laser detection field, she thought, fuck.
"Detective Jaeger," she heard a voice from behind her, the other end of the corridor. She couldn't see the face of the man, but she recognised the confident, bright voice, "I thought I'd be seeing you again."
"Dismas," Jaeger spat.
"As you know me," the man replied.
Jaeger knew he wouldn't willingly part with his real name, but he didn't have to. Another voice appeared, a female voice that obviously didn't know there was a third party in the room.
"Artem," the voice said, "the corridor is clear, let's... oh, shit."
"So, it's Artem?" Jaeger said, "that's even cuter than Dismas."
She heard Artem chuckle.
"I knew I hadn't lost you at the bar," he said, "you're too good. What else can you expect from a Jaeger?"
Was he trying to ply her with compliments still or could he just not switch off whichever mechanism made him so charismatic?
"You won't keep me trapped in here, you know," Jaeger told him.
She could almost hear him shrug.
"I don't doubt it," he said.
"How do you know I'm not just going to activate the security field on purpose, bring Castells' real security running?" She tested.
"Those mad dogs?" He asked, "I don't think that's your style."
"You don't know anything about me," Jaeger lied, even though he'd hit the nail on the head.
"Look, detective," Artem said, his voice not pleading but somehow amenable, "I'm sorry we picked your watch to do this, but you don't owe Sergei Castells a thing. Let us go, don't wrap yourself up in this."
Jaeger shook her head. He was telling her everything she wanted to hear but she refused to listen.
"I have a job to do, and I'm going to do it right," she said firmly.
"I can appreciate that, detective," Artem replied, "but I think you can appreciate that I'm not just going to offer myself up for arrest."
"Maybe not," Jaeger said, "but I have your name."
"Artem won't get you any further than Daniel Dismas," Artem told her, "just forget you ever saw us, detective."
"I'm not going to do that," she said, finally.
"I was hoping you would say that," Artem replied, no malice in his voice and even a hint of respect.
Then, he was gone, he and Robina Hood, and Jaeger was left in the corridor, squeezed awkwardly between the humming detection lasers.
"Shit," Jaeger said under her breath.