Bluebook Session 13a – Breaking and Entry

“70% of all meta-humans will commit a crime before they are 16. At Pryde Preparatory Institute we take the worst offenders, the most powerful meta-humans and mould them into constructive members of society. Yes, we’ve had our failures, but they have been a relatively small proportion of our student body – children who were already irreparably damaged before we got to them; beyond our ability to fix.”

Victoria Pryde, school founder,
in response to reports of attacks on meta-human teens by the Rejects.

—o0o—

Sunday morning, Sydenham, South London outside the Pryde Foundation Preparatory Institute. His ‘recce’ had been scheduled for just after 2am, because a 3am raid had become cliché.

As Cadet pulled up on his motorcycle, he was definitely impressed.

When he’d first received his ‘cycle, he hadn’t realised that it was a self-charging hybrid, capable of running on either biofuel (charging up the battery in the process) or electric. OK, so while running electric it had a limited range and was a bit slower at acceleration, but it was absolutely quiet. In some ways too quiet, he’d almost hit that girl who walked out into the road, her face buried in her phone because she didn’t hear him coming. Regardless, though, electric mode was definitely made for stealth.

He parked up and looked at the old grey stone factory that was located in the grounds near to the official school buildings that were the public face of the Pryde Institute. That was where the inspections took place as dozens of well-behaved, meta-enhanced teens put on a show for the government and the public. Thanks to information from Ms Kitty and some creative hacking by Firewall though, they had discovered that this old bricked-up factory on the edge of the grounds was the real school; this was what the kids referred to as the PITT, located beneath the factory, accessible only by a lift located in the middle of the factory. That’s where he had to get into, if he could.

That lift led down through several layers of security to the windowless training floor, the school serves, training facilities and secure cells for the pre-indoctrinated pupils; those still with some freewill like Kitty. If the operation went ahead, that would be his team’s primary target, while the other Claremont students would be dealing with the teaching staff and pupils.

He looked around and saw the secure mains substation, which was located behind the five-metre high walls next to the factory. According to Kitty, the school used mains electricity most of the time, but if it went off-line for more than three seconds, then their own internal generator kicked in. Raven thought one of the possible reasons for Pryde’s recent attacks on their school might have been to investigate or even try to steal the ARC Fusion Reactor that had been donated to the school by the Challenger-Wildeman’s. They’d also apparently suffered an unsuccessful assault at their Romaine Wharf home at the same time as the attack took place on the school. If the PITT had their own reactor installed, their entire school would be able to go off the grid for decades, however they hadn’t succeeded in finding Claremont’s, which was securely located in the bowels of Down Below.

The good news was that their reliance on mains electricity and a backup generator gave Firewall and him a three-second window of opportunity.

OK, he checked his watch and as agreed went radio silent as it confirmed 2:02am, a signal to Firewall who’d arrived separately and was now hopefully located somewhere nearby to zap himself down the electrical cables, into the main substation overwhelming the system’s distribution board in the process.

Firewall then had exactly three seconds to hack the external security system before it rebooted and hopefully create a ‘window’ for Cadet and get back out before either the mains resumed or the school’s own generator would start up, as that would definitely cause a full security sweep.

Outside, Cadet watched the security lights flicker. OK, so if everything had gone well he should now have a breach through the security, but as agreed beforehand it had to be something that would be almost impossible for Pryde’s staff to detect. Cadet had to carry this out precisely. UV goggles on, he saw the ‘graffiti’ that some of their Year Two Meta students had painted on the outer wall the previous evening in a mixture of ordinary and UV paint. Their janitor had subsequently washed off the paint, but hadn’t realised that he’d left behind an otherwise undetectable copy.

Cadet looked for an ‘invisible’ Delta symbol on the wall that designated the agreed location that Firewall would relax the security on. Finding it, he had a stretch of wall exactly 1 metre wide to the left of the tip of that triangle he could use to enter the grounds, just as long as he didn’t touch the wall; the sensors aimed above it would hopefully continue to give off a false signal regardless of anything passing over it.

He just had to get over a five-metre wall without touching it, cross 30 metres of grounds again without touching, then climb the wall to the second storey down from the roof without leaving a mark. He could then use the circuit strip he had in his cloak to open a window on the only floor with unsealed windows and climb in.

He headed over the road towards a nearby three-storey block of flats and made his way to the roof where he activated his costumes’ camouflage mode. This was going to be tight. He activated the memory cloth of his cloak, which unfolded again and again into a rigid wing hang glider. Given his current height, the best he could hope was to travel 5 metres for every metre of descent. It was going to be tight, very tight. He then married its camouflage circuit to his costume’s.

His main issue would be getting the hang gliders’ five-metre wingspan through a one-metre wide gap in the sensor array! He had a really crazy idea though.

Wings fully unfolded and extended, he leapt from the roof. The thermals from the cooling road surface caught the underside of his ‘wings’ as he began descending towards the wall and the marker. It took some gymnastics on his part to maintain the flight, especially after a car zoomed underneath and stole some of his anticipated thermal up-draft.

Then seconds before he reached the security gap, he folded the wings in, reducing the wingspan to a mere three metres with a further sudden drop towards the road and tilted his wings so he was flying at a 65^o angle to the ground. He skimmed through the gap above the wall with centimetres to spare, then tried to extend the wings again, but he was now too close to the ground. He was about to crash on the opposite side of the wall before he reached the factory.

Damn, there were pressure sensors located beneath the ground and he hadn’t the height now to reach the building. He had a thought, an idea, one that probably wouldn’t work, but what had he to lose? If his feet made contact with the ground, he was busted anyway.

Rather than extend his wings out, he activated his grapple aiming it for a drainpipe rather than the better target of the edge of the roof. Not only was the roof alarmed but it was checked regularly by guards and the hooks would leave a mark.

He was lucky. The grapple clanged against the metal drainpipe and immediately started sliding down the pipe until it caught on a joint and wall bracket. He immediately pulled his legs in, his feet brushing the blades of grass as he hit rewind and folded in the wings as he switched off the small electrical charge that extended and turned the memory cloth rigid. Without the charge, the material folded in on itself before it turned flexible again. The cable immediately reeled him in and upwards. His weight though threatened to break the drainpipe free of the wall.

Good thing his mother, as part of his ‘training’ had insisted he learnt free-climbing. He’d been twelve when he’d first ascended the Cnoc Na Mara cliffs in Donegal unassisted. The stonework of the factory building was child’s play in comparison with the sea stack’s overhangs.

He relaxed and slammed into the wall, his fingertips digging into the mortar joints, he again reactivated his camouflage and growled at himself as the suit’s sensors immediately identified the wall colour and displayed the information on his wrist display as Pantone 18-C601 TPX / 6A6A6A or industrial grey. Did the suit’s inventor really think he would ever need to know the exact shade his costume had adopted?

He released the grapple and wound it in as he navigated to his target entry point, then had an idea. Once inside, there was a good chance that there would be temperature sensors in play. He checked through the window and confirmed his assumption. They were concealed in the plaster, but were recognisable to an observant eye. He considered soaking himself in rainwater from the drainpipe to disguise his body temperature, but even if it worked, the drips would likely hit the pressure sensors on the floor of the factory and even if that didn’t set off, the alarms would leave a trail showing his route through the building.

No, he would have to rely on the sensors, which were set at chest height, being less sensitive towards the ceiling. Of course, he also had to avoid the pressure plates in the floor anyway, if only he could turn insubstantial like Firewall, though in his electrical form he would definitely set off the temperature sensors.

Thankfully, his utility belt held a couple of compressed space blankets, which were made of a type of Mylar, a heat-reflective material. His best bet was to free climb along the corridor towards the lift shaft using the tops of door frames and the wall rail while completely wrapped in one of the blankets. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but if he was fast enough, he might be able to travel past the temperature sensors without his body heat setting them off.

First, he had to get through the window. He had a strip of conductive cable to ensure the connections on the window and frame remained in contact at all times but as soon as he opened the window the change in temperature would register, or at least it would if he didn’t use one of the space blankets to seal  around the window with himself huddled inside it. Only then did he open the window and climb through, wrapped in the remaining blanket, and leapt towards the old-fashioned picture rail high above the corridor floor.

He almost didn’t make it as the cloth covered fingers scrambled for a hold. Okay, now to head towards the lift, he had several remotely controlled devices to plant in and around the lift shaft and doors so when Operation Shitstorm went live the whole school would be filled with sensor ghosts.

If the alarms in the lift shaft could be bypassed, then he had to decide whether to head down to the PITT and try to identify the main data station used by the mysterious Browser, though they had to ensure they didn’t alert any of the teaching staff. This was primarily a reconnaissance mission after all.

It took him a lot longer than he’d planned to get to the room with the lift. He worked his way round the room clinging to the tops of door frames and the ever-present picture rail, fitting concealed devices above each of the inner doors as planned, then decided to chance heading for the lift itself. What were the chances they had also fitted sensors and alarms so deep inside the building? Did he really want to chance it?

He looked and couldn’t see any obvious sensors or alarms. Seemed as though the assumption was if you got this far, you had the right to be there. He considered using his cloak to spread his weight across the floor, but in the end chanced it, sprinting for the lift and pressed the single button on the elevator door. The lift opened and he quickly bundled himself inside. The wall panel had four buttons. He assumed that the top three buttons were for the floors below, the last red button was for the emergency stop.

He was about to press for the lowest floor when he noticed that two of the buttons were pristine, only the first button and emergency stop showed regular wear and tear from use. He was about to press the emergency stop on its own when he stopped and considered. Why were both buttons so faded? According to Kitty, all the training facilities had been on a single floor, including the cells, so why two worn buttons?

He instinctively pressed both at the same time and felt a sudden sense of disorientation. Then, seconds later, the lift door opened on a massive windowless chamber. He was about to step out, then reconsidered. This floor had to have cameras. He again let his cloak take a reading on the lift wall as it and his suit duplicated the metal walls of the lift and looked out. This was the right place, all right.

Now what? He was about to risk stepping out when he heard a young girl crying and standing opposite her was an adult male, a teacher possibly. He began to berate her for leaving her room without permission. Cadet froze in place and used his camouflaged cloak to hide his presence as he tried to access his computer and take photos. That’s when he saw the suit’s built-in GPS was claiming he was currently in Cornwall, near a place called Polzeath. What the..?

He heard the adult say something about the lift being booby-trapped and any attempt to escape without a supervisor would result in the girl’s immediate death. The teacher then walked away as the young girl returned to her room opposite the lift, sobbing quietly to herself.

Cadet let both of them go back to their rooms and waited a couple of minutes inside the lift to make sure things were quiet, then sprinted out to explore, still looking for the servers to find out as much as he can about Browser.

He identified the cells but avoided waking any of the occupants, then next to the combat arenas he found what he was looking for, the server room, securely locked but fully enclosed all around in armoured glass. Inside was a large screen with the now familiar browser pattern on display. The room had two seats and two weird-looking helmets connected to the computers. If he had to guess, the helmets allowed the wearers to interface directly with the computer, but why two helmets, two seats? Was Browser actually two people working in tandem somehow?

No time for more exploration, he again checked his wrist console and confirmed that it still showed that he was supposedly in Cornwall. He really hoped it was Firewall somehow camouflaging their presence, providing an electronic alibi, rather than that he actually was 250 miles away from where he’d parked his bike. The talk of booby-traps was he hoped just a scare-story to stop the more reluctant “pupils” getting out, since if there were body-traps in the lift he would already have tripped them or found them surely? Or was that somehow related to what would happen if he’d pressed a floor button on its own? Well, he’d soon know one way or another. He headed back very cautiously to the lift, using shadows and his camouflage all the way. The lift didn’t actually have a ground floor button, only the three sublevels. Bracing himself against the wall, he decided to see what happened if the faded button and emergency stop were again pressed in unison, and was glad to hear the lift resume its journey upwards. Seconds later, he again experienced a moment of disorientation and the doors opened on the internal factory floor. He risked glancing at this GPS, and it was now displaying his location as Sydenham. What was going on? It was obviously not Firewall’s work, whatever it was.

Okay, something else he needed to add to his report, assuming he made it out safely. He was very cautious about leaving the lift and made his way to the door and again wrapped himself in the blanket and climbed up and began navigating his way close to the roof until he reached the window and headed out, closing the window behind him, before removing the strip and Mylar blanket from around the window. He stuffed both blankets into his belt.

So now he had to get out of the grounds, though at least once he was over that damned wall he wouldn’t have to worry about alarms and pressure plates. He climbed up towards the roof but avoided touching the edge, reset the camouflage on his suit and cloak and unfurled it into a rigid wingsuit with a much smaller fixed wingspan and back-flipped off the factory wall while twisting himself round so his suit caught the night wind and headed for the security gap above the wall.

Seconds later, he reached the wall as he somersaulted in mid-air through the gap as the wings retracted. He hit the pavement at about 20 miles an hour, his gymnastic roll absorbing some crash damage and his still rigid cloak acting as a shield absorbing most of the rest (though not all) of the impact. He picked up his bruised and battered body off the ground and limped back towards his parked bike.

Now he just had to get back to his own school, break in without being caught so he could attend class in just a few hours’ time. Simples…

Why had he agreed to do this again? He wondered as he put his helmet over his head and with a single glance back towards the factory building set off for his long journey back to Wessex.