Child of Recklessness (Trials of Strength Book 2) (10 page)

‘
I can see what you’re thinking Lucas, and no, this is far too
dangerous now,’ Chris said.

‘
Everything
we do now is dangerous,
Chris,’ I said. ‘This is the only thing we have.’

‘
Anna will listen to you,’ Chris reasoned. ‘If you tell her
it’s too much of a risk she’ll listen.’

‘
You want me to placate her!?’ I whispered and my upper lip
curled in disgust. ‘Brush it under the rug and let it go? There
could be information on her brother there! And you want me to tell
her to abandon it!?’

Chris
sighed in frustration, and Paul fidgeted.

‘
I want you to think about this for Christ’s sake!’ Chris
fumed. ‘Anna’s pregnant, and you want to march into a goddamned
trap! Do you even care!?’

That
pushed me over the line.

‘
It’s because I care that I’m doing this! You think because I’m
not running for the hills that I’m reckless!?’ I screamed. ‘They’ve
taken EVERYTHING from us. They’ll take more if we let them! They’ll
hurt
more
if we
let them!’

Chris’s
face was like a tomato and rage popped the veins in his
neck.

‘
I refuse to walk into that room and tell Anna to give up
looking for her brother,’ I spat. ‘I will not lie to make her
complacent. You’ve done enough of that.’

For a
second Chris looked confused.

‘
Remember,’ I growled, ‘when you convinced us all in Greystone
we were escaping to bring help back for our families? You
bullshitted us to keep us happy. You knew that as soon as we got
out the government would try to brush us away.’

Chris
paled. His search for words was in vain as he opened his mouth and
spluttered excuses. I wanted as much as he did to have a normal
life again. To wake up every morning and not have to train
abilities I shouldn’t even have. To not have to look over my
shoulder every five seconds to make sure there wasn’t someone
waiting to gun me down. The only way it would end, was if we ended
it.

‘
We’re going in,’ I said, ‘tonight.’

I turned
and stormed off.

*

Anna and
Brian were wary when I walked back into the main room. Anna looked
ready to burst out a stream of questions, but I shook my head.
Chris and Paul slouched in behind me, and Paul walked over to his
son, while Chris remained by the door. My mind was whirring,
questions firing left, right and centre. But I pushed them down,
and focused on what we were going to do. I was not going to doubt
myself, it had to be done.

‘
Is there any way to get weapons?’ I directed my question at
Brian. ‘Especially in the next couple of hours?’

Brian
shook his head, and I sighed.

‘
Oh, no, I didn’t mean no as in no,’ Brian said. ‘I meant it’s
not necessary.’

‘
Okay?’ I said.

‘
I mean, we already have weapons,’ Brian answered, his words
rushed.

‘
When we set the place up,’ Paul said, ‘it was part of the
equipment we got.’

‘
How did you… Never mind,’ I cut myself off, there wasn’t time,
if Brian could get drugs and a mass amount of tech, then weapons
wasn’t a stretch. ‘What do you have?’

Paul
seemed to perk up, and he smiled and walked over, manoeuvring me
towards the doorway.

‘
Soon, you’ll be asking what
don’t
we have,’ he beamed.

Anna,
Brian and Chris followed Paul and I out of the room, and across the
corridor. Paul unlocked the door, and we all walked into an area
that was almost identical to the one we had just left. The same
old, yet classy furniture littered the room, paintings and dim
lights hung from the walls. The window in front of us was
completely made of glass, and it peered out onto the opposite side
of the city. However in this room, there was no array of
computers.

Off to
either side were two doors leading into the rooms Brian and Paul
slept in. Paul adjusted the lights, something we hadn’t dared do so
far, and where computers took the space in our room, tables adorned
with black metal sat in theirs.

‘
Holy crap,’ I whispered.

‘
You can’t be too prepared,’ Paul almost sang. He was
undeniably chipper, and I wondered whether he’d had a fix. Then I
wondered on how much of a good idea was leaving guns in the open
with a drug addict.

‘
Handguns, tranquilizers,’ Chris muttered glumly as he perused
the tables, ‘ammo. This must have cost quite a bit.’

‘
I told you,’ Brian said, ‘money isn’t an issue. I’m good. I
managed to make a contact online who sold this sort of stuff. It
seemed a good idea to stock up. Don’t worry, Chris, this guy’s not
gonna lead back to us. Doesn’t know our names, doesn’t know where
we are. I paid him, he dropped the guns in a location of my choice,
and Dad picked them up.’

Chris
didn’t look too happy.

I
noticed a table at the far left with long silver blades that
reflected the soft light.

‘
I noticed in Greystone you had an affinity with that sort of
weapon,’ Brian informed me, catching the confusion on my face. ‘I
got some just in case.’

‘
This is exactly what we need,’ Anna whispered, her face
focused and alert.

‘
We use the tranqs,’ I said. ‘From what Chris has said we’ll
probably not have to use them, but in case we do, no lethal
force.’

Chris
scoffed and said, ‘And when these people you’re being so
considerate about unleash lethal force on you?’

‘
We’re not those people,’ I hit back.

We
loaded the tranquilizer guns and slipped them into holsters Brian
supplied us with. We moved back into our room, and Brian slid up to
his computers. We arranged ourselves around him, and started
formulating a plan.

Chris
finally relented, and in a glum tone explained his idea. Two of us
would take different ways into the building, and one of us would
wait a few streets away with the car. Brian told us of how there
was a skylight on the roof leading directly into the room we
wanted. It was alarmed, but he was confident that by the time we
needed to use it, he would have it deactivated.

‘
Are there any guards on the floor?’ I asked Paul.

‘
Not that I could see, no,’ he replied.

Brian
swivelled in his chair and adjusted his glasses.

‘
Digilock doesn’t supply the floors with their guards,’ he
informed us. ‘They leave it up to whoever is renting the floor.
That way the customer can feel more secure in the knowledge their
information is safe. If there are no guards then Richard hasn’t
placed any.’

Chris
grumbled audibly, and Anna turned round to him.

‘
Problem?’ she smiled.

‘
No,’ Chris replied.

‘
I’ll take the roof,’ I cut in. ‘It’ll be easier for me, and
faster.’

Chris
nodded.

‘
Okay, then I’ll take the front,’ he said. ‘I’ll take out the
receptionist, and see if we can’t just walk right in
again.’

‘
No,’ Anna said. ‘I’ll take the front.’

‘
You’re not going,’ Chris said, without so much as a
glance.

To her
credit, Anna didn’t react to his words. Her anger was in check, and
she turned, stared at him levelly, and said, ‘Just try and stop
me.’

‘
Remember you’re pregnant,’ Chris hissed.

‘
Remember I’m not incapable,’ she shot back. ‘If you think I’m
going to sit back on fluffy cushions while my brother is going
through all sorts then you’re insulting your own
intelligence.’

Chris
shook his head and laughed, but it wasn’t because he found what
Anna said funny. He rubbed his temples and gritted his
teeth.

‘
Fine, what the hell,’ he spat. ‘I’ll get the car.’

He moved
noisily from his seat and left the room. Brian, looking
uncomfortable, disappeared and returned a few minutes later. He had
two black objects in his hand, small and oval-shaped. They were
headsets that he had already linked to the phone in Chris’s stolen
car.

‘
This way I can keep in contact with you, I fiddled around with
the range and made it wider to account for the distance you’ll be
from the car,’ he said. ‘To save time, I uploaded a program to a
USB that should crack the security in that room.’

‘
Should?’ I asked.

‘
Will,’ Brian corrected, ‘it will crack it. Then it’ll search
through the files for anything relating to Anna’s brother and
Richard’s whereabouts. I even factored in any information about a
so called twin sister Lucas, just in case.’

‘
What about security cameras, inside and out?’ I
asked.

‘
I’ll set them on a loop once you’re there,’ Brian
replied.

‘
Thanks,’ I said and clasped his shoulder.

We took
the USB drive and headed for the elevator. My heart felt ready to
burst from my chest, and I bounced on my heels as we rode down to
the bottom floor. Anna was in a similar way, I could feel the
tension roll off of her in waves, and she had started to sweat. I
took her hand and squeezed.

‘
Are you positive about this?’ I asked, knowing the
answer.

She
nodded and looked me in the eye as the elevator pinged to a
stop.

‘
Here we go,’ I said.

The Test

Chris
drove within the confines of the speed limit. I shivered slightly
in the back seat and stared out into the night. I took shallow
breaths, and my mind tangled with itself with doubt. Was Chris
right? Was I being stupid? What the hell were we doing? But I
snuffed the questions out. There was no one else out there stopping
my father. We were in it up to our eyeballs. We were in it until
the end.

An hour
passed, and the blank faces of people walking the streets were our
only friends. The car was silent, and the anger and frustration
clogged the air like smoke. Chris was furious. Anna was furious. I
was terrified. It was going to be a long night.

Eventually, we stopped, and Chris slid round in his seat to
face us.

‘
Are you sure about this?’ he pleaded. ‘I can’t talk you out of
it?’

I shook
my head.

‘
It has to be done, Chris,’ Anna sighed.

‘
Doesn’t mean I have to like it, sweetheart,’ Chris
replied.

I got
out the car, put the headset in my ear, and waited for Anna to roll
down her window.

‘
Tell me when you’re on the roof, and I’ll make my way up,’ she
said. ‘Are you sure you can do this, Lucas? I mean, it’s
crazy.’

I nodded
and told her not to worry before setting off down the street. I’d
worn a jumper with a hood, and I pulled that hood over my head,
shielding my face. I slouched past people who paid me no mind,
while my heart assaulted my ribs. It only further intensified the
fact that we had to stop my father. I was becoming tired of living
in such fear.

Following the pavement I was on, I eventually came to a tall
building, ‘
Digilock Enterprises’
hung boldly above the glass revolving doors that
led inside. I took a few minutes to look around the outside of the
building. It was mostly grey concrete blocks, but every time it
reached a new floor a ring of windows encircled the entire
building. That gave me the climbing frame I needed. The windows, as
Brian had learned, were one way. You could see out from inside, but
they were practically black from the outside, and almost impossible
to break. The skylight I aimed for was different, still alarmed,
but less durable and it was transparent.

I moved
to the back of the building and down an alley. I looked up and
sighed.

Please God don’t let me fall.

With
that thought battering around my brain I jumped. I kicked my legs
from the ground, and using my strength, sailed through the air
until I latched onto the first-floor ledge. From there I just had
to pull myself up, and like a frog, repeat what I’d just done. I
even chuckled over my frog comparison. I wasn’t laughing when I
reached halfway and looked down.

‘
Oh god,’ I grumbled into the wind, pushing myself closer
towards the building. ‘Don’t panic, don’t panic, you’re not going
to fall. Why the hell did I volunteer for this? What the hell was I
bloody thinking!? What if someone sees me through the windows? Next
time, someone else can scale the tall things, because I am done
doing it.’

I kept
moaning as I climbed, it was comforting. After a half hour I was
one floor away from the roof. I shook as I moved my arm slowly to
the headset chiming at my ear, and pressed the button.

‘
How’s it going, Lucas?’ Anna asked. She sounded
impatient.

‘
I’m scaling a building, Anna,’ I whispered, terrified. ‘At any
second I could fall and you know, die.’

‘
Sorry,’ she sighed.

‘
It’s cool,’ I answered. ‘I’m there. You can make your
move.’