imperfect (8 page)

“
He’s planning on breaking
the system tomorrow but wanted to make sure you were okay with it
ever since, you know, the Harold incident,” said Bruno

“
Got it. Do you know what
Jack is planning to do after he breaks through the
system?”

“
Mason offered him three
hundred points if Jack raised his grade in Physics.”

“
Tell Jack to raise
Tompkins’ grade in World Studies while he’s at it.”

“
Alright. Are you going to
help Jack with the hijack? I know I am. Darrel is too. Jack says he
needs enough people to overwhelm the system for
tomorrow.”

“
Can’t,” said Troop.
“Tutor session tomorrow right after school.”

Troop could almost see Bruno wrinkling his
nose when he replied, “Oh, I see. Is it one of those fancy private
lessons?”

“
I suppose you could say
so.”

“
Ludus High isn’t good
enough for you, is it? Nope—you’ve got to have one-on-one classes
even though you already attend the second best high school in the
United Regions.” There was a hint of taunting in Bruno’s tone.
“Only the best for—”

“
Bruno,” Troop said. He
kept his voice even.

Bruno immediately realized he was walking on
a fine line. “Sorry.” He didn’t sound the least bit apologetic.

Troop let it slide, but
decided to keep a close eye on Bruno’s behavior over the next few
days. Bruno would be more than happy to stab him in the back given
the chance; it was common knowledge at school that Bruno hungered
after Troop’s power at Ludus.

chapter nine

[ Kristi ]

“
I see five watchtowers.
How about you?”

Kristi replied to Chelsa, “Same.”

Her left leg was going numb from crouching
behind a bush.

“
Stay here and count how
many guards there are for each entrance and watchtower. I’ll go
check out the patrols, alarms, cameras, trip wires, lasers, heat
sensors, droids, pressure pads—”

Kristi interrupted Chelsa, ”I get the
point.”

With that, Chelsa was gone in a blink.
Kristi hunkered in the bushes, tallying the guards while Ghost
drifted around nearby in case she needed help. She tripled checked
to make sure she had counted right: two per entrance and three per
watchtower. This equaled to nineteen guards in total and two droid
German shepherd watchdogs (one per entrance).

Hopefully Chelsa would be back soon. She was
eager to start moving and find Jaiden. Both of her legs were
seriously going numb now.

“
One little stretch won’t
hurt anyone,” Kristi said.

She straightened her back. Ghost hissed.

“
Okay, okay. Keep your
hair on.”

The droid-leopard didn’t stop the
threatening sounds until Kristi lowered herself back behind the
shrub.

“
Did Ghost see something?”
Chelsa returned from her brief scout.

“
No. He just started
hissing all of a sudden.” Kristi failed to mention chances were
that Ghost was trying to stop her from standing up and potentially
end up being seen by the guards. “So, find any useful
information?”

“
Breaking in shouldn’t be
too much of a problem. Breaking out once we’re in is the bigger
issue. I checked out the perimeter and found a couple of options on
getting into the building. We can either go through the window on
the north side of the building, through the delivery chute or
through the fire escape that leads to the exit on the
roof.

“
Patrols of five guards
pass every ten minutes or so. There are some cameras and lasers
though, so we’ll have to watch out for those. I don’t know what the
security is like inside, which may pose a problem later on. On the
bright side, I found out your brother is being held in cell three,
which saves us a lot of time from having to check every
cell.”

“
How did you get all of
that information so fast?”

Chelsa smirked. “Practice. Lots of it.”

Ghost padded over and rumbled his chest.

“
We’re getting off track,”
Chelsa said. “We better start moving. So here’s the plan: we’re
going to sneak in by means of the window I mentioned. The north
side window is the only one that isn’t locked; I guess one of the
workers here wanted to have a smoke without setting off the fire
alarm, but forgot to close the window properly.

“
There are four cameras
and one laser that we have to watch out for. Ghost will take care
of the cameras, which leaves only the guards and laser for you and
me to deal with. The laser shouldn’t be too difficult to avoid; it
seems like the standard model all local jails use. As for the
guards, if we time our moves right after a patrol passes, then we
have about ten minutes to get in, which is more than
enough.”

“
Ghost will take care of
the cameras?” Kristi asked to make sure she heard Chelsa right. She
tried to imagine how a droid-cat could disable four security
cameras.

“
You’ll see.”

Kristi took a deep breath
in. She had spent less than forty-eight hours with Chelsa and was
already breaking laws. Chelsa was
not
a good influence; but she was a
good friend. “Let’s do this.”

Kristi closely followed Chelsa as they
skirted the edges of the jailhouse by keeping in the shadows,
ducking behind foliage and running low to the ground. Just when she
was getting the hang of it, Chelsa stopped; Kristi stopped herself
from crashing into Chelsa. The window that was to be their entrance
was about half a football field’s length away.

“
Ghost, go take care of
that camera.” Chelsa pointed to a surveillance camera mounted on a
tree.

Ghost climbed up the tree and using his
paws, turned the camera so that it was facing the trunk. Then Ghost
leapt down, purring with satisfaction of a job well done.

“
Come on, we’re going to
make a dash for the trash bins,” Chelsa said.

They dashed for their temporary cover and
waited for a patrol to pass. Shiny, polished boots marched by in
unison. The guards swung their flashlight around, searching for
anything out of the norm. They didn’t spot Chelsa and Kristi hidden
behind the bins.

Chelsa whispered to Ghost, “Get the two
cameras hanging off the rain gutters.”

Ghost flicked an ear to show he heard and
scaled the building and onto the roof. He crept, belly close to the
roof, then along the gutter until he was directly above the camera.
As before, he knocked the camera askew so that it was pointing
downwards. Then he repeated the procedure with the second
camera.

“
Good. Everything’s going
according to plan,” Chelsa whispered. “We just have to hurry up
before the people monitoring the cameras notice all they’re
monitoring is a patch of dirt and the building wall.”

Ghost bunched up his hind legs and prepared
to leap down. Suddenly, a beam of light from the watchtower landed
on him, blinding the droid with its bright light. Ghost froze, as
still as an ice sculpture.

Kristi held her breath anxiously, heart
pounding like a sledgehammer beneath her ribs. Then to everyone’s
relief, the searchlight swung away. Ghost leapt down, looking
shaken for once.

“
That was a close call,”
Chelsa murmured. “They must’ve mistaken Ghost for a runaway
droid-cat. Okay, the next obstacle is the laser. Think of the laser
as an invisible trip wire. If you pass through it, it will trigger
an alarm.”

“
Where exactly is the
laser?” Kristi skimmed the ground around them but nothing hinted
the presence of an invisible trip wire.

“
About a foot off the
ground, a yard in front of the window we’re entering through.”
Chelsa directed her gaze to a small, black box positioned along the
wall of the building. “That’s where the laser trip wire is coming
from. There’s one last camera right above the black box. The camera
can’t see us though, since we’re in its blind spot. I don’t think I
want to risk Ghost being spotted disabling a camera again,
therefore we’ll have to be sure to stay close to the walls of the
jail.”

“
So all we have to do is
step over the laser, open the window wide enough to get through and
stay in the camera’s blind spot?”

“
Yep. I’ll
lead.”

Chelsa took a huge step over the laser and
hugged the wall of the building. Kristi imitated her, shimmying
along the wall. Once they reached the window, Chelsa tried to pry
it wider. “Give me a hand, will you? It’s heavier than it
looks.”

Kristi slid along the wall and grasped the
metal-framed window with cold fingers. Through their combined
strength, the window lifted easily and smoothly.

“
After you.” She gestured
to Chelsa.

Chelsa swung herself through the gap and
offered Kristi a hand up. Using Chelsa’s hand as a grip, Kristi
landed much less gracefully inside.

“
That wasn’t too hard,”
Chelsa said. “Now we need to find cell three.”

Kristi looked around the corridor they were
in. It was lined with cells, all of them empty. The door closest to
them had the number “ten” engraved on it. There were five cells
total in this hall.

“
Cell number three is in a
different hall. Are there any alarms or cameras we have to watch
out for?”

“
I don’t see any cameras,
wires, lasers or heat sensors either, but you can never be too
careful,” said Chelsa.

They entered the main hall and turned right.
All the overhead lights were off, which made keeping a sense of
direction difficult.

“
It’s this hall,” Kristi
said, spotting the plaque that read:
cells
one through five
.

She took lead and turned
the corner, almost running into a guard. If she had taken one more
step, she would’ve walked straight into him. Luckily, the guard was
dozing in his chair, so he didn’t notice the close encounter. A
large, empty bottle of booze was loosely held in his right
hand.
Thank you, maker of that bottle of
alcohol, for putting the guard to sleep,
Kristi thought. She supposed that even with the advancements
made in science, science could only do so much. While Perfects were
genetically perfect, they still succumbed to certain
pleasures.

Chelsa feigned wiping sweat off her brow.
Then she moved forward to lead the way, not trusting Kristi not to
lead them into any other guards.

They skirted a wide turn and moved on past a
couple more cells until they reached a door with the number three.
Kristi took a peek inside through the tiny glass window on the
metal door.

“
He’s there,” she
whispered to Chelsa. “And asleep.”

Chelsa came over and examined the lock.
“Quietly wake Jaiden up so once I have this lock figured out, we
can leave as quickly as possible.”

Kristi gently tapped on the window. Jaiden
bolted upright, blinking in confusion. Then he saw her and furrowed
his eyebrows as he processed why she was in the jailhouse at 2:17
in the morning. As soon as he came to the conclusion Kristi was
trying to break him out of here, his expression turned
murderous.

He came up to the window
and mouthed,
“What in the world do you
think you are doing?”

That wasn’t quite the reaction she was
hoping to get.

Click!
The door swung open when Chelsa broke the lock. She hastily
stashed away her lock pick into her boots, taking care to move out
of the way when the steel door swung open.

Jaiden stepped into the corridor. “Kristi,
what are you doing here? You’re going to be in so much trouble if
you’re discovered. Do you know what you just did?”

“
Run now, talk later,”
Chelsa cut in.

Jaiden turned on his heels and looked at
Chelsa. “Who are you?”

“
Chelsa, Kristi’s friend.
And like I said, we can talk more once we’re out of
here.”

CLANG!

“
What the heck?” yelled a
man’s voice.

They jolted in surprise.

The guard was talking to himself now, loud
enough for everyone to hear. “Must’ve dropped my bottle. Scared the
crap out of me. Ugh, I knew I shouldn’t have accepted the dare to
finish the beer.”

They waited for the guard
to fall back asleep, but that didn’t happen. After a few minutes,
Kristi gave Chelsa a look:
“Now,
what?”

She mouthed back,
“We wait.”

A few more minutes passed and the guard
stood up from his folding chair. He let out a belch and flipped on
his flashlight. The artificial light penetrated the darkness and
the guard ambled away to the general direction of the bathroom.

All sighed in relief before dashing down the
hallway. The window was still open at the end of the hall. Chelsa
gestured for Kristi to climb out first, reminding her to stick
close to the walls. Jaiden came out next and plastered himself
against the wall beside Kristi. Finally, Chelsa escaped from the
building and lowered the window so that it was back in its original
position.

The three teens waited in a suspenseful
silence for the next patrol to come. Less than thirty seconds
later, a squad of three patrollers thumped by in their heavy boots.
The guards scanned their surroundings, eyes passing over the
crouching teens. They marched on without breaking a stride.