Almost out of nowhere, the sound of an engine revving, a familiar one, appears down the street quickly followed by a long horn. Someone leans out of the window shouting. I look back toward the building to see if anyone had followed me out, they hadn't.
"Get in the van," he says, somehow louder than the engine of the van. The raspy voice combined with the familiar sound tells me it's Mike. When the van is closer, I can tell that it's Ari that's driving. "C'mon let's go, let's go," Mike says. The van has barely stopped and is half up the curb when the back door slides open.
I grab Ethan's datapad from his pocket and get in the van. I only have one foot and one hand in the van when Ari accelerates as fast as she can, making a sharp U-turn, throwing me toward the back of the van against a large crate.
"Comfy?" Ari asks.
"Very," I say while sitting back up, making my way toward the front. "Where are we going?" I ask. We were going somewhere, pretty fast actually. I look out the front window and more people have gathered on the side of the streets. It almost looks like one of those post-apocalyptic movies. The smart people are probably hiding somewhere. Everyone else, the curious and unprepared roam the streets, wondering what's going on.
No one answers my question, so I just sit back in silence. I almost think that we're heading back toward our parking garage until Mike tells Ari to turn down some alley. A few close turns later she turns off the car and gets out. Mike and I follow suit. Mike slings his backpack around on his back and punches some code into a keypad and a door unlocks, leading to a kitchen in the back some restaurant. That has power still?
"Put these on," he says. He throws me a pair of latex gloves that are almost invisible when it's this dark out. I put them on and follow Mike inside.
The alarm inside doesn't trip due to the loss of power, but Aria actives some box with some antennas on it, making a whining sound as it powers up until it's inaudible. I can only guess it's some signal jammer. She puts it in Mike's backpack as he unlocks a floor hatch that exposes a metal latter down to darkness. This has been planned out. Very few words have been exchanged between any of us. I'm too afraid to speak, but even if I do, no one will probably respond. I'm just here for the ride.
Mike throws his backpack to the bottom of the ladder, and then climbs down the ladder himself. Ari motions me to go, and I do, slowly. When I'm at the bottom, Aria slides down the latter, making me have to jump out of the way just before she crushes me. I expect her to start doing things just as Mike has, but she puts her arm around my shoulders and waits.
"Power, power, power," Mike calls out just before the sound of breaker after breaker is switched. A few seconds later the lights start to glow, slowly reaching their full brightness. Just as I'm about to walk forward, Aria squeezes my shoulder, and then a distorted voice comes from behind me. It's voice filter that the government's soldiers use.
"Freeze, down on the ground, now!"
We obey.
On our knees, someone grabs me on my shoulder and presses something against my back. After hearing the sound of something powering up, I realize it's some sort of electricity gun. I think there's only one of them when Aria receives the same treatment. I'm to afraid to turn around to check, instead I keep my head down as the person behind me pushes the barrel of their gun further into my back. I'm about to say something until a booming voice comes out from the darkness in front of us.
He commands the soldiers to lower their weapons. They do. And as soon as they do, Aria shakes their hand off of her, still on her knees. Mine takes theirs off immediately. Mike is no where to be found. Was this planned? Were we caught? Aria's nothing but calm, her calmness alone assures me that nothing can happen. Maybe something can and that's just her though.
After a moment just long enough to become awkward, Mike and another man steps into the light. The man beside him has goggles on top of his head and thanks Mike for letting him borrow them.
"Mike, what the fuck? We could have gotten killed," Aria says at the sight of Mike. "You scared the shit out of me. You're lucky I gave that that gift to you yesterday." No one says a word. The man squats down in-front of me, chewing on a toothpick. He takes it out as if it's a piece of candy and looks at it.
"You must be the one Mike has been talking about," he says. "Stronger than I thought... dumber too." At the insult, I'm about to say something but before he does he tosses the toothpick across the room and extends his hand. "Deegan, weapons testing and R&D for the military, sorry about the scare. I know first impressions are important, but I had no other choice. This is the first time me and that numbskull over there are meeting in months," he says, glancing at Mike who is now on a computer, "and they insisted they come," now looking at the soldiers behind me. I turn around too and find two standing with rifles held across their chest.
Aria gets off of her knees and throws her hoodie on the couch across the room. The room has gotten significantly brighter since the lights had come on, but still is not enough to illuminate the entire room. After clicking around and typing some things on the computer, Mike gets up and let's Aria take his spot.
"It's all fucked," he says. "Aria probably got us caught and with the combination of of the shooting, the power plant has become one of the hottest crime scenes in years. The Crime Investigation Unit is going to be all over that soon. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they're prodding around right now. And Arles is in the center of all of it."
"Mike," I say, "they don't know anything. The only person that would know anything would be Stacy, who we ran into earlier. She wasn't there tonight. The people who killed Jamie and the others destroyed all of our hard drives in the street, shattering them. No logs, no camera footage, no data. It's all gone."
"Arles, you're a smart guy, but think about this for a moment," Deegan says. "An attack on our country's power grid, the biggest domestic attack ever seen. Three murders with a restricted weapon. And your car is less than 20 feet from them. They'll run your vehicle and find out it's you. They'll come to your house but it'll be empty. So to investigators, that means one of two things. Either you got kidnapped or you committed the murders and ran. One of those is easier to justify with the bodies on the ground.
"Without power, we're running on emergency power, which means much of the country's infrastructure has been shut down. That means speed traps, lights, and most importantly... street cameras. No one knows that it wasn't you who killed them. You were probably the only one who saw it. When they see your car and interview your co-workers and they say, 'I don't know where he is,' that'll tell a whole different story. Without plausible deniability, there's more than enough to make you the most wanted man in the country, while putting yourself on different country's watchlists."
Everything he said was right. Aria won't be blamed for the attack, I will, I was the one who worked there. It was a stupid plan to go along with in the first place but Mike and Aria were going to do something anyways even if I didn't help. Would it include the power though? Jamie's datapad is still in my back pocket. I'm sure Aria could do wonders with it but I want to hold on to it as a bartering chip just in case. I look over at her and she leans back in her chair with a small smirk on her face. I get up and walk over as Mike and Deegan talk about the next steps and a possible "Plan C".
"What the hell?" I say as I approach her. She saw me coming as soon as I got off the floor.
"Look familiar?" she asks. It does. It's the inside of the power plant. I lean closer. At first, I think it's an old recording, perhaps the one they swapped in before the power outage. But then Nola walks out from under the camera, followed by Grover, followed by Nathan. They walk side by side talking to each other, but the cameras don't pick up audio. It's realtime. "Your security cameras were never hardened, and them running out outdated firmware allowed me to easily get in easily with an exploit from 14 years ago."