Young Writers Society

A square nut whistles through the air and crashes into the black glass dome with a satisfying crack. The whir of the camera inside instantly dies and the falling glass sprinkles across the floor like fairy dust. My skin tingles and a smile cracks my lips.

‘Camera Five Out!’ Lori calls down the hall. She bats her ladderlocks over her shoulder and looks up at me through the grate expectantly. The thrill of potential sabotage rolls off her body in waves, igniting her sapphire eyes like a jumpstart to her engines. Or maybe she’s pissed at me ‘cause I got her up so early. You can never be sure with Lori.

I unhook the grate and slide out of my hiding spot. I lower myself down, fumbling with the edges of the vent before dropping like a stone to the floor. I curse as my ankle falls out from under me and I stumble awkwardly, my head about four inches short of slamming into Lori’s butt. Not that I would have minded but let’s not talk about that now.

Focus Maddox.

I straighten up and fall in besides Lori as she fidgets with the catapult. She twists the handle over and over in her hand, the two pieces of glued together chipboard gliding seamlessly across her palm no thanks to me. The excessive amount of filing took me the better half of the night to do, instead of being in bed, where I belonged. I glare at the sling as she tugs at it distractedly. The twang of the rubber sets my teeth on edge. That bastard cost me a fingernail.

In between finding the pieces and being lectured on the measurements that ‘you absolutely cannot deviate from’, you could say it was a real labour of love. And with the finishing touches; several reams of duct tape and yet more filing, we now have what could be classed as a viable weapon in a station filled with defunct relics and wrenches. I guess that’s what you get when an engineer jacks up your arsenal.

‘Nice shot.’ I say, nudging Lori’s arm gently with my elbow. My skin tingles where it touches hers.

‘I know…Give me a gun and I’d be lethal.’

‘Don’t give me ideas.’ I wink at her and she smiles, her bravado slipping for a split second. It’s not long before she’s all seriousness and hard edges again; chewing at her lip with worry.

I slip a stick of gum from my front pocket into her palm. She takes it gratefully and seconds later I hear her lips smacking away.

Together we walk around the open halls of the ArcPath, staring out at the stars as they wink back at us, watching with bright eyes. I can imagine they don’t see much action.

I start to brush off the dust plastered across my clothes and struggle to match Lori’s pace as we cut down into the Maypole itself, our eyes searching for the tell-tale silver beams and blue magnetic strips of EpsiLoch.

You’d struggle to find anywhere that could pass for glamourous in this bolt hole but EpsiLoch comes mighty close. With its curved corridors of blue vinyl, arches of silver steel and electric wallpaper that lights up the place like the fourth of July, you could almost say they were trying too hard.

They might as well have painted ‘Rob Us’ in fat letters on the side of the sector wall. I adjust the strap of my satchel and the paint can inside jingles. Oh yeah, I’ve considered it.

Unfortunately for me, that amount of expensive hardware can’t be left just lying around unsupervised. Eves forbid someone lays her grubby hands all over it.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Lori probes as we stalk down the empty halls, our footsteps beating in time. I snort.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ I’ve done this a thousand times. The words hang on the tip of my tongue like a bad omen. Eves know who could be listening and I’d rather not tempt fate - I’m tempting it three times over already.

My eyes scope the ceilings while Lori’s roam the corridors. Curved paths branch off the main corridor every ten paces, stairwells every fifty and ventilation shafts line the ceilings, hidden beneath a layer of vinyl and lighting strips. All are possible entry points for unwanted eyes. Well, it’s only me you have to worry about with that last one and I’m a little bundle of joy.

‘We’ve never done anything like this before,’ Lori says timidly. A black dome looms up ahead and I tap her elbow. We both slide into the nearest corridor and press ourselves flat against the wall. She pulls the firing strip back and forth nervously before slipping a small nut into the rubber pouch from the front pocket of her engineering digs.

‘You’ve never done something like this before.’ I correct as I bring up the schematics on my WristChip. My finger glides through the blue fuzz hovering above my wrist and swipes from blueprint to blueprint. One camera to go. I look up to find Lori’s beady blue eyes staring me down. My hoodie suddenly seems a lot tighter.

‘Don’t you dare pretend that I’m not going to take as big a fall for this as you are. The cameras alone are enough to get me reconditioned if they find out.’ Her voice cuts through me like Hologlass. I shrink against the wall.

‘But they aren’t going to find out.’ I reply, almost choking on how utterly useless I sound. I clear my throat none too discreetly and start playing with the chipboard strung around my neck. She slaps my hand away and forces me to look at her.

‘Unless you’ve got a blasted guardian angel that I don’t know about then they scorching well will.’ I swallow.

Not a guardian angel per se…

‘Just trust me okay?’ I say. Trust. The word feels unfamiliar on my tongue. I only hope I sound more convincing than I feel. I snatch the catapult from her grip and sneak a nut from her pocket while she looks at me blankly, her mind whirring silently behind those treacherous eyes.

I step around her and lean across into the corridor. I bring up the catapult to fire and the fruity scent of Lori’s gum wafts its way up my nose. I glare in her direction and she glares back with one eyebrow raised, the hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.

I turn my focus to the black dome at the far end of the hallway and pull back, exhale and fire. My weight is thrown off balance at the last minute and the nut pings off the glass. I cringe as it barrels down the hallway, the crash of metal on metal alerting everyone in the vicinity to our presence. When the noise finally stops, I open one eye and squint at the camera. The glass is cracked not shattered. I sigh exasperatedly and slump as I turn to Lori, not surprised to find a smirk smudged all over her face much like her oil stains. I peel the grease stained hands from around my waist and a strawberry flavoured laugh erupts in my face.

She quickly shoves me aside with a flick of her hips and takes the catapult from me in the same movement, ‘Amateur.’

‘That wasn’t fair, you cheated.’ I grumble.

‘I thought cheating involved someone else’s hips?’

I roll my eyes, ‘Oh Har bloody Har.’

I move on to the next corridor, the glass sprinkling onto the floor behind me, tinkling like the Warp of the Enterprise. Bravely going where no man has gone before….Well, no woman anyway.

Epsiloch’s fortified walls loom up ahead of me and just beyond those seamless, solid steel walls I can almost sense the fizzing auras of every computer, every processor and every hard drive just waiting for my touch. The idea of skimming those forbidden keys excites me in ways I can’t even begin to describe. It’s a hacker’s dream. It almost hurts to be this close and to not go in. But today is not the day I storm the castle. Lori only needs to think we are.

I come to a stop before the entrance; a heavy looking door with thick rivets and deadbolts that feed directly into the walls like the kind they used to have in banks. But the door isn’t the problem. The problem is the fingerprint only access control panel screwed into the wall next to it.

I glare at the control panel with as much frustration as I can muster, willing it to explode. When no sparks magically fly I settle for breathing on the panel and attempting to wheedle out a fingerprint from the warm air, with no success. I curse and kick the door. A decision I swiftly regret. Lori pulls up beside me, arms folded, hips at right angles and ready to rumble, ‘So what’s the plan?’

‘There is no plan,’ I roll up my sleeves and shrug, ‘I just sort of wing it.’

Lori throws her hands up, ‘Wing it? What does that even mean?’

I tilt my head sideways so my smirk looks straighter than it actually is, ‘I guess you’ll have to find out.’

‘You are…impossible.’ She shakes her head and chews her gum with renewed vigour. It’s visibly painful for her not to have some form of an idea or plan or a schematic that she can dissect and rework a million and one different ways. Seems engineers have their flaws too. I cup her hands softly and she focuses on me.

‘Not impossible,’ I say, ‘Just…flexible.’

I stand on my tip toes and peck her on the nose, ‘Now make yourself useful.’ A mix of confusion and disbelief passes over her face. I walk past her, my hand tugging at the loose strap of her digs, before making my way back up the way we came. She frowns as I walk away before glancing down at her knitted palms.

She turns to follow me still staring at them, ‘I thought we were busting the door?’

I twist round and keep on shuffling backwards, ‘As you delighted in reminding me last night,’ I jab over her shoulder, ‘that door is unbustable.’ I swivel from foot to foot and pick a stopping point - particularly thick line in the vinyl panelling beneath my feet. I hold my hand out, squint with one eye shut and point my thumb toward the ceiling. I flip it sideways and then vertical again a few times over. I must clarify, this does absolutely nothing. It just looks technical and makes Lori think that I know what I’m doing. You know, to calm her nerves or something.

Lori’s face scrunches and she shrugs, ‘I didn’t think that would matter. This is you we’re talking about.’

I drop my hand and stand taken aback for a moment. My face practically glows with surprise, ‘I do believe you just complimented me, even if it did sound like you disapprove.’

Now it was Lori’s turn to snort. ‘Don’t get used to it.’ She folds her arms, not wanting to press the conversation, ‘But seriously V, how we gettin’ in?’

I hold up one hand and slowly saw across my index finger with the other. Lori’s face runs through a mix of emotions; first shock and then anger before noticeably paling, ’You can’t be seri-‘

‘Lor, do you really think I’d attack some random girl and saw her finger off just to bypass the door?’

She raises an eyebrow, ‘Do you really want me to answer that?’

I chew my cheek. That was one time dammit.

I run a hand through my hair, dropping my head in an attempt to hide the grin threatening to break across my face as the blurred memory of that night swims to the surface. In my defence, Aria was as much to blame as I was. You don’t ask a girl drunk on Jack-Up Juice to play Finger Fillet. Especially one who has an actual knife instead of a practice poker.

The silence draws out and with it, Lori’s eyebrows crawl further up her forehead. If I don’t say something soon this thing is gonna’ to go south faster than Godzilla vs Kong.

‘Well let me inspire some confidence,’ I say, as my face struggles to soften my usually antagonistic features into something that could be mistaken for confidence, ‘I don’t need to use the door to get in Lor. The only good the door ever did was tell me where to hit next.’ Which isn’t entirely a lie.

Lori’s brows draw up in confusion. I clarify, ‘If there was nothing important in there, why would they need such a bulky door?’ Her face softens but her mind still churns away behind those sharp eyes.

‘Erm…to get in maybe?’

I open my mouth to speak and close it again. Lori notices my hesitation and continues, ‘I don’t know if you’ve realised but…we kind of need to do that too.’

I chuckle to myself, ‘What’s the point in opening a door when I can just go over it?’ Lori rolls her eyes and lets out an exasperated breath as she notices the ventilation shaft and nods to her hands and herself as some formulation of a plan slowly unravels in her mind.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’ She chides.

‘Of course I know what I’m doing.’

‘You said that yesterday.’

‘What happened yesterday?’

Lori sighs, her lips pursing amused. ‘Cassie broke your nose.’

I scrunch my nose from side to side. A tiny slither of pain accompanies the movement. I snort, the air whooshing out of my nostrils in a pained whistle.

‘Oh yeah. How could I forget?’ Lori rolls her eyes at me but smiles as she poises herself.

I lean forward into a crouch and rub my hands together. I launch myself, running full pelt into Lori’s awaiting hands and she catapults my upwards. My fingers grasp the edges of the opening, my callouses proving helpful for once, and I pull myself up, wishing I had the same upper body strength as Lori clearly does. I use my bony elbows to haul the rest of my sorry ass up and quickly slip my feet inside, careful to muffle the squeaks of my soles on the metal.

I dip down and rescue the grate dangling loosely in the air and catch Lori staring up at me. She looks impossibly small from up top but I can still make out her blue eyes and my favourite brows scrunched with concern. They seem to do that a lot lately.

‘Are you sure you want to do this V?’ Her words are no more than a whisper, drifting up to me on what seems like hope alone. She glances towards the EpsiLoch entrance, worry etched in every plane of her face. I hesitate.

She’s scared for me and for her. I suppose I should be scared too but I passed the point of caring a long time ago. But I do care about Lori. I don’t care if I get caught, let’s face it, it’s a long time coming but if she goes down with me I could never forgive myself.

And that’s precisely why I haven’t told her the truth.

‘Never been surer.’ I throw her a wink and what I hope is an encouraging smile before slotting the grate back into place and shuffling down the vents towards the station’s thrusters.