REMY'S ELEVEN: Bruce Willis, Eat Your Heart Out!

[x-gambit.livejournal.com]

After breaking the poker bank, Doug and Nathan support Forge as he finds a way to tap into the system.



Inch by inch, Forge crawled on his belly through the space between the air ducts and the ceiling tiles until he found the access grate. Wriggling through like a snake, he curled up into a semi-fetal position, fingers manipulating a series of panels on his modified prosthetic leg. Stripped down to the bare pistons and servos, Forge had attached a number of utilitarian devices specifically invented over the last few days just for this situation.

One of which began crawling off of his shin and up his thigh. The small metallic "spider" trailed a thin wire that spooled out of a reservoir in Forge's calf. Given that the security in the casino was likely to jam radio frequencies from the inside, he'd need a direct-contact antenna to transmit back to Nathan. He blinked twice, activating the map function on the heads-up display he'd built into his new contact lenses. A wireframe diagram of the air ducts popped into life before him, with his position marked as a blue arrow. Satisfied with his preparations, Forge began crawling.

Twenty-two feet southeast, contort a little, and down the central ventilation shaft he went. Hand-held suction cups kept him adhered to the aluminum shaft walls like a gecko, descending headfirst into the darkness. Thirty, forty, fifty feet down and Forge checked his map. He was on the level to Arcade's office. Wriggling through the small hatch, he thanked his parents silently for his skinny build as his shoulders slipped through the tight opening. Pulling with fingertips and pushing off with his toes, he inched forward, watching his map. Until his fingers hit bare metal. A dead end, where his map indicated the shaft continuing.

"Pinnochio to Gepetto," he whispered into his collar mike, trying to raise Nathan on the net. "Major problem here."

Nathan, sitting out in the parking lot in the van Remy had procured for just this purpose, grimaced at the codenames, but then froze at the words 'major problem'. "Elaborate," he said curtly over the headset.

"It ends!" Forge hissed, "There is supposed to be a LEFT here, there is no LEFT, I am stuck against a wall and the blueprints say there is supposed to be a LEFT and there is no LEFT!" He was beginning to hyperventilate in the enclosed space and instinctively clutched his hands to his chest. "It's not matching up with the map and I don't know what to do."

Well, shit. Nathan rubbed at his jaw, taking a deep breath. "Forge," he said calmly - screw the codenames, anyway, "calm down. There's an inaccuracy in the blueprints - let's work around it."

Forge did not sound like he was calming down. In fact, he sounded rather like he was hyperventilating. "Forge," Nathan said more firmly. "Listen to me. You panic in there, I'm going to have to come in and get you, and that's going to blow the whole job."

"Don't panic? Don't panic?" Forge's voice was high-pitched and tense. "Easy for you to say, you're the fucking superspy! I had a plan and the plan is botched! I am stuck, I can't crawl backwards, I can't go forwards. I'm trapped, I'm scared, I'm panicking, okay?"

He stretched out his fingers, his metal hand contacting the obstruction in his way. Then he felt it. A small vibration from the other side of the metal. That meant this panel was thin, and... yes! Inverted cowling, it wasn't directly attached to the shaft. That vibration meant moving parts, but not a pump.

"I'm a god-damned genius," Forge breathed. "Gimme a few minutes, man. I'll have this minor annoyance disarmed and out of the way."

Running a hand through his hair, Doug breathed a sigh of relief as Forge started to settle down. Tapping a few keys on his laptop from where he sat in the hotel room, he chuckled and decided to make a touch of small talk to try and keep Forge calm. "Besides, boss man, would you even _fit_ in those ducts? I'm not saying anything about your weight or anything, but you're not exactly a small guy." To be honest, Doug was rather relieved it was Forge in there and not him. He didn't want to think about how claustrophobic the vents must be.

"It was bluster," Nathan said peacefully. "Forge? Details on your genius, please."

Forge grinned to himself, multitool clenched in his teeth. Flipping over onto his back, he let the tiny drill do most of the work as he began boring a series of holes into the lower edge of the metal plate.

He could only get one hand above his head to work, and for once he felt grateful for his prosthesis. A normal man would have to worry about shaking fingers or nerves trembling. But Forge was steady as a rock. Precise. Controlled. Perfect.

"Okay," he mumbled over the link, "we've got a set of pressure sensors in here, set to trip if something big like - oh, me - drops into the secondary shaft up ahead." He thought quickly, then came up with an idea.

"Change one to the plan: Nerd-boy? If I get you a remote patch to the system, think you could bypass it for... five minutes?"

"Nerd boy?" Doug asked with a rather incredulously raised eyebrow that Forge couldn't see on the other end of the comm. "Mr. Kettle? There's a Mr. Pot calling on the black courtesy phone..." He shook his head and chuckled. "And oh ye of little faith in my 'leet hacker skills'. Of course I can bypass it. Just tell me when."

"Boys, boy," Nathan chided gently from the van. "You're both pretty. Not that I have any objections on principle to the snappy banter, but minds on the job, please?"

"Yeah, yeah," Forge drawled. "Gimme that bypass as soon as you can-"

He blinked as the little LEDs inside the shaft went from green to slowly blinking red. "-manage it. Okay, that was nice. Not thrilling, but nice." Lifting the panel out of the way, Forge wriggled on his back through the small opening. He felt the clicking of the pressure panels under his back, but trusted that Ramsey's bypass would do its job.

"Back on track, then." Forge reoriented his map. Seven more feet, then paydirt. He flipped onto his belly, peering down through two crossed grates to see...

"You have got to be shitting me," he breathed. "The cocky motherfucker left his terminal on and logged in."

Doug whistled low. "Damn, that's not cocky, that's just plain stupid. But hey, his stupidity is our gain, right?"

"I assure you," Forge intoned, "I am not shitting you. Sending down the Longarm now." Slowly, Forge fed the cable down through the air vent. A miniature version of his own skeletal prosthetic hand was attached to one end, and at the other was a plug that he slotted into his palm. A quick muscle twitch, and Forge flexed the probe as if it was attached to his own wrist.

Finger-walking across the desk, Forge ran the probe across the keyboard. "No false keys, no biometrics - this..." Forge muttered a small stream of profanity under his breath. "Guy's got a billion-dollar security system and what's he use in his own office? A fucking bog-standard Alienware gaming rig. Pathetic."

The probe extended down to the main tower of the computer. One button press, and a small Flash memory card popped out.

Before he began retracting the cable, Forge noticed a PDA nestled in a cradle on the desktop. Reaching over to grab his mobile off his belt, he ran a quick IR port scan. "Come on, come on... bingo!" Information flowed across the screen and his contacts' display, mirroring the contents of Arcade's PDA. With this, he and Doug could easily backdoor into the casino floor security system and cause no small deal of havoc.

Reeling in the cable, Forge rolled over and began inching himself back down the ventilation shaft feet-first. "Easier than reading your mom's email," he snickered to himself.

"Firstly, never complain if the enemy leaves you an opening," Nathan said coolly. "Just take advantage. Secondly, less commentary, more action, please."

Through the sensors, replacing the security panel, then a minute or two of wriggling like a worm, and Forge was back in the main ventilation shaft. The whole thing would have been more dramatic, he thought, were it not pitch-black and smelling like dust and air freshener.

"Good job," Nathan said quietly as the connection came online. "Let me know when you're out."

Forge paused for a moment, holding on to the suction cups for leverage, pressing his back against the shaft wall. Now that the hard part was over, he turned off the communicator briefly, then clipped himself in to his anchors. For a good long minute, he just hung there, breathing deeply and shaking. In the limited vision that he had from the lights above, he could see his hands before him, the mechanical one steady as a rock, the other shaking like a leaf.

By the time he arrived back at the room he'd started in and gotten the "all clear" from Doug to drop down from the ceiling, Forge had managed to take the nervousness and bottle it up. No one needed to see that. No one.