Read Online Ultraviolet by Joseph Robert Lewis - Free Book Online
Authors: Joseph Robert Lewis
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then.
I walked up to the fence near the back side of the building, wondering what sorts of guards and cameras and drones they might have here. Security would be scary. After all, this is Cygnus. They kidnap people.
“Lux, sword and shield.”
It may have been a bit much, but I felt better with the huge black shield and the softly glowing sword in my hand. I held the shield up so that if there were any cameras, all they would see in the darkness was a black circle. I figured that the security program wouldn’t think that was a threat, so unless an actual person looked at the feed, I’d be okay. Then I sliced a hole in the fence and went inside.
I jogged across the parking lot, still hiding behind my shield, and then leaned up against the cold wall of the building. I definitely didn’t want to go near the front where all the trucks were parked and the security would be tightest, so I slid along the back wall, looking for another way in. There were three back doors, but I didn’t touch them. There was no way to know what sort of alarms they had.
After a few minutes I still hadn’t found anything except for a metal ladder up to the roof, so I decided to risk it. With my gloves turned off, I climbed the ladder and hopped out onto a huge gravel roof the size of a football field. I saw the fans for the air handlers, and I saw the door to what must have been the stairs.
This feels familiar.
But I didn’t touch the door handle. Instead, I used my sword to pry up one of the metal plates on the side of the stairwell, and I slipped inside through the gap in the wall. Inside I still couldn’t see any cameras, so I crept down the stairs into the warehouse.
I don’t know what I was expecting to see when I got there, but I was just stunned by the size of the place, a vast shadowy cavern of row upon row of towering shelves covered in boxes and crates and plastic-wrapped palettes of smaller boxes. I’d been inside a few big buildings like the power plant downtown, and the old Science Center, but nothing like this. And in the darkness, it was easy to imagine that I had slipped down too far, well below the surface of the earth into some ancient chamber of a lost civilization.
I walked up to the first row of shelves where there was a small sign, but it was too dark for me to make out what it said. And that’s when I realized that my holo-gloves didn’t have any sort of flash light programmed into them. Kicking myself for that oversight, I took out my phone and used the glow from its screen to read the names of the feedstock items on the shelf.
Wood pulp, pine.
Wood pulp, cherry.
Wood pulp, black walnut.
I moved on down the aisle, reading the little signs, working my way through the organic stocks to the plastics, and then finally to the metals. Iron, tin, zinc, lead, copper… more copper… aluminum… way more aluminum than copper…
I had to move to the next aisle, and then the aisle after that to find the rare metals. Lithium… palladium… and there it was, finally. Rubidium. I grabbed five of the slender bars in plastic sheathes and slipped them into my backpack. And then I grabbed three more, just to be safe.
I stepped back.
I did it. It’s going to be okay now.
I turned to head back to the stairs.
“I knew it would be the rubidium.”
The voice echoed through the vast canyons of the warehouse, but it had sounded close. Very close.
I didn’t move.
“When I saw the clips of you online, I was just blown away. I really was. Never seen anything like that sword before.”
It was a man’s voice. I wasn’t sure if he had an accent or not. If so, it was very faint. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, but I pressed up close to the shelf and moved along it toward the aisle as quietly as I could.
“Oh, no, wait, don’t go. It’s okay, I’m one of the good guys,” he said.
Yeah, right. Likely story.
I turned the corner and kept going.
“No, wait, Carmen, stop for a minute.”
I stopped. “How
I walked up to the fence near the back side of the building, wondering what sorts of guards and cameras and drones they might have here. Security would be scary. After all, this is Cygnus. They kidnap people.
“Lux, sword and shield.”
It may have been a bit much, but I felt better with the huge black shield and the softly glowing sword in my hand. I held the shield up so that if there were any cameras, all they would see in the darkness was a black circle. I figured that the security program wouldn’t think that was a threat, so unless an actual person looked at the feed, I’d be okay. Then I sliced a hole in the fence and went inside.
I jogged across the parking lot, still hiding behind my shield, and then leaned up against the cold wall of the building. I definitely didn’t want to go near the front where all the trucks were parked and the security would be tightest, so I slid along the back wall, looking for another way in. There were three back doors, but I didn’t touch them. There was no way to know what sort of alarms they had.
After a few minutes I still hadn’t found anything except for a metal ladder up to the roof, so I decided to risk it. With my gloves turned off, I climbed the ladder and hopped out onto a huge gravel roof the size of a football field. I saw the fans for the air handlers, and I saw the door to what must have been the stairs.
This feels familiar.
But I didn’t touch the door handle. Instead, I used my sword to pry up one of the metal plates on the side of the stairwell, and I slipped inside through the gap in the wall. Inside I still couldn’t see any cameras, so I crept down the stairs into the warehouse.
I don’t know what I was expecting to see when I got there, but I was just stunned by the size of the place, a vast shadowy cavern of row upon row of towering shelves covered in boxes and crates and plastic-wrapped palettes of smaller boxes. I’d been inside a few big buildings like the power plant downtown, and the old Science Center, but nothing like this. And in the darkness, it was easy to imagine that I had slipped down too far, well below the surface of the earth into some ancient chamber of a lost civilization.
I walked up to the first row of shelves where there was a small sign, but it was too dark for me to make out what it said. And that’s when I realized that my holo-gloves didn’t have any sort of flash light programmed into them. Kicking myself for that oversight, I took out my phone and used the glow from its screen to read the names of the feedstock items on the shelf.
Wood pulp, pine.
Wood pulp, cherry.
Wood pulp, black walnut.
I moved on down the aisle, reading the little signs, working my way through the organic stocks to the plastics, and then finally to the metals. Iron, tin, zinc, lead, copper… more copper… aluminum… way more aluminum than copper…
I had to move to the next aisle, and then the aisle after that to find the rare metals. Lithium… palladium… and there it was, finally. Rubidium. I grabbed five of the slender bars in plastic sheathes and slipped them into my backpack. And then I grabbed three more, just to be safe.
I stepped back.
I did it. It’s going to be okay now.
I turned to head back to the stairs.
“I knew it would be the rubidium.”
The voice echoed through the vast canyons of the warehouse, but it had sounded close. Very close.
I didn’t move.
“When I saw the clips of you online, I was just blown away. I really was. Never seen anything like that sword before.”
It was a man’s voice. I wasn’t sure if he had an accent or not. If so, it was very faint. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, but I pressed up close to the shelf and moved along it toward the aisle as quietly as I could.
“Oh, no, wait, don’t go. It’s okay, I’m one of the good guys,” he said.
Yeah, right. Likely story.
I turned the corner and kept going.
“No, wait, Carmen, stop for a minute.”
I stopped. “How
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