Break
1038 Words
Damian woke up two hours before the guards’ first sweep. He lay still for a second, listening to the dorm breathing around him—the soft, even sounds of sleeping kids—and then he sat up. No shower. He had work to do.
Now, sitting on his bed under the thin dorm blanket, he brought the device he stole from the hardware department out again. It looked simple — a flat, rectangular piece with a dial on one end and a small light that blinked once every few seconds.
This device could send wireless signals to any electronic device. When he found it, that was all it did. But Damian had spent the last two nights rewriting its code, line by line, until it became something better.
He changed the firmware, and gave it a new purpose. Now, when he turned the small wheel on its side, it won’t just send signals anymore, it can now overwrite the program that powers the device. Now, this is not powerful enough to hack powerful programs, but because of his plan, it doesn't need to, since he only needs it to open locks, as he has observed all the locks here are all electronic.
He stood up, carried a small cloth sack, and stepped out of the hostel. He did not have time to take a bath or change his uniform, not if he wanted to begin his plan today. He walked quietly to the front door and when he turned the dial on the door, the light on the lock changed from red to green. It made a small click sound and it was now open. He walked down the quiet, tiled corridor toward the kitchen.
The hostel hallways were empty. The guards had routes, and he had mapped them. Early morning was always thin: they checked the gates first, then the main corridors just before roll call. Two hours would be enough.
He stopped at another sealed door. Held the device near the lock and the door opened in the same manner as the hostel door opened.
He went into the kitchen. It was large and industrial, rows of stainless counters, big warmers, and machines that smelled faintly of oil and sugar. No one was there. The usual early-shift worker wasn’t on duty yet. He had seen this before: the facility ran on a strict schedule, and for the two hours before staff arrived, housekeeping systems ran but no one patrolled.
He filled the sack. Protein bricks, vacuum-sealed packets of preserved fruit, a couple of nutrient gels, and four small heat packs. Enough for four days if he rationed. He took a canteen, a small medical kit from the supply locker, and a rolled thermal blanket. He kept the sack light. Because he understood that the journey that now lies before him was one full of many troubles, he did not want anything slowing him down, hence he took only what he needed. He closed the kitchen door quietly, locked it, and slid the device into his pocket.
His plan was simple: to get into the facility’s interior structure, because it seemed NeruoDyne was so busy beefing up the exterior defenses that they forgot that the interior where the guards and all the drones and bots would have a hard time finding him there.
He would remain there until the supply plane came up to deliver supplies and that would be his window of opportunity. Damian knew for a fact that the supplies would run dry in 4 days' time. He had calculated it.
He ducked into an access panel near the end of the corridor and pried it open. Behind it lay a maintenance void: ladders, cable bundles, air ducts. The sound of the facility changed here. Above, the main hall’s hum was a steady wave. Inside the void it was a mechanical rattling, a constant pulse. He crawled in.
His first stop was the ventilation lattice. It was roomy enough for him to move like a cat if he kept his back low. He listened to the building’s breath: the HVAC fans cycling, the muffled voices of the morning shift in the distance, the faint beep of status messages moving across the network. He waited for the two hours to pass, counting the intervals between distant footfalls.
At 05:10, the first guard sweep rang through the dorms. He heard the metallic clang of the rod on the floor. The sound moved through the air like a metronome. He tuned himself to it. The guards moved slower than he expected. They were methodical. They checked bunks, glanced at collars, tapped tablets. Routine. No one noticed the empty mattress in bunk eleven. No one cared that a sock had been left on the floor. To them, it was just another morning.
Damian breathed quietly. He had a narrow window.
He crawled further into the ventilation system, toward the elevator shaft. The shaft was a vertical throat with ladder rungs bolted to the metal skin. Elevator cars moved through it at regular intervals. He had watched the cars at night, seen how the cables hummed and the counterweights balanced. The shaft offered a ladder into the heart of the building, and from there, access to maintenance access points deeper in the pillar.
He kept his bag against his chest, palms flat, moving one rung at a time. The metal was cold. He wrapped his fingers around each rung and thought through the next steps in short bursts.
If he could get to the service deck above the data core, he could find test consoles, repair panels, power distribution nodes. Those were risky. But they also contained opportunities: low-level maintenance access ports, spare keycodes printed on paper, a chance to loop a service drone, or to plant a false exhaust signal.
He reached a service landing halfway up and slid into a maintenance crawlspace. The crawlspace was narrow, and the smell of hot metal and ozone filled the air. He settled into an elbow-width gap, pressed against a cable tray, and listened. The building had a rhythm: ventilation fans, elevator motors, server turbines. It was a large animal breathing nonstop.
He pulled out the small transmitter and checked the calibration.
- Writer
