Chapter Nineteen—Sex Toys

Crawling through the air ducts, Kyle grunted as he kept an active mic via their wristlets. “Why do I always get the shit jobs?”

“Because you’re smaller than I am,” John said.

“But May’s even smaller than me.”

“She’s a woman,” Lexa said.

“Yeah, so?”

“You’re a chivalrous guy, aren’t you?” May said.

“Uh…” Kyle said as he thought about that. “Yeah! Definitely!”

“Well there you go.”

John chuckled over the coms and Kyle shook his head. Another one that I walked straight into. Can’t believe this…

“You do know how to use these?” John asked.

“Yeah,” May said. “I’ve had a few experiences where UAGs were necessary. What, you don’t think I can do it?”

“It’s not that,” John said. “I’m just surprised.”

Kyle gritted his teeth, frustrated that John got to hang out with May while he was crawling around dusty air vents.

They had chosen a secluded area where Kyle could break in and then laser saw his way into the vent. He kept going straight, then came to a T-junction. But instead of turning, he went up.

According to their schematics, this juncture should reach up to the security building. His sneakers clanked against the ladder rungs as he went.

“You doing all right?” John asked.

“Yeah,” Kyle said, grunting as he went up the ladder. “Just fine. Perfectly fine.”

“All right,” he said. “We’re going to get back into the air.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

As he reached the top, he crawled in and forward. The vent opened up ahead of him and he saw a secure room with metal detectors and a desk guy looking at some camera monitors.

Kyle crawled right, went down about twenty meters and then left again. The grate at the end was easy to remove and he dropped down into a storage room filled with shelves and boxes.

With a click of his thumb and forefinger, he activated both his topo-mask and his holo-mask and opened the door into the hallway. The bathroom was on the other side and the door opened, revealing a stunned security guard in a suit.

Kyle raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked loudly and the bullet passed through the guard’s head, puting a splatter of blood onto the stalls behind him.

A wisp of smoke rose from the barrel as the bullet casing clinked over the tile floor. Being thorough, he stepped into the bathroom, leaned down on one knee and tilted his head.

If there was a guard sitting on one of the toilets, he would know.

Unless he’s some kind of hero—then he might have the good sense to stand on the toilet. With an impatient sigh he put a round through the two closed doors.

Leaving the bathroom, he went down the black marble corridor and turned right into the main security station. There was a booth on the right and on the left, both in separate alcoves.

“Yeah,” the security guy on the right said. “And then she told me she didn’t want to anymore. Can you believe that?”

“Man, that’s harsh. Brought you all the way up to her place just to tell you to get out.”

“It’s not like I was being a douche or something. Dating is just a bunch of fucked up—“

Kyle stepped into the space between them, reached his pistol under his arm and shot the first guard. “What the fuck?!” the other screamed just as Kyle—in the most dramatic fashion possible, spun and shot the other in the head.

His neck whipped back and blood filled the chair behind him as he slid out onto the floor. “Done and done!” Kyle said. “Scratch two overlord lackeys!”

“Yeah,” May said. “We saw that.”

“What?” Kyle asked, his heart jumping in his throat as his cheeks heated.

“You forgot to turn off the live feed when you starting this little open mic party.”

“Shit!”

May laughed.

“Focus,” John said. “We’ve got work to do.”

Kyle clicked off the live feed.

I’m such an idiot!

Shaking his head and still feeling embarrassed, he grabbed the guards by their belts and slid them across the slick tiles to make sure their feet weren’t visible from the entry door ahead.

He got on the right side terminal and started scrolling through the camera feeds.

“Well?” John asked. “You got the floor?”

“Man, hold on. Strogaus industries has like, a billion cameras!” Almost feeling dizzy with the crazy feed, he finally stopped when he came to the feed titled CEO Reception.

“Got it!”

“What floor?”

“Two-ninety-six.”

“All right,” May said. “Can you use the camera to find out which face of the building is closest to his reception desk?”

“Uhh…” Kyle said. “Yeah, hold on.” He activated the camera. Ahead he saw an elevator and a corridor with glass panels. Very fancy shit. Panning the camera to the right, he saw a wider area of the reception desk with other cubicles.

He panned the camera left and found a second elevator, but next to that was a panorama of glass windows looking out. “Okay,” he said. “So on the left side, right next to the desk, we’ve got another scraper out there with a large neon sign.”

“What’s it say?”

“Umm…” Kyle felt embarrassed to say.

“Well?” May asked.

“It’s the Triple X building.”

“Triple X, huh?” May said. “Isn’t that like a big nightclub?”

“Not exactly.”

“What is it?”

“It’s… you know.”

“No—not really.”

“Kyle? Lexa said cheerfully.

“Yeah?”

“I believe Miss May is trying to make you feel uncomfortable by forcing you to tell her that Triple X is in fact an adult sex toy conglomerate.”

“Hey,” May said. “You snitched me out.”

Kyle breathed out a sigh of relief. “Oh, is that what it is?” John was conspicuously absent from the conversation. “Didn’t know they had ‘conglomerates’ for that sort of thing.

“Actually,” Lexa said, “it’s a multi-billion dollar industry, Kyle.”

“How do you even know this stuff?”

“I know everything.”

“Wipe that smirk off your face.”

“You can’t see me, Kyle.”

“I still know you’re smirking.”

Lexa chuckled.

“All right,” May cut in. “Enough monkey business. Be ready to back me up, yeah?”

“You got it,” Max said, glancing toward the security elevator next to the exit doors. “If you get into trouble, I’m….”—he looked at the numbers—“three floors above you, so I can be there in no time.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“All right,” John said. “Let’s do this.”