The Gambit (11 page)

“Emily, slice off a piece from another limb—something different.”

I could hear her fiddling with the scalpel. I reached for another slide and pushed it in her direction. She put the new slide underneath the microscope and I saw the image change.

As I focused the lens, the cells were
all
the same. The nuclei damaged, the cells stuck in a dysfunctional mitosis, and pre-cancerous growths.

I walked around from the image display. Emily stared at me wide-eyed.

“Look,” I said quietly. I backed away from the table and let her see our discovery.

“It’s not Strontium,” Emily gasped. She stepped away from the image and faced me. “They lied. They
lied
about what it was.”

“Then what is it?” I asked.

“Perhaps Cesium-137. It appears to be evenly distributed throughout the soft tissues. There are other isotopes that act in the same manner, but this is definitive evidence that this cat’s radiation exposure was from something other than Strontium-90.”

Behind Emily, there was more congestion in the hallway outside the lab. The day was beginning.

“We have to clean this up, take a few more samples from its soft tissues, and dispose of it properly. Like you said, it’s not worth the risk of Professor finding out.”

She nodded and began taking more samples, preserving them in vials as she did so.

“I can’t believe your hunch was right…and to think, out of all the specimens you’ve brought in without radiation exposure and now this. How much did you spend on that cat?” she asked.

“I gave the homeless lady a hundred bucks. She put up a good fight, but I told her if the cat really
was
in the Danger Zone on Black Monday it wouldn’t live much longer. She confirmed it had been ill, and I told her we might be able to heal it in the lab.”

“You liar,” she replied, shaking her head in disapproval.

I shrugged. “All in the name of science, Emily.”

“That was probably her only friend.”

“She had a dozen more surrounding her,” I said. “I have a heart too, you know.”

“Or so you claim,” she responded with a smile and continued packing up the equipment.

I heard someone at the door, a student, trying to get in with their palm on the scanner. It was being denied.

“Shit, hurry!” I urged her. “Keep our samples locked away and get rid of the cat. I have to make a phone call.”

In light of my discovery, I hadn’t the slightest idea of what to do. How could I report something that the government had tried so hard to destroy? My dad potentially could help, but he would want more evidence before he made a claim that bold. He would need something peer-reviewed, something more. I took out my phone and dialed the number for the EPA. I had someone, someone on the inside who had kept quiet and lied to me about the very evidence I now had. Perhaps
she
could help…

Emily was running circles around me, and I could tell she had cleaned quickly enough for our experiment not to be revealed to the student trying to get into the lab.

“EPA, how may I direct your call?” said the voice on the other line.

“Can you please connect me to the office of Ms. Walling?”

I had managed to make it into the city without any issues. The streets were filled with morning traffic, and I pulled up to the curb on the side of the bank. I saw a meter when I stepped off my bike. I wasn’t going to be here long anyway, so I ignored it and began my walk to the entrance.

My heart pounded out of my chest. I could feel the cold metal of the gun in my right hand inside my jacket pocket.
What am I about to do right now
?

I was having a hard time preparing mentally to rob the bank, but as I neared the shiny revolving door, I swallowed hard. This was
necessary
.

I walked into the bank and pulled the gun out of my pocket. I aimed it toward the ceiling and fired two shots.

Screams filled the bank and the employees froze.

“Everybody listen up!” I yelled and walked towards the counter. My heart was in my throat. “If you make one wrong move I will blow you the fuck away. Don’t try anything stupid! Stay down on the ground!” I commanded, waving my gun around at the people lying flat on the marble floor. I turned and pointed the gun at the employees who all had their hands up.

“I hate to put a damper in your day, I really do,” I shouted, my voice echoing throughout the lobby. “But I’m going to have to step behind the counter and get into the vault.”

As I stepped behind the counter a female employee was just a foot away. She was younger, short-haired, and she stared at me, shaking her head side to side with tears in her eyes.

“You can’t,” she whimpered. “It’s locked.”

I sighed with relief as I watched the piece of script that contained the Chinese bank’s routing numbers processing. The script executed seamlessly. I sipped my coffee, which wasn’t helping my racing heart. Having stayed up for over twenty-four hours was beginning to make me delirious.

Suddenly, it hit me. I just became a millionaire.

I grinned and laughed, shaking my head, and thought of how hard I had worked my entire life…and to think, I just pressed enter and waited thirty seconds.

I opened the minimized window of the security cameras at my bank to see Owen approaching the vault door. I almost spit my coffee out.

Shit
. I opened our network mainframe that I was booted into remotely and began searching for the correct scripts that were associated with monitoring the vault’s lock. I knew from experience, the vault door sent out a ping every time it was opened or locked. What I needed to do was essentially send the lock a message wirelessly to unlock itself.

I found the right script. I reversed the code and sent it back to the lock.

Nothing.

My stomach sank. I saw Owen pulling at the vault’s lock.

I tried again.
/Denied
.

Angrily, I hit the enter button over and over.

/Denied

/Denied

/Denied

/Denied

“Fuck!” I shouted and slammed my fist against the desk.

Owen continued pulling on the vault’s lock. He wouldn’t stop trying.

Remember what I told you, buddy. Remember
…

I began searching for another route. I had to search the event log, to find the last time someone opened the vault. The password would have been manually entered into the keypad, and the ping would be encrypted to protect the numbers themselves.

Whipping around, I waved my gun at the employees in front of me. I was beginning to sweat from the adrenaline. I glanced down at my watch. I had pressed the timer the moment I walked in. Three minutes had passed and my backpack was still empty—no money.

If it happens to not work, there is a woman with red hair who is in one of the offices. She is the manager of the bank. Only she will have the code to access the vault
.

Grey’s words echoed in my mind. I kept my gun aimed at the employees and left the vault door. There were four offices in my view, and I peered into the first one. A brunette—she was on the phone. “
Get off
the phone,” I threatened, pointing the gun directly at her. She hung up and kept her hands in the air. I went to the office beside her, another brunette. The corner office, the fourth one, was the largest. My instincts were leading me there, and I followed. There she was, dressed in a black business suit and had
red
hair.