She slid her hand around the cold metal railing and started up the stairs. The first two floors went easily, but she slowed after that. By the fourth, sweat beaded on her brow, and her heart hammered against her ribs.
It would be impossible to tell if she was about to pass out and wake up as a different person with another four flights of stairs to go.
Every step felt heavier than the last, each breath a reminder that her body wasn’t entirely her own anymore. Would she make it to the eighth floor before her vision faded? Or worse—what if she didn’t know when the blackout was coming, and she put them all at risk? The thought sent a shiver down her spine.
“I really need to workout more.”
“Exercise is for the birds, Sparky. We’ll just take longer walks on the beach together.”
“Maybe you should have some stairs installed in case weever need to find a criminal organization again,” she answered with a grin as they reached the fifth floor.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “And in the interest of knowledge, the guard has started his routine walk around. He usually doesn’t go to the eighth floor, so you should be all good, but he is on the move.”
“Copy that,” Ava said, puffing for breath as her knees wobbled when she reached the landing for the seventh floor.
“One more to go.” She glanced at Kyle whose chest heaved.
“Yeah, I’m feeling this,” he said breathlessly.
Sebastian bypassed them, hurrying up the last flight. “What? I run stairs.”
“I run stairs,” Alex mimicked from the van.
“I heard that,” Sebastian retorted as Ava dragged herself up the last flight to the door leading to the hallway.
“Are we clear?”
“Clear,” Alex reported. “Guard is still downstairs checking doors. No one is on the eighth.”
Sebastian opened the door, and they stepped into the hall before he eased it shut. “There should be a file room at the other end.”
Ava flicked on her flashlight to combat the darkness in the dimly lit hall, and they moved forward in search of the space.
“Here,” she said as her beam bounced off of the room number mounted on the wall next to a wide wooden door. She depressed the handle, her heart sinking. “It’s locked.”
“Uhh, like with a key?” Alex asked. “Because I’m not seeing an electronic lock on anything on the eighth floor.”
“No, with a key coded pad,” Ava answered.
“Okay, umm, give me a second here,” Alex said. “I’m going to send a program to your phone that will search for the frequency of the lock, test every available combination andthen display the appropriate one. Just shift your phone in front of it.”
Ava pulled her phone from her pocket and held it in front of the lock, swiping it open, to find the program already running.
“Nice, Ace.”
“Do you see why we have you in the van behind a keyboard?” Sebastian asked.
“Look, I get that I’m a tech genius, Shadow, I just want to play tougher sometimes.”
“Yeah, well, when you’re the best hacker in the world, that’s the position you play.”
Ava shot him an annoyed glance as the last digit appeared on her phone. She typed in the code and a green light indicated success.
“We’re in,” she said as she depressed the handle and pushed into the room. Lights bloomed to life overhead as they entered. She toggled off her flashlight and stared at the rows of file cabinets.
“We need to find current projects or something similar,” Sebastian said, already hurrying down a row of cabinets.
“I’ll take the ones at the end, I guess,” Kyle said, striding toward them.
