Alternia Comics

   "Excellent. Well done." Gennson clapped slowly, looking at Anna. "Explosives are your specialty, you say? I, for one, could not be more impressed."
   "Can it." Roland silenced Gennon's commentary before Anna did more than glare menacingly at the doctor. "Let's just get this over with quickly and get this day behind us." The smoke and dust settled and the team stalked through the open door, pointedly ignoring the scorched dent in the concrete floor around the other corner.
   Julian sent a Long-Legs drone, its softball-sized body suspended on eight spindly legs, to add his presence to the team. The drone was the most maneuverable ground robot in his collection, and Julian thought of it as his best spy. It could skitter along the ceiling and hide in small, shadowy corners. It quickly caught up to the team and at Roland's signal preceded them down the corridors. Julian checked the spider's position against the blueprints of the building. "This should be the target room." The little robot bobbed on the ceiling above a door. "Five minutes until the scheduled patrol."
   "Understood. You're up, kid." The team avoided using names as a matter of course while on a job. No matter how good Mariah's surveillance jammers were, they couldn't stop a curious guard from eavesdropping; Roland refused to trust them 100% and insisted on giving away as little as possible.
   Mariah stepped forward, examining the electronic lock on the door. "10 digit keycode, two minutes. Biometric scanner. Tricky... normally three minutes minimum."
   "Better cut that down. You've got --"
   "Four minutes, fifteen seconds." Julian interrupted Roland.
   Mariah pulled out her hand-held computer gestured toward the lock while tapping the screen. Anna drew her KA-BAR, stalking quietly up behind Mariah. Three quick flicks and it was over, the knife was sheathed again and Anna stepped lightly past the girl.
   "Thank you." Mariah drew a pair of leads from her pocket and clipped them to the freshly exposed circuitry of the lock, its panel dangling four inches lower than its mounting bracket on the wall. The girl keyed another sequence on her device and the numbers on the lock's readout began cycling quickly through likely combinations. Mariah pulled another hand-held from her pocket and executed the hand-print program she wrote, keying in the specific make and model of the scanner she had to trick. The first device chirruped and the lock's indicator light went green.
   The leads were removed and reattached to the biometric scanner. Her program worked on a simple principle: every scanner had a database of valid inputs, and a log of recently used inputs. All she had to do was read both sets of data and trick the scanner in to thinking it had just scanned a valid input, usually the most recent success.
   The lock on the door clicked and Mariah pushed lightly on the door, opening it.
   "One minute, ten seconds. Hurry up, guys." Julian's spider was watching the hallway for signs of approaching guards.
   "We're in." Roland ushered the team through the door and closed it quietly behind them as a guard shone his flashlight down the corridor. "Great work, kid."
   "This looks promising..." Gennson held a print out in his hands. "What is it we're here for again? And can we take anything extra?"
   "What'd you find?"
   Anna rolled her eyes at the doctor and walked around the room, scanning for threats.
   "Research notes. They're close to a breakthrough in light-weight, small-scale, high-capacity power plants, suitable for, well, just about anything that needs power. Cybernetic arms with wrist-mounted laser cannons capable of leveling a city block every minute? All you'd have to worry about is heat dissipation, power consumption's taken care of with this." He waved the papers around a bit.
   "Jesus..." Roland whispered under his breath. "Grab it. That's what we're after, a new power source. No idea it'd be that powerful though."
   Gennson put the notes in the empty bag he was carrying. "That's a theoretical max, and couldn't be sustained for more than half an hour or so. A couple of years away, but still..."
   "Right. Notes aren't everything though. There should be a prototype around somewhere."
   "Oh God... I think I found it..." Mariah sounded uneasy. No sooner had the others spotted her than she ran back to the door. She sat down, one hand on her stomach and the other wiping her face as she doubled over.
   Anna was the first to the table Mariah found and kept a wary eye on it. "What is that?" Roland asked Gennson as they approached it.
   "The host." A child lay on the surgical table its eyes closed. Roland guessed it to be no more than nine or ten years old. Its ribcage and abdomen were splayed open. The heart was plainly visible, pumping in a normal rhythm while the lungs worked on either side, inflating and deflating in time with the child's breaths. Most of the rest of the internal organs were scattered around the table, resting in silvery bowls. In their place within the body was an oblong, rounded metal device.
   "Christ. Is it ... alive?"
   "She, and yes, technically." Mariah began sobbing quietly as Gennson spoke. "Though I doubt very much the quality of life, the child is still alive."
   "Can we move her?"
   "Absolutely. The machine can be transported quite safely." Gennson paused as Roland looked him in the eye. "Oh, you meant the girl. It will not be easy to move her without killing her. She's not hooked up to a respirator, which is in our favor, but we can't simply wheel her out of here split open like that. Infections aside, we'll get quite the look rolling her down the street."
   Roland was in no mood for Gennson's humor. "Stitch her up. We're leaving."
   "Shift change in forty-five minutes. That'll be the best time to slip out." Julian looked over the guards' rotation schedule. "Everyone will be in the monitor room, briefing the next team. I can spoof the cameras. You'll have six minutes."

   "Tell the client that if he wants us in the future, we'll need to know more about what he wants." Roland threw the packet of notes on to the table. They spun slightly and slid to a stop in front of Grace's plate. "That's where we'll be to exchange the cash for his merchandise." The diner fell silent for a moment after Roland stomped out the door. Grace waved the waitress over to pay for her half-eaten meal.