Max Collins - Before the Dawn

Max watched from the shadows as the plump guard checked the door at the end of the hall, then disappeared into the stairwell, to continue his rounds on another floor. She waited to make her move, listening to the door click shut and the guard’s footsteps — he was going down — on the metal stairs dissipate.

Then she all but soundlessly sprinted ( This is the Golden Age of silents, she thought) the last fifty feet to the exhibit’s door, circumvented the alarm, picked the numeric push-button lock, and took a long deep breath.

The lock and the alarm were the easy part. Mines, activated only when the museum was closed, lay beneath the floor, and lasers hooked to infrared beams crisscrossed the room with barely a foot between them. Taking one last look at the floor plan Kafelnikov had so thoughtfully provided, Max memorized it, tucked it away, and plotted her course of action.

She opened the door, slipped inside, and eased it shut behind her. The chamber was windowless and silent, reminding her of the solitude of the barracks at Manticore after lights-out. Half a dozen glass cases stood around the room, each bearing props from a movie called Titanic.

A tall display case in the corner contained a mannequin wearing an old-timey diaphanous white gown, while a similar glass case in the opposite corner held a mannequin of an attractive if baby-faced young man in a tuxedo.

Three long, flat cases were arranged in a triangle in the center of the room. One held silverware, another a model of a ship, and the third one was an arrangement of still pictures from the motion picture.

At the far end of the room, encased in a Plexiglas box, under a narrow spotlight, her prize caught her eyes: a gigantic blue diamond on a silver chain encrusted with smaller diamonds.

Max knew little of the film, which apparently was famous. Television was limited and very controlled in the post-Pulse era, and, anyway, she didn’t care for fiction... what was the point? Few people in made-up stories lived more interesting lives than she did.

But she did know — thanks to Moody — that although everyone back in pre-Pulse days had thought the great blue diamond, the “Heart of the Ocean,” was merely a film prop, it had indeed been real, a ten-thousand-dollar necklace commissioned by the director who later donated it to the Hollywood Heritage Museum.

“Its true value,” Moody had told her, “is known to few — why attract thieves... like us? And to the public... those who still care about silly ancient celluloid... the magic of the prop is enough to make it stand on its own as a tourist attraction.”

Funny, Max thought. In this town where dreams once were manufactured, one of the most famous artifacts was a fraud of sorts... because it was real.

Now the famed Heart of the Ocean lay only twenty-five feet across the room from her.

And if she could retrieve it, and get out of here with her skin, the Chinese Clan could fence it for enough money to set them up for years to come.

Her breathing slowed as she prepared for the final assault on her prize. She popped a huge wad of gum into her mouth and started chewing slowly, methodically. Withdrawing from fatigue pouches two good-sized suction cups with pressure-release handles, Max attached one to each hand with inch-wide nylon straps and looked up at the ceiling. She had less than two feet of open air between it and the topmost infrared beam.

The young woman leapt straight up, arms outstretched, suction cups sticking to the ceiling with a sucking kiss. Taking in a deep breath, then letting it out, Max pulled herself up until her neck was bent to one side and she held herself up with her arms akimbo.

Even for a soldier with her unique talents, the strain was severe.

Next she slowly pulled up her legs and stretched them out in front of her, as if in a ballet exercise. She now sat, head cocked to one side, hanging from the ceiling above the beams by no more than six or maybe seven inches. Moving across the room folded up like this would be no small feat.

Glancing down at the necklace, she formed half a smile. No guts, no glory, she thought, and that blue rock was serious, serious glory not only for her, but for her whole clan.

Releasing one suction cup, she held herself up, eased it forward as far as she dared, and attached it again with its tiny puff of a kiss. She repeated the action with the second cup and found herself a foot nearer the prize. The muscles of her shoulders bunched and burned, but with her breathing, she compartmentalized the pain, putting it out of her mind.

Few on earth could have done this. Max had had this ability since childhood.

Sweat trickled down her face, dripping onto her shirt front as she single-mindedly made her way across the room, still casually chewing the gum as she went. She had completed her action with the cups nine times now and not only did her shoulders burn, but her biceps, triceps, quads, hamstrings, and glutes were each in the middle of a three-alarm blaze of their own.

A voice in her head that sounded uncomfortably like Colonel Lydecker’s reminded her that pain was the price of achievement.

Shut up, she mentally replied, and kept moving the cups forward.

Finally, after what seemed like forever but had only been six minutes, she found herself directly above — if barely able to cock her head enough to see — the Heart of the Ocean.

She had maybe a foot and a half of clearance on each side of the Plexiglas box. As if the trip over here hadn’t been enough, now the job would get really tricky. In that tight space, she would have to remove the cubic foot of plastic, snatch the necklace without setting off the alarm, then suction-cup her way back to the door.

No problem.

Taking one hand out of a suction cup, Max snugged her knees up, then slowly rolled backward, letting her feet come up toward the ceiling as her head lowered toward the box. About halfway home, her body tucked into a sphere only slightly larger than a beach ball, she slipped her shoe into the empty strap of one of the suction cups.

Satisfied the strap had her securely, she let go with her other hand and swung her other leg up and into that strap. She now hung upside down, her head barely a foot above the necklace with its glimmering stone.

Working quickly, Max picked the locks on each side of the case, lifted the Plexi box straight up, withdrew the gum from her mouth and affixed it to the top of the lid. Then she rotated the thing so its top was down... and eased it toward the floor.

This was the part that worried her most.

Her arms were not long enough to reach the floor. She would have to drop the box the last couple of feet or so, and hope to hell the wad of gum held it in place and kept it from bouncing into one of the infrared beams.

Letting out her breath, Max released the box with as light a touch as possible. It dropped to the carpeting with a dull, barely audible thud, then rocked toward the beam...

... but righted itself, and stopped.

Step one accomplished.

Pulling a utility knife from a pocket, Max leaned in close to the displayed jewelry. Only one wire connected the necklace to the alarm, but she would have to work gently not to set it off.

Blood was rushing to her head, and she could feel her face growing hot, like a flush of terrible embarrassment... just a little longer and everything would be fine... fine...

Hanging there upside down, Max wished absently that a dash of bat DNA had been added to her genetic cocktail — then maybe this stunt wouldn’t make her so dizzy. Carefully scraping back the plastic coating on the wire, she exposed about two inches of gleaming brass strands, put the knife away, and pulled out a wire of her own with alligator clips at either end. Attaching the clips at both ends of the section she’d cleared, Max took out her wire cutters, slowed her breathing again, and clipped the alarm wire in the middle of the cleared section.