Jay Budgett - The Indigo Thief

“We needed two different retina signatures,” he explained to me as the woman ran back to her colleagues.

Behind the door, a towering warehouse five stories tall loomed. Rows of glass racks stood perfectly aligned, filled with cases of Indigo that sat undisturbed below dimmed lights. The room’s refrigeration sent a shiver down my spine as it leaked through the open door.

The vaccines were kept at a constant temperature of fifty degrees to ensure their viability. There were no workers or drones roaming the warehouses’ hundreds of rows.

We stepped inside, and the door clicked shut behind us.

Mila shook her head. “This isn’t right.”

A clock flashed 12:00. The room’s power had been recently reset. I wondered if the grand chandelier’s fall down on the seventh floor had caused it.

“You got the stuff, Meels?” asked Phoenix. She shoved her hands into her pockets and nodded. “What about you, Kai?” he said. “Check your pockets.”

I reached into my front and back pockets, and felt the lint balls I’d touched earlier. “Just these stupid things.” I moved to toss them.

“WAIT!” He grabbed my wrist. “Didn’t you learn anything from the paper clips?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I can’t trust anything around here.”

Mila rolled her eyes. “I’m pretty sure you thought that before the paper clips.”

Phoenix gripped my wrist tight in his hand. “Those are gum wrapper bombs. Altogether, they have a combined force of ten kilotons when detonated.”

“Holy shit,” I said, remembering Bertha’s comment. The others nodded. “And you wonder why I can’t trust things around here…”

Phoenix ignored my comment. “We’re going to line them along the warehouse’s left wall, spacing them equally to make the most of the blast.”

“Won’t that knock out the Indigo?” I asked.

Phoenix gestured toward my recently acquired gun. “Shoot the rack.”

“Uh… what?”

“Shoot the rack,” he said again.

I fiddled with the gun the woman had slid me, pointed it at a rack of Indigo, and fired.

Nothing. I tried to pull the trigger again.

Nothing. The stupid gun was jammed. I shook it and tried to fire again. Mila rolled her eyes. Maybe I had the safety on. I slapped its sides with my fingers.

Mila grabbed it. “Give it here before you shoot your brains out.”

She fired at the nearest rack of Indigo. The space around the rack rippled, and the bullet dropped to the floor.

“Force fields,” I muttered.

Phoenix rubbed the stray hairs on his chin. “Something of the sort.”

We lined the gum wrapper bombs along the wall, hid behind a rack farther back, and poked our heads out to watch.

I stared at the line of gum wrappers that seemed incredibly unlikely to explode. “How do we set them off?”

“It’s a somewhat scientific process, really,” said Phoenix, sucking in a breath. “Significant force must be applied to the wrapper at just the right angle to trigger an appropriate chemical reaction within its solution-soaked paper. The first bomb’s detonation will trigger a similar process in the others, instigating a chain reaction, and, subsequently, a series of detonations.”

Phoenix was really well read.

Mila shrugged. “I’m gonna shoot one until it blows.”

Phoenix nodded. “That works too.”

Mila fired at the first bundle of gum wrappers along the wall. An explosion of fire erupted. I jammed my fingers into my ears as I fell to the floor, knocked back by the chain of explosions that followed. Smoke and debris slammed against the rack’s side, but the force fields appeared, absorbing the blows and protecting both the Indigo and us. The wall the gum wrappers had been lined against wasn’t nearly as lucky: it was blown to smithereens.

My ears rang as the smoke cleared. One side of the warehouse was now exposed to open air, and the cooling system’s engines hummed furiously as they fought to keep the warehouse chilled.

Mila pointed to helicopters hovering overhead. Shit , she mouthed. Feds .

Phoenix shook his head and grinned. Not Feds , he mouthed.

Music blared and trumpets thundered as the ringing in my ears gave way to the blistering beat of mariachi music.

Big Bertha was here.

Phoenix stared at the other copters. “Caravites,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “Vern kept his end of the deal.”

I pretended not to catch the last part. Bertha’s helicopter door swung open, and Dove poked his head out, aiming a gun in our direction. I leapt out of the way as he fired. His projectiles hit the ground just below the first rack of shelves. Thin, clear nets with metal prongs rushed across the tiled floor. Phoenix and Mila each grabbed an end and secured them to the racks’ sides. As soon as the prongs were secured, they sprouted small metal legs and crawled along the racks, wrapping them in the clear net like industrial-strength saran wrap.

There was a flash of light around the racks, and then Dove held three fingers to the side of his left eye. Phoenix did the same, and the helicopter pulled away. Dove—or more likely Sparky, remotely—must have deactivated the force fields. The Lost Boys salute was merely the signal to go. The racks of Indigo flew from the building in chunks, the Indigo cargo secured by the clear, crawling net.

The other helicopters repeated the process. Nets were fired, prongs were attached to the racks by Phoenix and Mila, and then a signal was exchanged and the racks were carried away. I watched from the corner as a third of the racks disappeared through the hole we’d blown. It seemed too easy. Where were the Feds? Hadn’t they felt the chandelier fall? Or the gum wrapper explosions? Hadn’t Howey called them?

As Phoenix and Mila clipped the last copter’s net to a shelf, a plane dropped from the clouds and knocked the copter toward the ground, pulling the shelf of Indigo with it. Vaccine cases smashed into the ground, and I wondered how many kids would have to go for weeks without their Indigo as civilian screams echoed from below.

Phoenix turned to Mila. “That went better than I expected.” She nodded.

I felt sick to my stomach. The thought of crumpled bodies burning in the wreckage of the fallen helicopter made me want to puke. I ran to the warehouse’s edge and hurled through the wall’s opening.

“I’m sorry!” I yelled below, hoping my voice would carry down with the wind, but realizing that from ninety-nine stories high it was probably futile.

“No need to apologize,” called a deep voice from within the warehouse. The chancellor stood at its entrance, flanked by two dozen Federal guards. His lips twisted into a sick smile. “After all,” he continued, “we’re the ones who are late.”

“Hide!” shouted Mila as more guards poured in.

“Find the Lost Boys!” ordered the chancellor. The Feds formed two lines along the front perimeter as I stood there, dumbstruck. I pulled up my cheeseburger socks: it was time to be brave.

Mila hit me hard in the side, knocking me to the ground. “I’m starting to think you’ve got a real death wish.”

“If only I had a magic lamp.”

What good would it do to try and escape? I was dead either way. The Lost Boys wanted to kill me. The chancellor wanted to kill me. With the exception of Kindred, lately everyone seemed like they wanted to kill me. (Kindred probably just wanted to bake me muffins.) There’d be no escape. In all honesty, my odds were probably best with the megalodons. When it came to killing, at least they were indiscriminate.

Mila dragged me behind a case of smashed Indigo and pointed to the ledge where the copters had once loomed. “We’ve gotta jump, Kai, and soon.” She stared at my socks. “You better pull those socks up so damn high you get a wedgie.”