Thief: Part Twelve by _joleveeflareporeon |  |
Prologue
You have to admire the kid for his intelligence, eh?
Not everyone can break into a museum without getting caught, of course, his
mission's only just begun... Well at least we know whom he gets his IQ from
anyway... at the moment the mood's getting tense and Viper's mission is standing
on the edge of a dagger. Take one step to the side and it will fail...
Just then, a patrol shone his flashlight into
the Battledome exhibit, causing Viper to jump back, shrinking against the wall.
Seconds later, the beam departed and Viper calmed down. He glanced back at the
hall. None of the guards were close to him. Without any hesitation, he tore
across the room, careful not to make a sound. Only when he was safe behind the
desk did Viper take a breath. He sneaked a look over the desk to be sure that
none of the watchmen had seen or heard him. With a single paw he awoke the sleeping
computer by tapping the mouse gently. The black screen flickered and lightened.
Viper scrolled down the list of icons before finally clicking on the one that
read: 'Security'.
The screen refreshed and now showed a list of
all the different alarms. The Lupe clicked on the one that was called Laseralert3000.
Suddenly, his heart sank as a password entry window popped up. If he wanted
to shut down the alarm, he'd have to hack in. Viper covered his eye with one
paw and punched in a few random letters. He clicked Enter and waited for the
screen to refresh. Password denied. This time, looking at what he was doing,
he typed in 'Rainbow Swirly Thing'. Once again, password denied. The mutant
growled softly and typed in '0003trelaresal'-Laseralert3000 backwards. Three's
a charm, right? thought Viper, pressing Enter. The window refreshed and
this time, to Viper's great surprise, it read 'Password accepted'!
The screen refreshed and brought him to a page
of options. Near the top of the page was a box highlighted 'Activated'. Viper
checked the box beside it, switching it to 'Disabled'. He scrolled down to the
bottom of the screen and pressed 'Accept changes'. The moment the screen refreshed,
Viper closed all the windows and ducked back under the desk. He peeked around
the desk's edge. The guards were walking about normally. No one had been alerted,
thankfully. Making sure that the watchmen were already occupied, he sprinted
across the room like a bodiless shadow.
Sure enough, when he arrived at the Rainbow
Swirly Thing's case, the lasers were no longer there. Viper grabbed the key
lock straight away and began picking at it with the screwdriver. He grunted
disapprovingly. The end wouldn't fit; it was too big! The thief lay it aside
and stuck one of his recently sharpened claws into the lock. He twisted it around
a bit until the lock clicked satisfyingly. Quickly, Viper yanked open the lock
and unlatched it. The next lock was the padlock. He pressed his ear flat against
the glass as he twisted the knob, listening for clicks. At last, the bolt on
the inside snapped open. Now, the only lock remaining was the fingerprint-activated
lock. Viper had no clue what to do for this lock. Then it struck him. The laser!
The Lupe took out the handheld laser and flicked it on. Slowly, he touched it
to the lock. At first, nothing happened, but then it began melting away. Four,
maybe five minutes later, the lock was nothing but a smoking hole. Viper looked
around for guards, then swung the glass door open, removed the artefact, and
shut it again. Viper sighed and ran over to the wall from which he had descended.
Hey, mused Viper. I climbed up a rain
gutter. How much harder can a wall be? He climbed up onto a glass display
case to give himself a boost of about ten feet before starting on the wall itself.
Holding the two tools and the amulet in his mouth, he stood on his hind legs
and dug his fore-claws into the wall. Like the pole, he pulled himself up a
few feet before using his back paws. Pressed against the wall, he camouflaged
perfectly. Even the guards wouldn't see him. Climbing up slowly and tranquilly,
he crept up the wall before pulling himself through the hole from which he came.
Actually, before he left the museum, he did one more thing, perhaps out of instinct.
Viper took the laser in his left paw and, on the wall beside him, carefully
branded in the form of a snake.
Then, he climbed through the hole and looked
over the edge of the roof. Sure enough, the van was parked exactly where it
had been before, and Draken was padding around it impatiently. Viper suddenly
had an idea. He took the laser and turned it on himself. He aimed the beam at
the tracer on his neck. After a while, a section of it melted away and it snapped
off.
Just as he hoped, Viper heard Scorpion shout.
"We lost the signal!"
"What?" roared the Kougra, flipping around towards
the van.
Viper took this opportunity to catwalk across
the gutter, towards the fence. There, a large tree's branch rested on the glass
roof. He padded across the branch and dug his claws into the trunk of the tree.
He then softened his grip a bit, allowing himself to slide down the trunk. Bits
of bark flew everywhere as he slid down the tree. Just before he became lower
than the fence, he sprung off the tree and landed sprightly on the opposite
side of the fence. He crept along the museum wall as he watched the other two
agents get out of the van. The trio split up and began searching the bushes
lining the fence. Seeing them fairly far away from the van, Viper darted towards
it. He swung himself into the front seat and slammed the door, loud enough to
be sure that the agents heard him. The three flipped around to face the van.
"You!" snarled Doppelganger, beginning to advance
on the van.
Viper leaned out the wide-open window, swinging
the Rainbow Swirly Thing to-and-fro in his left paw in the manner of a hypnotist
swinging a pocket watch or in the manner of a pendulum in a grandfather clock.
"Don't come any closer!" he threatened, brandishing the stolen weapon. The three
intelligence agents simply continued to advance on him.
"You wouldn't dare!" boomed Draken, but it was
already too late. Viper had slipped the amulet around his neck and was now concentrating
on summoning its ancient power. The threesome of agents gasped as the air around
them had become amazingly cold, but the wind had stopped completely. It was
as if time itself had frozen. Without warning, there a blast of colour, and
time sped forward, the wind blowing now at gale force. This continued for several
seconds until, finally, the colour faded away and time returned to normal speed.
Viper chuckled and removed the Rainbow Swirly
Thing from his neck as he saw Doppelganger, Draken, and Scorpion sprawled face
down on the grass. "Well, that's what you get when you mess with the Viper!"
muttered Viper, referring to his old Mafia alias. The Lupe looked around the
car, examining the dash. There, in front of him were the steering wheel, ignition
key, gas and brake pedals, and the speedometer and fuel gage. Beside him was
the gear, and, where the glove box should've been, there was a digital map of
some sort. Viper figured that the van was the blinking red dot and the solid
blue dot, not too far away, maybe was the HQ of the Serpent Thieves.
Nevertheless, Viper turned the key, allowing
the engine to rev up. Right away, he jammed on the gas. He heard the wheels
whine helplessly as they spun aimlessly on the grass. Puzzled, Viper gazed over
at the gear; it was in Park. Still pressing the gas pedal, he switched it to
Drive. Suddenly, the wheels stopped whining and the van blasted forwards, almost
hitting one of the unlit lampposts. Viper hurriedly released the gas and changed
to the brakes. The van screeched to a halt and Viper saw the tiny red dot on
the map do the same. According to the monitor, the Serpent Thieves' HQ was on
the very north edge of Neopia Central. The mutant studied the map closely for
a while before attempting the gas again. For the next forty, maybe fifty minutes,
he pressed the gas lightly, not allowing the van to pass 40 km/h and stopped
completely when going around corners.
At last, the little red dot on the map collided
with the blue. Viper gazed up at the giant office building that rose, at the
very least, eleven stories high. It was also very brightly lit. Man, wondered
Viper as he drove the van into the crowded parking lot. How do they keep
a headquarters for a gang of thieves this big from being discovered?
Careful not to drive over the curb, Viper parked
the white van, grabbed the two tools and the amulet off the passenger's seat,
and slammed the door shut behind him as he left the van. He figured that he
could crawl through the ventilation system. Viper padded up to the vent next
to the door, but before uncovering it, he looked up at the sign above the door.
"Must be a front," mumbled the Lupe as he read: Sand Bottling Inc. He unscrewed
the lid of the vent, careful not to let it clang on the cement and crawled inside.
It was a tight squeeze but somehow he managed to crawl through. The trek went
on quite well for a few minutes as the pipe didn't change direction, but suddenly
it came to a fork. One vent went right while the other went straight up. Viper
didn't remember being dragged down any flights of stairs when Draken and the
others took him to the van, so he didn't bother with the one going upwards.
The metal corner dug into his side as he squeezed
around the right vent fork. As far as the eye could see, there were no other
forks, but there was something else. It was a small barred opening on the bottom
of the vent. He crept up to it and looked through it. Sure enough, he was looking
down on Constrictor's office. As usual, he sat on his maroon swivel chair, facing
the many monitors on his computer. The burned chief commander seemed to be smirking
at one of the screens, concentrating very hard. Now was the perfect opportunity
to strike.
To be continued...
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