-- BEGINNING OF EXCERPT --
He
was perhaps twenty steps beyond the doorway, outside security camera
range, when he suddenly bore to his right and began skirting parallel
to the front of the building. He checked his tablet: still within
range of their network. He switched apps and pulled up a simple
window with a large cartoon picture of a bomb in the middle, in the
middle of which was the single word BOOM!
He grinned at his own whimsy as he crouched behind a decorative
maple tree growing from a hole in the concrete entrance patio. At the
moment only he was aware of his charms; soon the whole city would
know them intimately. Of course he had to reserve a bit for himself,
but that only served to spice up his own experience of the intricate
plan now beginning to unfold.
Thirty
seconds…
Steam
clouded out from his mouth as he huddled near the tree, his gaze now
glued to his watch as the digital numbers ticked down the seconds he
had left. At the twenty second mark his finger moved to hover over
the obscene little picture of the bomb, and at fifteen seconds he
mashed it a little harder than he needed to. QX computer code began
to stream across the screen, duplicating itself across the invisible
data connection into the giant building beyond. Gerald watched the
code with a face full of almost childlike expectation; an eager,
hungry face that
twisted into a grin when he began to see his success in the code.
Inside
the building, in the languid atmosphere of the glass guard booth, a
warning began to flash on the security camera feed. All three guards
glanced up and soon found themselves glued to the screens in a daze
of non-comprehension. Each screen blinked, stuttered, then dissolved
into strange code that streamed across a dark background. The master
intrusion alarm began to sound and red lights lit up the entrance
lobby. Tony looked back at the other two guards, his face ashen. “Did
either of you two mess with our camera feed data?” The pair of
guards shook their heads back at him, their faces equally astonished.
The
screens blinked again and then turned white, and a single word
appeared in the center of each one: SURPRISE!
Zero
and zero seconds.
