Giant Robots of Tunguska by Dave Robinson

Author:Dave Robinson [Robinson, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Doc Vandal Publications
Published: 2017-11-06T05:00:00+00:00

#

Doc sat quietly in the middle of his cell; listening. The building had begun to quiet down around six, and he had spent the time since then building a mental map of the building. He started by building a picture of the parts he had actually seen, and once he had that image held securely in mind lowered himself into a trance state. The deeper he went, the more he focused on what he heard, letting faint echoes slowly build up a picture of the spaces around him. The Prefectural Office was huge, and there were a lot of closed doors so it was hard to pick up too many details.

What few he could discern showed a largely empty building with guards at all the entrances he could sense. Even after most of the people had left and the night shift arrived there were still two guards in the guardroom. At around eleven o’clock he started hearing more movement from upstairs, probably the cleaners seeing as he hadn’t seen any around the building when he arrived.

After a deep cleansing breath, he brought himself back out of the trance. He couldn’t trace movements throughout the building, but at least his mental model was nice and sharp. The concrete floor was cold beneath his stocking feet, which wasn’t surprising considering he’d heard the furnace turn off right at six. Reaching inside his waistband, he felt around until he found a small knotted thread among the stitches. Catching it in his fingernails, he gripped the thread and pulled. The hem unraveled, revealing a small pouch less than an inch on a side. Pulling it open, he revealed a tiny set of tools including a pair of folding lock picks and a small blade.

After extending the lock picks, he slipped one arm through the bars and twisted his wrist to get the picks into the keyhole. After another breath to center himself, Doc closed his eyes and eased the pick into the single entry deadlock. As he explored the lock with the pick, he built up another mental picture, visualizing the interior of the lock and position of all the pins and tumblers. Each quiet clink of metal on metal helped Doc build another picture element, the same way a bat used echolocation to navigate at night. His lock picks were small and he had to hold them carefully so that they didn’t fold back on themselves inside the lock. Luckily, the Japanese hadn’t bothered with expensive locks so there weren’t many tumblers.

A moment later, the last pin dropped, releasing the bolt. Now came the tricky part; Doc had to turn the cylinder to retract the bolt while keeping all the tumblers in the open position. Carefully manipulating the picks with the tips of his fingers and thumb, he applied just enough pressure to start the cylinder turning.

He had barely got it into motion when one of the guards yelled from the guardroom, followed immediately by the peal of alarm bells. Despite the shock, Doc forced himself to keep focused.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.