A Bad Hair Day

Earlier

Earlier

Earlier that evening, the world had been a much better place for JJ. The extremely desperate and perhaps very shortsighted security guard was tied up, and his plans of showing JJ where he worked had been thwarted when he had put his hand up JJ’s dress. The shock of what he discovered was followed by unconsciousness as JJ damaged two of his perfectly manicured nails putting him to sleep behind a desk; the sleep was due to the drug he administered, while the broken nails resulted from hitting the sleeping guard as payback for painfully grabbing his balls. He removed the ID pass card along with a copy of the guard’s thumbprint on a clever little device that could be said to be a modern version of a set of picklocks and carefully made his way to the top floor.

He did not have long, but he did not need long so long as he did not break his legs in the shoes. After the first flight of stairs, he took the shoes off and carried them. If all continued to go well, he should have time to complete the task and be long gone before the alarm was raised. The office located twelve floors above the party he had pretended to attend took longer to break into than he wished, though the codes his employers had given him got him though the first set of doors had worked along with three more rooms and eventually a very secure hidden door. This took all his skills to find, let alone open, but it finally led JJ into what was not so much a room but an overgrown safe.

“Well, this is what I would call a safe room!”

It wasn’t much of a play on words, but JJ liked the sound of it.

The walls were clad in metal, as were the floor and ceiling. In the center of the room, there was a metal cabinet with a slot containing a small silver case that resembled those very expensive document cases designed for high-level businessmen who do not need to carry their own documents; they just keep a daily schedule in their heads. Documents are carried by less important people who have big, heavy cases to carry what their bosses need at their meetings and who probably could not afford one like JJ was currently looking at. It appeared to be very special and expensive and should have come with a prefix of “Bespoke” so he would be sure to check it out before leaving.

“Oh! Well, back to work!”

He removed a small box from his bag and fixed it to one of the metal walls with a satisfactory clunk. A flick of a switch lit up a display of numbers, which slowly and relentlessly started to count down from 10,000: 9,999… 9,998… 9,997 …

“Okay, job well done! Now, for the fast getaway, and maybe time for a bite to eat on the way home…”

JJ took another look at the numbers: 9,984… 9,983… 9,982… beep… 81… 80… 79… 76… 75… 74… beep… 20… 19… 18…

“What the hell!”

He grabbed the small silver case and ran across the room, slamming the door as he left to reseal the room. JJ got as far as the second room and then dove between some heavy-looking filing cabinets.

“Metal room, small bomb, strong heavy cabinets, perfectly safe… please, please, please, perfectly safe...”