Caitlin struggled to control the minicopter. It was overloaded, of course, which was bad enough, but it was also having trouble staying aloft inside the elevator. Helicopters require a constant flow of air to fly, and it just wasn't moving around fast enough in the enclosed chamber. She wished the ride would come to an end and the damn doors would just open!
"Why don't you just set it down?" came a voice nearby, only barely audible over the steady beat of the rotors.
Caitlin looked over to see the woman named Becky sitting in the copilot's seat. She was looking at Caitlin curiously, with hardly a trace of fear in her eyes. "I can't," the agent replied. "I need to move the instant the door opens. We don't want to still be in here if the door shuts again."
"Oh, yeah, I guess that's true," said Becky. "Sorry, I'll keep my mouth shut now, so you can fly."
Caitlin didn't answer, because the elevator had finally stopped climbing. She knew this because she'd been compensating for the effects of motion on the toy-sized machine, and now those had come to an end. "Hold on, everybody!" she called out as the doors slid apart.
The instant there was enough room to fit through, she leaned forward on the stick and moved the minicopter through, into the hall beyond. The other women in the helicopter gasped at the sudden motion, holding on to their chairs and each other for dear life. Caitlin was sorry they had to be so uncomfortable, but it was that or leave them behind!
She stopped the helicopter in the open area beyond and rotated it slowly around, trying to get her bearings. "Aw, crap," she muttered under her breath, for they were now hovering inside a dingy-looking stairwell. Behind them, the elevator doors slid shut with a clank.
"What's wrong?" Becky asked beside her.
"This is supposed to be the roof!" exclaimed Caitlin. "We'll never get out of here at this rate!"
"It's all right," said Becky calmly. "There's a window over there, see? Can't you just take us through it?"
Caitlin glanced over at the woman in the co-pilot's seat. She seemed completely unfazed by what was happening, which was more than Caitlin would've expected. She knew if something like this had happened to her, before she joined the MAT, she'd have been scared out of her wits. Or perhaps not, she thought after a moment. Hadn't she, herself, eventually settled down and enjoyed what was going on?
Well, there was no time to wonder about such things now. She brought the copter up to the window, hovering in front of it. "The damn thing's closed," she swore. "Even if we could throw that latch from here, there's no way we could ever lift it at our size. I knew I should've had Carl follow us up here!"
"How could you have known?" asked Becky. "Maybe if you just find a corner to land in or something, that evil man and his scumbag partner won't find us."
As if to argue with her, the building suddenly shook in front of them, and a few wisps of dust floated down from the ceiling. "Well," replied Caitlin calmly, "that's not really what I'm worried about at the moment. I think they're making plans to leave. Tell you what, I'll see if I can shoot out the glass."
"Shoot it out?" asked Becky, grinning with surprise and anticipation. "You people sure do have a lot of cool toys!"
Caitlin didn't reply, for she was too busy throwing the switches that activated the twin miniguns attached to the bottom of the chopper's undercarriage. These were another of Tom's wonderful inventions, but unfortunately, they were far from perfect. They had a real tendency to jam, or even blow up when fired. That was why they were mounted as far away as possible from anything vital. "Hang on," Caitlin said, mentally crossing her fingers. "I sure hope this works!"
She pressed the firing stud even as she rotated the minicopter quickly from left to right. Only one of the guns fired, laying out staccato bursts and causing multiple holes to appear in the glass ahead. Some of the ladies further back in the compartment screamed at the sound of gunfire, but other more level-headed ones quickly calmed them down. "Damn!" cursed Caitlin. "They didn't shatter it, they only put some holes in it."
"What now?" inquired Becky. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Not that I can think of," replied Caitlin resignedly, "unless you want to swing out underneath this thing and give that pane a couple of swift kicks."
"Okay," she replied. "Sounds like fun! How do I get out?"
Caitlin just stared at her, mouth hanging open. At first she thought Becky was joking, but now, seeing the interested look in her eye, she knew that wasn't the case. Becky was completely serious! "There's no way," she replied absently. "Thanks for offering, but I'll go do it myself. I'll have to land for a bit, though, and--"
Just then, the building shook again. Caitlin looked up in horror, afraid she might see a chunk of ceiling coming down, but all that fell were some powdered fragments of plaster, which turned into a roiling cloud as soon as they passed through the minicopter's rotors. "Look!" Becky shouted suddenly, pointing ahead. "The glass!"
Everyone who heard her, Caitlin included, turned to see what she was talking about. As the building shook, the holes the miniguns had made began to expand in ever-widening cracks. It seemed as if the pane was struggling to hold onto its integrity, but finally gave in. It shattered into a hundred falling pieces even as Caitlin swiftly backed the chopper away.
"That's it!" yelled Caitlin happily. "Hold on, ladies, we're getting out of here!" With that, she zipped the copter forward and out the window into the night.
"Come on!" Carl urged. "We have to shut down this destruct sequence fast, or we'll never get out of here in time!"
In his hand, Randi struggled to hang on without being thrown out to the floor. In her pocket, Tania similarly fought to keep a grip on the coarse leather interior, afraid that if she flew out, she'd be lost somewhere on the floor, assuming she even survived the fall.
Carl seemed to race desperately along until he reached the door to the miniaturization room, where he paused and started taking out the PDA contraption again. Almost as an afterthought, he set Randi on his shoulder, where she watched him work the device with easy skill. The machine was obviously beat up from the fight he'd had with Thomas earlier, but it seemed to be working all right, though Carl smacked it a few times. "Damn!" he suddenly yelled in a frustrated voice.
"What's wrong?" asked Randi, somewhat concerned. The building was still shaking, and chunks of plaster and other debris were falling all around her. The air was thick with dust, and while that hardly bothered Carl, she had to cover her mouth and nose with her hands to keep from breathing too much and choking.
"The password!" Carl told her. "He's changed it! He must've been expecting us to try to shut down the self-destruct. I don't like this. We could be walking into an ambush!"
"We don't have much of a choice," replied Randi, shouting through her fingers and over the noise of the latest small explosion. "If we don't, we'll be trapped here when the place goes up too."
"Okay," he replied, "let me try something here." He kneeled down on the floor, taking care not to dislodge Randi from her perch, and started doing something she couldn't see.
"What are you doing?" she asked curiously, unable to make out what he was entering. He was punching in commands faster than she could make out from where she stood.
"Bypassing the system's protocol program," he replied, his voice sounding monotonous, as though reciting something from a book. Throughout his explanation, his eyes never wavered from the screen and his fingers never stopped working. "Saul has changed it so that only his card is accepted, so I can only assume that his card has special coding that's specific to him. I'm introducing a virus I have with instructions to bypass the restrictions and force the system to recognize my scanner's code to open the door."
Randi just stared at him in amazement. This was a high school kid? Rewriting code on the fly, in the midst of a building that was about to blow up all around him? Talk about cool under pressure!
"The only problem is," Carl went on, as if his own voice was keeping him steady, "that I can't be sure about these codes I'm entering. There's no time to double-check what I'm doing, so it could either break through the safeguards and give me access to the system directly--or, if I'm wrong, it could fry the entire system and we'd be locked out for good."
Randi was about to tell him not to worry about it when another explosion rocked the hallway and almost knocked her off his shoulder to the floor. She clung to the collar of his jacket while he just kept on working, oblivious to the danger. Finally, the screen seemed to flicker. He gave it a good smack, and then it lit up with the lovely words "Password accepted." "Yes, that's it! We're in business, Randi!" Carl yelled triumphantly, and with another push of a button, he made the door slide open.
Shaking her head, Randi wondered if she would've been able to get that to work quite so quickly, even at normal size. Almost certainly not, she thought. Well, maybe if she had the right tools, but she'd have been more likely to blow the door than try to hack her way into it.
Carl seemed to relax. "When I get home, I'm going to repair this thing," he said, breathing a sigh of relief. "My uncle says it could be my ticket to a position in the Special Ops Division. I guess I can say I've field tested it, but I've got a feeling I couldn't say anything about this adventure we've been having, could I?"
Randi just grinned at him, the amusing thought of what he might put down on his resume running through her head. "Probably not, Carl. I don't think they'd take kindly to you making claims about tiny female agents running around foiling the plots of mad scientists."
"Good point," he said, probably thinking about the same concept, for he too was smiling. "I want a job, not a one-way ticket to the funny farm."
Carl took one step forward and then froze. "What is it?" Randi said in his ear, but then bit her tongue as Carl jerked back into the hallway. Randi lost her balance and fell, but Carl caught her deftly in his hand, holding her without squeezing, for which she was quite grateful. At that moment, a shot range out, and a bullet whanged off the wall somewhere behind her head.
"Just as I thought," muttered Carl, taking out the gun he'd placed in his jeans earlier on. "He's set up across the room behind a countertop. Sorry I couldn't warn you."
Randi shook her head, gathering her composure and making sure Tania was all right in her belt pouch. "Better you dodge than waste time telling me," she replied. "Besides, I'm a tough girl. You'd be surprised how much punishment we can take at this size."
"Stay where you are, boy!" called out the grim voice of Dr. Saul from deeper within the room. "If you step into the open again, I will kill you!"
Carl whispered, "Shit, he's got me pinned here! Should we just run? We need to get into that room and access one of his terminals, but I don't know how to get around him as long as he's armed!"
Randi just shook her head. Several possible actions occurred to her, and in fact, from where she was standing she could see her cable still dangling from the ceiling. She was about to ask if Carl would let her climb back up there when he turned back towards the room. "Doctor Saul!" he yelled. "There's no sense in blowing us all up over this. You're an intelligent man. You've obviously managed to make some improvements to that shrinking machine that the other group never dreamed up. Let me in, shut down the self-destruct, and we can both walk out of here alive."
Andrew just laughed at him, sounding once again every bit the mad scientist. "Do you think I'm that stupid, boy? Now that the Agency has discovered that I was working on an improved version of the miniaturizer, they'll never let me live, or let my achievements come to light. No, they'll suppress it, hide any knowledge of its existence away and never acknowledge that I was right all along. I had hoped to surprise them all so they couldn't deny that I had been right about my theories, but that's not possible thanks to you and those two agents."
At that, he fired again, and two more shots bounced off the frame of the door just next to Carl's head. Carl, though, had by then turned back to the tiny woman in his palm. "He doesn't know about you!" he whispered carefully. "He assumes there was only two of you!"
"That could help us," Randi replied, nodding, "but it won't do us any good out here."
"I know, hang on, I have an idea." With that, Carl shoved Randi into his shirt pocket, where she suddenly found herself unable to see. "Trust me on this," he went on, moving around rapidly so that she was unable to stay on her feet.
"What's he doing?" squeaked Tania from her belt pouch.
"I haven't a clue," Randi answered, but then several more shots rang out nearby. Randi hunkered down in the pocket, hoping none of them had hit Carl, or else what would happen to her then? The sound of more gunfire erupted, and somewhere she heard a crash as glass shattered with a bullet's impact.
"Damn!" Carl's voice swore. He moved around again, then without warning his hand came in and plucked Randi out of his pocket. He set her on his knee, back under cover behind a computer platform. He was, at least, inside the room now. "Any ideas?" he asked, shaking his head sadly. "I'm fresh out at the moment."
"Boy, you still out there?" hollered Dr. Saul's voice from elsewhere within the chamber, proving to Randi's dismay that he had survived the attack and counter-attack.
Carl ignored him, though. Instead, he fiddled with the computer on the table he was hiding behind. "Look, I'm going to try to keep him busy," Carl announced. "You see if you can get into the system from this computer and deactivate the self-destruct order. I can plug my scanner into one of the ports to give you access. The smaller keyboard should make it easier for you to get into the system. Since I've already cracked his password, it shouldn't be a problem."
Randi nodded vigorously. At least it would give her something to do while he took the battle to Dr. Saul. "Be careful, Carl," she warned.
"I wouldn't have it any other way, Randi," he replied. "I've got a graduation and a wedding ceremony I want to be alive to attend!"
With that, he waited out another round of explosions and plugged in the scanner, setting Randi down on the table next to it. From where she stood, she could tell, Andrew couldn't possibly see her through the bulk of the computer monitor. If he came around the side, though, she'd have to scurry off quickly. Keeping a wary eye out, she started pushing keys on the scanner, finding it relatively intuitive to use.
Randi punched the buttons as quickly as she could, almost trembling with excitement. Every time another explosion sounded, more debris and dust fell from above, and she had to fight to control her shaking hands. This was no time to get frightened, she told herself. Nearby, Carl and Andrew exchanged some nasty words, and another shot was fired, but it must have missed because the verbal battle continued unabated.
Tania poked her head out of the belt pouch. "Anything I can do to help?" she called out in her infinitesimally tiny voice.
"Not right now," replied Randi, clenching her teeth. "I'm trying to turn off this self destruct. It's not working, though."
"Damn," Tania swore. "I hate being this small! I feel so useless!"
"Don't worry about it," replied Randi. "You'll be back to normal in no time, and besides, while you're like that you've got a better chance of surviving an explosion than I do."
"Well, let's not test that theory, okay?" said Tania. "I'd rather not--oh, geez, look out!"
Randi jerked her attention away from the huge keyboard. Carl and Andrew were now fighting, two immense figures throwing blows and words at each other as they cris-crossed the room. Randi gasped as Dr. Saul's legs passed the console just in front of her. Both of the giants were pounding on each other relentlessly, and she found herself amazed that the much older Andrew was even able to stand toe to toe with his younger opponent. Still, despite his age, he actually looked like he was winning!
In fact, it looked like Carl was about to collapse, when suddenly he pulled off an amazing trick with a broomstick. Instead of attacking with it, he used it as a support to make some kind of gymnastics maneuver, taking Dr. Saul completely by surprise and kicking him all the way across the room! "Did you see that?" Randi gasped, totally amazed at what she'd seen.
"How could I miss it?" replied Tania's tiny voice from her pocket. "Even from down here, I could see that move. I've got to get him to show me how he did that. That was so cool!"