Lights | A Forever Fanfiction

Chapter Five: Disaster's Descent

Dr. Morgan and Jo made me stay at the station, but as soon as they were gone and no-one else was in the office, I whipped out my laptop and opened up an incognito web browser. I had only read about people hacking into security cameras, but I really needed to know what was happening. Desperately.

My fingers skirted across the keys as I worked my way into the system. Most cameras have an online feed, and that feed can be broken into, if you just find the right one. You'd be surprised by the number of unsecured 'security' cameras that there are.

Finally, I found the set of streams belonging to my apartment building. The cameras were easy enough to control, and soon I found myself with a view of almost every part of the building.

I was just about to see if I could hack into the security database when the glass door to Dr. Morgan's office opened. I glanced up quickly, closing the lid of my laptop panickedly, but it was only the guy from before - Lucas, I think his name was. He had sandy hair and an air of inexplicable, bubbly awkwardness.

"Hey, so do you know where Henry went?" Lucas queried friendlily

I shrugged. "Off to visit an apartment building that might be packed with explosives. Why?"

"So he went off with Detective Martinez... again," Lucas sighed. "Leaving me here to deal with the corpse on our table, and you."

"That thing that they do, where Dr. Morgan begins speaking and Jo finishes for him, they do that a lot?"

"Yeah. They're like Sherlock and Watson, though Jo is more on the same level as Sherlock in this instance, so I suppose I'd be Watson, and he and Jo would be like the double Sherlock. Maybe Irene Adler and Sherlock."'He noticed me giving him a strange look, due to his incessant, nonsensical rambling. "Sorry. Usually Henry is here to, uh, stop my talking." I nodded almost disinterestedly, turning back to my laptop and opening the screen. I caught just a glimpse of two figures leaving the view of the first camera, followed by a little armada of armed, Kevlar-suited police officers, and a crew of people wearing hazmat suits. Dr. Morgan and Jo had arrived.

"What's that?" Lucas asked.

"Hacked security cameras," I replied casually, following the team with my eyes nervously.

"Oh, oh. Wait, what?"

"Don't worry about it." They went down to the basement level, the only place large enough to hold a lot of explosives, and I had to switch the sets of cameras. Lucas pulled up a chair and watched the screen with the same desperation that I carried.

What I couldn't wrap my mind around was how this 'enemy' knew that my father wanted to stop helping them. He was smart. Crazy and ridiculous, but smart. He would have had some sort of a plan, an idea of how to proceed, and-

It was as I was switching camera feeds that it hit me like a rock. It was so obvious. Why hadn't it occurred to me from the moment that Jo and Dr. Morgan made the discovery? I picked up my phone and tapped in Jo's phone number. Panic seeped through me like icy water as the phone picked up to voicemail.

"This is the voicemail of Detective Jo Martinez- Hello?" I sighed with relief as she picked up.

"What are you doing? Who are you talking to?" Lucas asked.

"Jo, you need to pull back." The urgency in my voice echoed over the low quality microphone. "They- they might be watching. The security cameras- Don't go into the basement!" I shrieked. Jo stopped at the door.

"How do you know what I'm doing?" She looked up at the camera and her mouth formed a perfect O.

"Yeah, cameras. Um, I may or may not have hacked into them, but-"

"What are you doing, Lights?" she demanded, exasperated.

"Please! Just trust me for five minutes!"

Jo glared at the camera and hung up. Dr. Morgan looked at her and asked her something, and she mumbled something else in response. He grabbed her arm, but she pushed him away and unlocked the door.

I switched cameras, and the door swung open on the other side. Jo flicked on the lights, staring into the room. I couldn't see what she was staring at, but her face explained everything. The other officers charged into the room around her, the hazmat crew surging forwards to diffuse whatever demented mechanism they saw. A shadow moved across the room, and Jo began aiming her gun in its general direction. They slowly circled around each other, and finally one of the enemy came into view. With one hand, she was pointing a pistol at Jo. The other hand was tucked under her jacket, it seemed. Clipped to her waist was a small remote that probably controlled the bomb.

And then I looked at her face. Her blonde hair framed full pink lips and harsh silver eyes.

"Mother?" I whispered.

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