Stellar

five

"Put your arms where I can see them!" The officer's voice booms through the room. My arms shoot up, I feel my heart sink.

"Turn around! Nice and slow!" Wow. We really fucked up.

12 hours earlier

"Visit them? Are you crazy?" Tate says astonished.

"I can look up the interior of the building and find the places we won't be spotted by cameras and-" Alejandro gets cut off.

"That's insane! We could get in serious trouble." Kairi intervenes.

"Do you want to find the cure or not?" Ale's focus pans to Mattia, his expression was unreadable. The room goes silent for a minute before Mattia speaks up.

"We should do it. If there's a chance I can be normal," He looks at me with hopeful eyes,"what do we have to lose?"

"Um maybe a clean record? This is trespassing, a misdemeanor." Tate looks at everyone, hoping to be acknowledged. 

"How about like two of us go in, the rest can be a look out. We can wear something over our faces just in case someone sees us." Ale suggests.

"That's nice and all, but what if we get caught?" Tate butts back in. Ale opens his mouth to speak but realizes he doesn't have an idea. 

"We won't?" I say, uncertain. Everyone just shrugs and agrees except for Tate. Ale spins around in the chair and starts going at it on the computer again. All of us lean in and watch him open a bunch of programs and look up random things, I couldn't help but let my jaw drop. In about 5 minutes, he pulled up a full interior map of the lab that showed red dots where the cameras were located. It also showed shaded parts on the map that were picked up on the cameras.

"How did you even..." Mattia drags on his words.

"I have my ways." Ale smirks looking back at him. "I'll print this map out and then we can draw a path for us." We let Kairi take over the path drawing because he was the most creative out of all of us. He placed it out on the desk, showing us his plan.

"Whoever is sneaking in can come in through here, the only people that should...," He looks up at all of us to emphasize,"SHOULD go through here are people that drop off shipments for equipment and shit. That works out good because there isn't a camera in sight until this hallway on the right, which leads straight to the main pod." He pauses. "Got that so far?"

"Yeah keep going." Tate says.

"Whatever you do, do not enter that main pod. It's a huge circle and a camera could catch you like that." He snaps his fingers,"Keep going down this hallway until you get to this last door on the left, this should be where all the important files are kept and hopefully what we're looking for. But the problem is, it's most likely locked." Kairi looks over at Ale, waiting for him to say something.

"What?" Ale asks confused.

"You're the tech genius. How do we get in there?" Kairi says.

"I don't fucking know, it could be a key lock or a retinal scanner for all I know." Ale throws his hands up. Kairi starts to tap his pen on the desk, thinking. 

"I can bring a lock pick. If it's not a normal lock and key we'll just get out of there ASAP." I suggest. Kairi nods in agreement. 

"I can't believe we're doing this." Tate mumbles. "So who's going in?" She clears her throat. No one volunteers so I decide to take one for the team.

"I'll go in because I have the lock pick." It stays silent for a second before Mattia speaks.

"I'm the reason all of you guys are doing this. I'll go in." Everyone seems content with the decision and we start to pack up and get ready.