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creatorofuniverses · 10 months

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Gt July Day 27 – Jewelry

Checking in on everybody’s favorite viri spy for this one! And also getting pretty caught up- I have yet to do anything for today’s prompt, but sure feels good to catch up for the last week or so!

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Virian was, despite herself, on another mission with Steele.

She had tried, oh she had tried, to make this a solo job. The less she needed to work with a human – and a human as arrogant as Steele, at that – the better. Unfortunately, their mutual employers were all too eager to team them up at every given opportunity, and Virian could only make so many excuses before logic won out.

“You’ll get there faster, going with me,” Steele had said. Debatable, but likely true in the end, given that humans didn’t have to worry about stealth on public transportation. “And I’ve got my part of the job in the same location. Besides, once you have the goods, I can hand them over personally, which the bosses always appreciate.”

The “bosses”, as he put it, had never before had a problem with Virian leaving “the goods” in secure drop boxes. She was known in these circles, after all. Her usual demands weren’t even really demands anymore, just facts of her employment. She was invisible, in her own way, and that was what made her a great spy. They couldn’t rightly complain that she wanted to stay invisible to everybody.

Everybody except Steele, that is. Oh, how she wished she could put that particular cat back in the bag, but alas, he knew her secret- he was well aware that she was only five and a half inches tall, and, damn him, he wasn’t hesitant to use that fact when arguing with her.

So she’d… hitched a ride, and now was thankfully inside the walls of this mansion rather than riding through the front door in the inner pocket of Steele’s suit jacket. Ah, the glorious transportation options of a viri spy.

“This feels more like petty burglary than anything else,” she muttered, knowing that her headset would take the annoyed mumble directly to Steele’s ears. She’d gotten all too used to having somebody to talk to while on the job, which was yet another thing she rather resented him for. It made no sense for her blunt hatred of him to be tempered by his usefulness. “I mean, stealing jewelry out of this lady’s bedroom? Hardly necessary for a master spy to do that sort of thing. A simple thief would work.” Any viri could do this; they wouldn’t need all the expensive gear Virian had strapped to herself, and really, neither would she, not on this simple of a job. She’d brought it anyways, out of an abundance of caution; but that was both a viri thing and a spy thing, so really she’d never considered doing otherwise.

“You really have no shame, do you, duckling?” came Steele’s voice, a low, wry comment from a human probably schmoozing with other humans halfway across the enormous house. “Calling yourself a master spy.”

“Steele, you have absolutely no room to talk to me about a lack of shame,” she shot back. She clambered up and over a support beam and started to look for an entrance into the vents. “And my point stands.”

“It’s not just jewelry.” There was a pause – well, there was a spree of Steele talking jovially with somebody “important”, which Virian always tuned out – before he explained in a whisper, “There’s supposedly some sort of secret code embedded in that particular piece of jewelry. A ring, I believe it was?” It was. Virian knew, because a ring was something she could lift; huge diamond necklaces, not so much. “So, it’s less about stealing jewels and more about finding secrets. I would say that’s perfectly within the job description.”

Virian just grunted in reply. Fair enough- not that she would say as much to Steele. It would go straight to his overlarge head.

Finding a section of the vent that was a little loose, Virian slipped through it, her cloth shoes nearly silent on the metal. She walked along until she discovered a vent grate leading to the master bedroom; from there, it was a matter of basics. Make sure the room is empty, slip out of the vent, dart from shadow to shadow and stick underneath the furniture when possible. She was doing this when she was nine. It hardly offered a challenge. Her grappling hook got her up to the lady of the house’s vanity, and from there it was a simple matter of finding the jewelry box.

Which was locked. How cute.

Virian knelt down, keeping an ear out for anything out of the ordinary, and stuck her hands into the lock. Years of practice made it easy to feel out the tumblers and get them in the right position; a quick twist of her wrists and the lock popped open. Of course, then her hands were covered in old grime, but that was easily wiped off on her pants. She, for one, didn’t have to look good for anybody; she left all the human interaction to the humans.

Heaving, Virian opened the heavy wooden lid, and grinned in at the jewelry this revealed. It glinted in the light from the windows, all glimmering gold and shining silver. Jackpot.

She leaned over, hip-deep in treasure, and rummaged around until she found the ring described in the briefing. It was rather plain all told, especially compared to the rest of the pieces in the box- just a simple gold band, one lonely sapphire inset on one end. As Virian freed it from the pile, however, her natural eye for detail (and her size, which made details that much more obvious) illuminated the edges of a shallow engraving along the inside of the ring. She tilted it, letting the grooves catch the light. It looked like a cipher of some sort.

She grinned, looping the ring through her arm and letting the lid to the jewelry box fall shut again. She locked it again for good measure, then set off with her prize.

Whatever secrets the ring held, they wouldn’t stay secret for long.

#gtjuly #gtjuly2023 #my writing #virian

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creatorofuniverses · 2 years

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Gt July Day 28 – Scavenger Hunt

This was a fun prompt, especially since I decided to write some characters I haven’t introduced much yet- Virian, a viri spy, and Steele, her... frenemy? Partner in crime? It’s complicated. Their first meeting was rough (and is a story I’m still working on) but this drabble takes place much later, after they’ve reconciled a bit and been partnered together for yet another mission. It’s a bit of a long drabble, but I hope you guys like it!

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The party was in full swing. Sleek, expensive cars rolled up to the entrance, their doors opened and keys accepted by waiting valets. Sharply dressed men and elegantly dressed women wandered through various parts of the luxury estate, from the reception area where important people mingled to the grounds overlooking the nearby coast where fountains burbled and people strolled across the manicured paths with drinks in hand. The chatter and wine both flowed freely, meeting gleaming, curated smiles and polite words. Everybody here had connections of some sort, to politics or fame or money older than some countries; everybody wanted more.

Including a well-dressed gentleman wearing a tuxedo and a charming smile, who floated through the crowd shaking men’s hands and paying women compliments. He was here to glean what he could from all those connections- after all, the right knowledge could be more powerful than even old money. He could learn a lot from the prime minister who laughed at his jokes, or the idol who found him charming; but he had his sights set a little higher.

This estate belonged to somebody with more connections than most: the patriarch of an influential crime family, who dealt in information gathering, weapons smuggling, and the sabotage of international elections. Somewhere on these grounds all of those juicy secrets were waiting to be found by an enterprising spy. Steele had taken this assignment as a compliment when it was given to him.

Well, when it was given to him and one other spy. Virian was a contractor, a spy for hire, one of the most enigmatic and exceptional spies on the continent.

She was also under six inches tall and very unhappy with him.

“I can barely stand all the schmoozing you’re doing,” came the quiet, irritated comment. His earbud carried her small voice clearly despite her being across the house and likely inside a wall somewhere. “How do humans manage to waste so much time? Always talking for so long and saying nothing at all.”

“It’s a dance of words, duckling, and a party, neither of which I expect you to understand,” Steele murmured under his breath, smiling at and greeting a few people as he walked past. Once their attention was elsewhere again he muttered, “Did you find it?”

“I think so. There’s a basement sub-level. Looks like a storage room, but there’s definitely a safe in the wall down there. A big one. Not easy for a lumbering brute like you to get to though- the only way down outside the walls is an elevator in the study. Study door’s locked, elevator needs a security keycard. Camera in the study, heat-based alarm system down in the storage room.”

Steele forwent the ‘lumbering’ comment in favor of making himself a mental map of the challenge ahead. “Alright. Meet me in the bathroom off the west hallway.”

“Anything to get a break from all this useless human chatter.” She still sounded grumpy, but Steele just grinned and headed toward the rendezvous point.

The bathroom was as luxurious as the rest of the manor, spacious for a single occupant room and tastefully decorated, but Steele wasn’t here for the decor. He locked the door behind him and stood by the sink, smoothing his lapel and making sure his hair was still suitably styled while he waited. Virian was good at what she did, shockingly so given her size, but it did take her much longer to get places. He’d learned that commenting on this only got him an earful, so now he just tried to exercise patience.

Not one of his strong suits. He was checking his watch for the tenth time when the outlet by the sink popped out of its casing and a small woman emerged, clambering past the cords that trailed alongside her through the new hole. Steele straightened and looked down at her as she stood and brushed herself off.

She looked fairly normal, all things considered. Her brown hair was tied back into a ponytail and she wore all black, the better to hide her relatively pale skin while she navigated the more shadowy parts of buildings. She wore no-nonsense boots, a belt full of tools, and a backpack that housed some tech as well as enough space to hold a few things. If she were human, she would look like any other Ops agent; but she was standing on the sink and leaning against the faucet like it was a telephone pole, so she couldn’t look like anything but herself.

“Took you long enough,” Steele griped.

She angled a flat glare up at him in return. “Some of us can’t just stroll down the hall,” she testily reminded him. “I was halfway across the house and you knew that when you picked this spot.”

A consideration Steele hadn’t actually made, though he wasn’t about to admit it. “Doesn’t matter,” he dismissed instead. “Here.” He held out a quarter of a sticky note, upon which he had written a list.

Virian took the piece of paper – it looked as big as a restaurant menu in her hands – and frowned at it. “What’s this?”

“A scavenger hunt,” he replied. She angled her frown up at him as he explained, “I need some things to get into that safe downstairs, and if I go snooping now my chances of getting caught later escalate. I want you to gather them while I continue to put on appearances around here.” She didn’t say anything, studying the paper again, and he helpfully added, “I made the list really tiny for you and everything.”

“Thanks,” she said, her tone as dry and unamused as her expression. Even so, she folded the sticky note even smaller and stuck it into her belt. “Give me an hour then meet me by the door to the study- it’s past the foyer and at the end of the south hallway.”

Steele smiled, an expression most found charming but which just made Virian roll her eyes. “You got it, duckling.”

“I hate you, you know that?” With the ritual of their banter now complete, Virian scrambled back through the open outlet, pulling the cords behind her until the cover popped back into place once more. Steele couldn’t help but marvel at it for a moment- it was as if she was never there, gone without a trace.

Just like he would have to be soon- but not yet. For now, he made a point of rejoining the party, making sure no suspicion ever fell on his shoulders.

Meanwhile, Virian made her way through the walls of the manor, the ever-present noise of the party muffled behind drywall and support beams. She preferred it that way. There had been missions before where she had been forced to huddle in Steele’s pocket while he danced with words or whatever, and it was horrible every time. Not to mention the indignity. At least this way they each played to their own strengths.

Hers, of course, were much the same as any viri’s: navigating through the walls unseen, taking what she needed in secret, being generally quiet and inconspicuous. Steele hid in plain sight; Virian just hid.

She got to a juncture within the walls and paused, pulling out the list he had given her. If she was going to scrounge up what he needed in an hour, she would need to take the most efficient route through the manor she could.

Making her decision, she folded up the list and set off once more. Scavenger hunt, she scoffed internally. As if her whole life wasn’t one big scavenger hunt.

The supplies were easy enough to find. She snuck out of the vents and rummaged through the lady of the house’s beauty supplies for some. Next came the kitchen, where it was easy enough to dart across the counter and dive into one of the drawers while the cook was yelling at the servers for ruining the appetizers. The garage was empty at the moment, making it all too easy to transfer some of what she needed into her own container. By the time the hour had passed, her pack was nearly full and she was hiking over to the south hallway.

Steele was waiting for her as she shimmied her way out of a vent grate, sidling over to stand in the shadow of an ornamental vase out of habit. Not that there were any other humans around at the moment, but it was better safe than sorry- and Virian had been sorry before.

She wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t sorry this time either as Steele reached down and wrapped a hand around her, yanking her up through the air before setting her atop a nearby side table. “Your grace continues to astound me,” she sarcastically quipped, pointedly brushing the new wrinkles from her shirt. “I could have gotten up here myself, you know.”

“No time,” Steele dismissed. He couldn’t wait on her for everything. “Did you get what I asked for?”

“Yep.” Virian dug around in her pack, dumping things onto Steele’s outstretched hand as she pulled them out. “Bobby pins. Bunch of aluminum foil.” She had folded it up into a small enough square to carry, but when she saw Steele frowning at it she assured him, “It’s more than it looks. Also, the glue you asked for.” She placed a makeshift bag of plastic wrap, tied with twine and filled with milky-white glue, next to the small folded square of aluminum foil.

The bag of glue had looked basketball-sized in her tiny hands, but on Steele’s palm it was barely larger than a blueberry. He tilted his head and raised his eyebrows slightly, unimpressed. “Hope that’s enough.”

“Hey, you want the whole bottle, go find it yourself.” Shaking his head, Steele took the bobby pins and dumped the foil and glue back into Virian’s arms, before grabbing Virian and putting her back down near the grate. She kicked his hand as it retreated. “What, pray tell, was the point of putting me up on the table just for that?” she demanded, putting the supplies back into her bag before she wound up with glue all over herself.

“I don’t enjoy kneeling on the ground,” Steele easily replied. He retrieved a small device from the inside of his suit jacket- it looked almost like a miniature USB stick, albeit with a sharp, square metal tip instead of a drive sticking out. He handed it to her. “I need you to get up to the camera while I pick the lock. Stick this onto the AV output wire. Do you know which one that is?”

Virian made a face up at him. She couldn’t help but snipe, “Of course I do, I didn’t start doing this yesterday.”

Steele just smirked. “Fair enough. Tell me when it’s done.” She didn’t bother to reply, opting to disappear back into the vent rather than bickering more, and Steele stood. With one last wary glance down the empty hallway he grabbed the bobby pins and got started picking the lock on the study door.

Just on the other side of the wall, Virian peeked out of the vent leading into the study. The camera was easy enough to spot- it nested in a high corner towards the back of the room, its focus on the door and the elevator. Its blind spot would be right below it. Luckily, there seemed to be another vent opening just behind the desk. Virian quickly made her way over there and, checking her vantage point once more, darted out of the vent and along the baseboard, quick and too low for the camera to notice.

Standing right in the corner, directly beneath the camera, Virian pulled her grappling hook from its resting place on her belt and took careful aim. Her line shot straight up, wobbling a bit but allowing the hook to catch amongst the tangle of cords and metal attaching the camera to the wall. She hit a button and all but shot up through the air, clambering up atop the back of the camera once she was up there.

Flinging herself up ten feet in a matter of seconds was still preferable to Steele plucking her off of the floor.

Focusing, she found the cable she needed and shoved the small device onto it with her full strength. The metal tip sliced through the rubber casing and bit into the wire itself, inserting the drive into the connection. A small blue light atop the device began blinking. “Camera’s secure,” she informed Steele over the coms.

The door clicked and then the knob turned, Steele sliding in and softly closing the door behind him. He glanced up at the camera and the small woman perched behind it. His hand flicked up, a plastic card held between two fingers. “Snagged this off a security guard who looked a bit brighter than the rest. Here's hoping it’s high enough clearance.”

“And here I thought I had provided all the critical supplies,” Virian quipped.

Steele came over and stood below the camera, looking up at her for once. He held out his cupped hands and suggested, “Just jump, duckling. I’ll catch you.”

Virian scoffed. “Full offense Steele, but I don’t trust you that much.” She swung her leg back over the bundle of cables, readying her hook and line for the trip down.

She didn’t even have to look to know that Steele had his hand over his heart, a dramatically aghast expression on his face. “Duckling, you wound me.”

“That could be arranged,” Virian promised. She had plenty of sharp objects at her disposal. A scar on Steele’s palm could prove it. “Move along, Steele. I’ll meet you down there.”

Steele blinked up at her. “You’re not coming with me?”

“And risk getting stuck in an elevator with you if something goes wrong? Pass.” She much preferred having her own routes, and therefore her own exits.

“Fine,” said Steele, not all that bothered. “The heat sensor down there is too far for me to get from the elevator, you’ll have to cover it with the foil before I step out into the room.”

“Possibly before you even get down there. I’m pretty sure the elevator is within its scope,” Virian informed him. She loosened her line and all but fell back to the floor, stopping her momentum at the last moment before landing lightly on her feet. Now instead of being below her, Steele loomed above her, a fact she steadfastly ignored. “Better let me go down first and give you another all clear.” She hit a button on her belt and her hook retracted its prongs, the line reeling down until she caught the slender attachment like a baton and clipped it back where it belonged.

Steele looked down at her with one eyebrow raised. “Better get a move on then,” he suggested. “Time is money.”

“Just as long as somebody else is paying.” With that, Virian disappeared into the walls once more.

Virian made it down into the storage room and up behind the heat sensor, much as she had done with the camera upstairs. She pulled out the square of aluminum foil and unfolded it until it was a sheet about thirty centimeters across on each side. Setting the bag of glue in her lap, she untied it and carefully dipped each corner of the foil into it, making sure to keep her hands clean. Then, gripping only the edges so that her own slight heat wouldn’t come within the scope of the sensor, she carefully lowered the foil over the sensor’s face. The corners stuck where they met the plastic and she held the foil there for fifteen slow, slow seconds, until the glue had dried enough to hold the foil up on its own.

She had tied the bag of glue back up and was putting it in her bag, getting ready to give Steele the all clear, when the elevator dinged. Virian immediately closed her pack and ducked down behind the sensor, her heart pounding steadily and her grip on the bracing she sat on tightening.

Either Steele had come down early without waiting for her signal – a decision that would be reckless even by his loose standards – or there was trouble.

The elevator door slid open and a voice broke into the room alongside heavy footsteps. “-so you’re gonna tell me what you’re doing here with my security card, pal, or we’re gonna have ourselves a problem.”

It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened, but Virian cautiously peeked out from behind the heat sensor anyways, silently gauging the situation. Steele was held at gunpoint by a burly man in a security uniform, scowling as he marched the would-be thief into the room and demanded answers. Not that Steele was providing any, as the spy simply stared ahead, his mouth shut. The guard growled and jabbed the gun a little closer to Steele’s skull. “Talk, or we’ll get the answers from your corpse.”

Well, this wasn’t going well. Moving silently, Virian opened her pack and rummaged around for one of the basic supplies she carried with her. Once again it looked like it was up to her to salvage this mission. And maybe save Steele’s life, or whatever.

She pulled out a ball bearing and threw it towards the guard.

The tiny metal sphere clacked when it hit the ground next to the guard’s feet, and he glanced down at it in surprise. That moment of hesitation was all Steele needed. The spy grabbed the gun behind him even as he twisted, yanking the firearm away before the guard could so much as reflexively squeeze the trigger. Steele kicked the guard in the knees, eliciting a grunt of pain, before flipping the gun around and clobbering the man on the head with it. The guard dropped like a bag of lead.

“Oh good, you’re still alive,” Virian commented from up high.

Steele glared up at her before smoothing out his expression. “Yes, duckling, thank you for that. Now jump, we are running out of time.” He held out his hands and this time Virian had no choice, not when they’d already been compromised. She made sure nothing was attached anymore and jumped, landing in Steele’s palms with an impact that knocked the breath from her.

She sat up and directed Steele to a false panel in the wall, which swung open to reveal a large safe. Steele held his hands up to the dial and Virian stood, putting her ear to the safe wall so that she could hear the delicate inner mechanism catch as she slowly but steadily turned the dial with both hands.

One number… another… and finally, the third. A much louder latching sound came from the safe as it popped open. Steele transferred Virian to one hand, making her stumble to a seat, and swung the safe door open with the other hand. Inside were neatly bound stacks of cash, guns that were most certainly illegal in this country, some very nice jewelry, and documents- papers, binders, notebooks, you name it. All the information they needed was here.

They didn’t have time to look through it all, however. Steele set Virian on the ground and began shifting through, scanning for keywords and grabbing whatever he could. Sheafs of documents were stuck inside a black leather journal, which he then tucked into the back waistband of his pants, letting his suit jacket cover it from sight. As he folded papers and tucked them away where he could, Virian sidled towards the nearest vent, anticipating their departure.

It came sooner than expected. An alarm blared to life, shrieking between the concrete walls as the lights overhead turned red and flashing. Virian’s heart was in her throat even as Steele glanced up at the heat sensor. The foil still held- something else must have tipped them off. “Looks like the party’s over, duckling,” he announced over the alarm, slamming the safe door shut and closing the panel. “Time to leave.”

“See you at the drop point,” Virian yelled back, already halfway into the vent. She slipped inside the walls and put her hands over her ears as she walked away, her clipped pace nothing compared to Steele’s pounding footfalls out in the room. He dashed to the elevator and it shut once more, carrying him upstairs, where he was bound to either fight his way out or somehow blend in with the crowd.

Virian, meanwhile, would make her own way out without anybody noticing. She couldn’t help but grin even as the blaring alarm made her ears ring.

They’d found something pretty good, for a scavenger hunt.

#my writing #virian #gtjuly #gtjuly2022

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