Gabe grunted after changing lanes. He knew he was being tracked, and he didn’t like it.
He knew it had to a be a standalone device, and knew that they couldn’t be dumb enough to put it under the seat like most beginners did, so he put his right hand behind the dashboard and began looking for it on the wiring. He hoped they were lazy and hadn’t cross-wired it with anything else, else he would’ve have to park to remove it, and that didn’t sit with him well. He didn’t like to waste time.
It didn’t take him long to find it. He didn’t felt any wiring leading directly to it, so he yanked it away. He looked at it and smirked. They weren’t stupid, just lazy.
It felt hot to the touch, so he knew the cube shaped device was indeed transmitting a signal. He rolled his window down and threw the device away.
With that out of the way, he turned his attention to the cheap insta-comp hastily attached on the center console. The odds of it having a secondary tracer software running were high, since they were cheap to install –especially with pirated software- and easy to track, so with one hand on the wheel, he began typing on the micro keyboard below the dot matrix display, looking for any code or software running on the backburner, maybe hidden as a shadow executable. He searched for several minutes and couldn’t find it.
He grunted, unsatisfied. His eyes began to dart from the insta-comp to whatever was in front of him, careful to go on the right side of the horizontal line and hit any cars. He accessed the main micro-server and unblocked the tracking software for common accessing. He hit the program, and indeed, it was off. He found out just in the time to break before he hit a truck at a high speed, which would’ve sent him ricocheting up in the air.
He rolled his eyes. They were lazier than he thought.
He drove for fifteen more minutes until he found a nice, dark place between two buildings in a hover platform to park. It was obvious enough to make people who saw him not suspect a thing, and dark enough to make most people miss him entirely anyway, which was also helped by the apparent proverbial rain of the city. First thing he did was pull the insta-comp out of its socket on the car’s center console and yanked it off, careful not to cut the important wires. He was pretty certain he was going to need it later.
Then he got off the car and checked the trunk. He was welcomed by the sight and the fresh smell of laundered guns. Several pistols, shotguns, rifles, and even two SMGs, all with three of four of their respective clips, along with an empty duffle bag and some rope.
He checked the duffle bag. It was empty. He rolled his eyes and focused on the guns. So far the Medici family had proven to be not very good at their job, so he checked the weapons they had provided, just in case. He believed there were very good chances not all of their had been taken care of properly.
He was right. All of the gun’s sights were off and at least two loading chambers were busted. The rifles feared a little better, with only one crooked barrel and two had botched nozzles. The shotguns were specially modified to have triple shot, turning it into a cannon, but ironically only one of the mods was assembled properly yet all of the shotguns were dirty, rusted, and didn’t work, one even having a malfunctioning trigger. None of the SMGs worked, having broken loading chambers.
He rolled his eyes as he took a toolbox from the trunk and began disassembling the guns. There wasn’t much he could do, not without the proper equipment, but he could make a good gun or two if he cannibalized enough working parts of all the others.
After ten minutes of constant assembly, disassembly, and testing of each component, he managed to rescue one rifle, one shotgun, and a pistol. The SMGs were impossible to salvage.
He checked the clips. Those were impossible to screw up, so he would’ve impressed if they had actually found a way to ruin those. In the end, he had switched the triple mod from the shotgun –since he didn’t trust the loose fit- to the rifle, although it took some improvisation and change some cosmetics with the butt of a screwdriver. The pistol was the easier to salvage, only taking straight parts replacements.
Luckily, they weren’t. The ammunition worked and the clips fit, which was what mattered in the end.
He tucked his weapons, insta-comp, clips, and rope into the bag and closed the trunk with the scraps still inside before setting the car on reverse and letting it fall and crashing in a tail dive from the platform to the city and below. He didn’t trust it.
With bag in hand, he walked down the dark hallway until he reached the parking lot of both buildings. He looked around and couldn’t see a security camera. One of the guards was making his rounds on the other side of the lot while the other was taking a nap on his chair, so he shrugged and walked to the farthest car.
It was an old Jurta Karu model. Small yet somehow bulkier than the usual car, with a huge compressor with exposed tubes and wires on top, and neon lights on the side. He knew the type. Popular with car modders with no money and wannabe gangsters looking for a cheap getaway car. You could find spares parts practically everywhere, even more so in the dark underbelly of the city.
There was a reason for that. It was the easiest car to nick in history.
Gabe looked around twice and saw no one around paying any attention to him. He liked it that way, more so in that moment than usual. He put his back on the main door and discretely shoved the tip of the screwdriver on the wedge were the lock was. The forced it inside with a small his on top of the butt of the screwdriver before moving it left, right, down, and then left again.
He heard a too familiar click. He turned around, and the door opened wide.
The car stank of wet cheap carpeting and cigarette smoke. He ignored the stench, sat down, threw the bag on the passenger seat, closed the door to shield himself from the relentless rain. He grunted when he saw a leak on the roof.
Gabe looked at the dashboard. Whoever owned it didn’t seem to know that all Jurta Karus had a huge design flaw on its wiring, and he could tell because the owner had taken no precaution against said flaw. He shook his head as he pulled the hazard warning light switch, popped back in again upside down, stepped on the accelerator and the break at the same time, and just like that, the car turned itself on without a key.
Not wanting to waste any more time, he took off, merged into a horizontal traffic line, and vanished from view. He knew that by the time the guards saw something was amiss, it was going to be too late.
