The Millennial Box by Julie Steimle (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

area in the place yet not entirely closed off?" Jeff asked out loud.

Zormna pored over at the map, thinking.

"There," Agent Keane pointed to an office on the second floor. It had one window that was unreachable by rooftop. It overlooked a parking lot.

Jeff nodded. "Then that is probably where the box is."

"But how do we get in?" Zormna asked.

Jeff looked up at those watching them and leaned back, grinning at the FBI agents. "Oh, I don't think that will be a problem."

Jeff had Zormna tie her hair up in a baseball cap and wear the old leather jacket the biker had given her so she would not be so conspicuous. She did it, knowing full well how obviously Arrassian she looked when she let her hair hang. A degree of stealth was required for when they approached the area near the social club, and going natural just did not do.

They did not actually go to the official clubhouse - which was in a posh neighborhood and appeared to be a local Rotary Club - but to a storage facility that was owned by the club. It was an unobtrusive building that sat among other plain buildings. It had large front doors that could allow a truck to drive in. The rest of the building had high windows on the second floor and a barred window on the lower floor. The lower window had glass with wires in it, reinforced, and brown curtains covered it. What gave the building away as a possible Martian link was the insignia painted in gold and green on the huge set of doors. Large and ornate, the symbol was painted with filigrees and swirls and plants and the like, but in the center of it sat a tiny circular symbol, the same symbol that was branded on Zormna's right shoulder. Their vanity exposed them.

The FBI had been watching the building from a nearby warehouse. In order to avoid suspicion, Agent Sicamore never came to the warehouse himself. And most that did come in drove up in beat-up trucks and such. This time they parked in a lot a block away and all of them walked to the warehouse through back alleys which could not be seen from the other building. All except for Steele, who rode over on his Harley. This, they allowed. The man did not give off the impression that he worked for the government. And he certainly did not look entirely out of place in a warehouse district, unlike Zormna and Jeff who gave the impression they were kids playing hooky. Jeff parked his motorcycle in the lot with the FBI cars and they walked with the four agents. Zormna carried a backpack of things they both thought might help with the job, and Jeff carried another one, mostly of food since he figured they would be waiting a while.

Once they stepped into the back door of the warehouse, far from the seeing eyes of the social club's windows, Jeff opened up the bag and pulled out his cell phone - that and a bottle of aspirin. Zormna had been wincing once she saw some familiar faces and was pressing her temples to alleviate the pain that was coming on.

"Is she all right?" Steele asked, looking at her from the seat he had taken next to the stairs.

Jeff glared sharply at him. "She'll be fine."

He handed Zormna the pill bottle. She took it with a thankful nod and opened it. Swallowing the pill dry, Zormna then proceeded to look around the warehouse floor. It was empty for the most part. There was a bread truck parked on one side, and there were about twenty boxes and three wood crates in the room. A set of rough wooden stairs led up to a small office where the agents were watching the building across the street. Zormna left Jeff and walked up the wooden stairs. She stopped short on the landing.

"You!" She gasped.

Jeff heard her and ran up to see what she was staring at. There he found Agents Maya and Cameron Brown, the two black FBI agents that were sent to watch them at their summer sports camp. He smirked, still wondering if those were their real names or merely aliases.

"I thought we had gotten rid of you," Jeff said, placing his bag on the nearest table. Zormna had dropped hers on the floor, not moving an inch.

Jeff went over and picked her backpack up, placing it next to his bag. He opened up the first bag and pulled out a wrapped submarine sandwich and then another for himself, handing the first sandwich to Zormna. Zormna took it and sat down dejectedly in the nearest chair, still peering at the Browns whom she felt an intense distrust towards. She preferred the agents who at least had been open about what they were. Those two had been undercover at camp that summer.

There were several chairs in the room, five total. That, and a fold-out couch where no doubt the Browns slept. Jeff chuckled at that, as clearly both Browns were still 'camping'. Mr. Brown did not even fake a smile when he saw Jeff. Agent Brown searched back to find Agent Sicamore, who was coming up the stairs followed by Agents Simms, Keane and Hayworth. Steele stayed downstairs, talking to the FBI agents below about the plan they had set up. Two other agents came up the stairs after the four. It was Palmer and Powell, the two other agents that Jeff and Zormna had met at camp. They both gazed at the two teenagers like they were intruders.

Both teens ignored it, making themselves 'at home.'

"So," Jeff started in a light conversational manner, "this is your setup? Nice place."

Agent Keane shook his head, familiar with Jeff's casual act. He sat on a nearby chair. The other agents stared at him, waiting for some sort of snarky remark or quick movement to...do whatever. They all saw Jeff as dangerous.

"Well, can I have a look?" Jeff asked the two Browns who seemed to cringe the most at seeing him. "Have you decided how we're getting in there?"

Agent Cameron Brown looked up at Sicamore again. "They're going in? I thought we were going to keep them out of this."

Jeff grinned with a glance at Sicamore too, to see what he would say. Zormna merely smirked to herself and ate her sandwich, just listening. She had come to appreciate how Jeff worked. It was different than the military way she was raised with, but she was enjoying his style of handling tough characters while in sticky situations. Jeff had not touched his sandwich yet, though he kept it in reach - and she guarded it.

Agent Sicamore nodded with business. "We need their help, Cameron. They know things."

Agent Brown shook his head with a glower Jeff's way. "Yeah, and are unwilling to divulge."

"They got us this far," Agent Keane interjected from his seat, shrugging.

Agent Cameron Brown peered back at him narrowly.

Jeff picked up his sandwich and started to unwrap it while looking at their machinery. "May I?" He leaned over Agent Brown and peered into the telescope that focused on the building across the street. He smirked and leaned back. "You can't see much, can you?"

Maya sighed. "There really isn't much going on. And we can't get a number for how many are inside. Sometimes there are around seven that come and go, but I have seen security guards inside at the door and some in the upstairs window."

"Which means that there are possibly more inside," Jeff finished her thought.

"Exactly," she said, sharply nodding.

He took a bite of his sandwich. The agents stared at him as he munched, watching him chew for several minutes. He paused when he saw them staring. "What? I haven't had breakfast."

Jeff sat down in a chair next to Zormna. She had nearly finished her sandwich and was digging around in his backpack for a box drink or a juice.

Ignoring the hungry two, Agent Brown said to the room, "What we need to do is find out exactly how many people are inside and where the item is."

Agent Keane pointed at the upper room on their larger copy of the building's blueprints. "We figured it was probably in this room, or so they have guessed," pointing to Jeff and Zormna. "They figure it should be in a small, well-protected room."

"What is this box exactly?" Agent Brown said, turning to Jeff.

Jeff had to swallow before answering. "Valuable."

Zormna snorted, nearly choking on her mouthful of juice.

Agent Cameron Brown glared at Jeff. Jeff ignored the tension coming from the man that used to pose as his coach, continuing with his sandwich.

"It's ours, which is all that matters now, isn't it?' Zormna said, wiping her chin.

Both Agent Browns turned and looked at her.

Zormna only raised her eyebrows at them and swallowed another mouthful of her juice. The room sat silent as they ate, filled with unspoken anger over whose property it really was, which the two teenagers ignored as it clearly was the standing argument.

Jeff placed down his empty sandwich wrapper and took a good swig of his juice. He placed the half empty plastic bottle down on the table and wiped the corners of his mouth. He glanced up at them and smiled. "Ok, now we can get started."

He walked to and unzipped the backpack Zormna had brought. He pulled out several random flat objects, placing them on the table. Some were small and round, like the musical disks that come in singing birthday cards. Others were long and flat, like the zip disk gizmo Jeff had used earlier when he hacked into the social club's database. He had a few USBs. Some were just plain computer disks with peculiar writing on them, which everyone assumed to be Martian. They took secret photographs of it, as it was in Jeff's handwriting and not Zormna's. Jeff picked up one of the tiny musical-type disks and held it up, peering at it with a smirk. Jeff handed it to Agent Keane.

"This," he said, placing it is Keane's palm, "is a sensor. It can give us an approximate room reading so we can guess how many people we need to crash the place."

Agent Sicamore peered sideways at him. "So how does it work?"

Jeff pulled another gizmo out of the bag. It looked like a handheld computer game. In fact, it was a Game Boy - except shoved inside the slot used to access the games was another zip disk type object with prongs like antennas.

"We get the disk into the building, and we receive its transmission with this," Jeff said.

Taking it from Jeff's hands, Agent Keane turned it over in his hands, peering at it. Agent Keane opened the back and saw that it used regular batteries. He lifted on skeptical gaze on Jeff. "With a computer game?"

Jeff nodded.

Sicamore peered at it, pulling it from Keane's grasp to get a good look. "You can receive signals from that," pointing to the disk, "with this computer game?"

Peevishly taking it back from him, Zormna scowled. "Not the game. The computer game is only for the visual interface. It is the card inside that does the work."

"You made this?" Agent Keane asked, turning to Jeff.

Jeff shrugged with a peek Zormna's way.

"I made it," Zormna said, glaring at the FBI agent.

All their eyes veered onto her. Zormna put the Game Boy back onto the table and glowered at their incredulous expressions, as clearly they still did not believe that a girl her size and with her looks could be intelligent enough to engineer, well, anything.

Recovering, Agent Sicamore shook his head. "Ok, so how do we get it in there without them suspecting?"

Jeff walked across the room to Agent Keane and stood next to him. He patted the young-looking FBI agent's shoulder. "That's where you come in."

Agent Steve Keane glanced at the pale, dark-eyed boy skeptically. "What do you mean?"

Jeff glanced at Zormna, and she nodded back at him.

"Well, if they haven't seen you already, then