Wood Sprites

The bugging software that Louise had on the mansion’s phone indicated an incoming call. Since she’d set it up, there hadn’t been any calls, which made her think she’d bugged an inactive line. After careful checking, though, she’d discovered that the secret elves avoided most lines of communication. It put the meeting at the museum in a new light: the secret elves didn’t call someone when they wanted to talk.

She tapped an icon so they could listen to the rare conversation. Rapid-fire High Elvish spilled out of her tablet. She only recognized a handful of English words thrown in, referencing technology that elves normally didn’t have access to. Cargo ship. Overhead crane. Ammo. Someone had the unfortunate job of telling Yves about the fire in the South China Sea. The news was not being taken well. There was a thunderous noise and then silence.

“I think we got their attention,” Louise said. “Let’s take everything they have while they’re trying to put out that fire.”

36: Mischief Of Mice

“What we need are mice,” Jillian thud-thunked the baseball against the floor and vanity instead of helping Louise. “A whole bunch of mice. A herd? A flock? Whatever they call a lot of mice.”

“Huh?” Louise wasn’t sure she had heard her twin correctly. It was proving harder than she thought to raid Ming’s many bank accounts. Most of his liquid capital was well hidden in offshore accounts. She had to track all large transfers of cash and then determine who actually owned the destination company. Once she found the accounts, however, it was fairly simple to trigger another transfer to one of theirs. She bounced the money between shell companies, like a pea under a set of cups, and then dropped it into one of their super-secret accounts.

“A mischief of mice,” Nikola answered Jillian’s question, head cocked in confusion. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s so cool.” Jillian laughed evilly. “And utterly perfect. Then what we need is a mischief of mice. Robotic mice. Exploding robotic mice. A couple hundred of them. Maybe several thousand.”

Louise sighed out her anger. Dovetail and the others had already finished moving all the furniture into Lain’s old bedroom. Luckily the chaos that they were creating had distracted Anna along with the elves. Louise could feel that they were running out of time. Still, she couldn’t insist on Jillian focusing on looting Ming’s finances because it would make her twin more aware of their danger. Even now, Jillian was barely coping with their situation; they’d been playing WWII prisoner of war for two days now. Louise comforted herself with the knowledge that Jillian probably was making important progress in their actual escape. Hopefully. “Mice? What are you talking about?”

“Getting across the border on the next Shutdown. There’s a pedestrian-only gate between the North Side and the North Hills. Only Pittsburgh residents can use it to visit Earth; they’re given a bracelet that allows them to quickly cross back through the gate later without the hassle of checking visa paperwork.” Jillian put aside the baseball and glove to pull up a map on her tablet. “See, Pittsburghers park in this lot here, walk through this gate, and they’re on this dead-end street. They can walk down to this corner and catch a bus that only runs during Shutdown that loops from this bus stop to these local malls. The setup only works because none of the roads on either side actually connects to the four highways that link Pittsburgh to Earth. The normal traffic jams that happen at Shutdown don’t affect this area.”

If they could get to one of the North Hills malls, then they could take the bus to the gate. It was easy to see why April had ignored the option; the parking lot was in the middle of nowhere. Still, they could conceivably walk to Orville’s. “Why the mice?”

“We need something to distract the guards,” Jillian said. “It probably should be something small enough that they don’t call for reinforcements, but unwieldy enough that they can’t easily deal with it. Even a dozen people would be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of mice.”

“Why do they have to be robotic? Real mice would work just as well.”

“Real mice would probably just run and hide. Robotic mice could be programmed to ‘play’ and thus actively seek out humans and attempt to be chased.”

“And exploding?”

“Well — they don’t all have to explode. Just in case the EIA decided to ignore them, one or two should be able to blow up.”

It had the benefit that no one had probably tried it before; thus the EIA probably had no standard protocol for a mischief of exploding robotic mice. The biggest problem with the plan, however, was sheer lack of time.

“Where are we going to get that many robotic mice in twenty-six days? And have them modified to explode?”

“It’s a work in progress.” Jillian thud-thunked the baseball and caught it in her glove. “Maybe they could just have tasers.”