The Resistance

the blueprint of the building right in front of him. If he thought hard enough, he could probably remember how he’d got here from reception, then he could work out where he was. His brow furrowing, he found his eyes travelling up towards the air vent. It was small. Difficult to reach. And well sealed.
    Jude scanned the room. And then his eyes lit up. In the corner, at the back of a shelf, a paint tin sat, discarded, and a painting tray with a scraping tool sitting in it, both caked in stark, white paint. One out of three problems solved. Listening out for the guard’s footsteps, Jude picked up the scraper and, putting his foot on the shelf, he lifted himself up towards the ceiling.

Chapter Twenty
    It took Jude a minute or so to get his bearings, and a couple more for his eyes to adjust to the dark. The only light came from the vents below him, which was barely enough to see by. The space above the ceiling was hot and dusty and full of cables, heating pipes and air-conditioning units; his progress was torturous and uncomfortable. But he scrambled as quickly as he could, stopping every few seconds to listen out for the beep of an identi-card opening the door to his cell. He had gone over his route from reception in his head and if he was correct, he was only a few metres from the Pincent Pharma Energy Centre, which was also on the ground floor, next door to the Security Centre.
    Frantically, he crawled; he had only minutes, he knew that, and the seconds were ticking by. He didn’t have long enough to find the girl, didn’t have long enough to do anything, except . . . Except buy himself more time, Jude told himself.
    Finally, he arrived at his destination. As he’d expected, above the Energy Centre the ceiling was crammed with devices, with wires, with routers and rerouters. Carefully, he looked around, then alighted upon the mainframe, the hosting computer that ran all of Pincent Pharma’s energy supply. The monitors were below in the room itself where employees and guards sat; Jude could hear them talking. Little did they know that above them, the mainframe routes could be found, that by connecting them to his handheld device, he had access to the only computer that really mattered. Feeling the sweat begin to drip from his forehead, he reached out towards it, took a deep breath and got to work.
    The damage would have to be small, impossible to find but devastating in its impact he decided, as he bypassed security and navigated on to the system set-up. He could hear the sound of heavy footsteps in the corridor outside the Energy Centre, and had to wipe beads of sweat from his forehead. Something that would look like a power cut. Something that would shut everything down for at least twenty minutes ideally.
    The seconds were ticking by – Jude knew that his absence might be discovered any minute. And then he found it. A connecting code, one of thousands of links embedded in the system. One change would render the system useless and it would take days, maybe even weeks, to find the error. Deftly, he changed one of the letters, keyed in a delay of ten minutes, then frantically, crawled back down towards his cell; twice he thought he had arrived back, only to find that the air vent beneath him was fixed in place. Finally, he found the vent that he’d taken out, swung back through it, and closed it behind him as best he could; as he landed on the ground, it fell open slightly. Quickly, he began to climb back up to fix it in place again, but stopped suddenly when he heard footsteps coming down the corridor. Dropping to the floor, he dusted himself down and looked up guiltily, just as the door swung open and a guard appeared, well-built, head shaven.
    As he entered, he eyed Jude suspiciously.
    ‘What’s going on in here?’
    ‘Nothing!’ Jude did his best to hide his breathlessness, put all his effort into feigning the outrage and frustration that the guard would be expecting. ‘What can go on? I’m in a cupboard. But if you don’t let me out I’m going to scream blue murder.’
    ‘Scream?’ The guard grinned and pulled out a chair. ‘You do that. No one’ll hear you. These rooms have been soundproofed especially. You can scream all you like.’
    ‘I want you to let me go,’ Jude said angrily, trying to stop his eyes from darting involuntarily towards the air vent, which was dangling precariously. ‘It’s against the law to keep me here against my will. I’ve done nothing wrong.’
    ‘Think the