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“Is a silver spoon really a blessing?” The static of Pip’s voice hummed painfully in his ear, followed by a swift adjustment to the earpiece disguised as a habitual glasses tilt. Hands and shoulders brushed against entitled strangers in the crowd with artificial smells filling his nostrils as he subtly made his way in closer proximity to the two people on the stage who he was really there for. As he tuned out the loud chatter and listened in on the speech, he noted that the current moment gave him a perfect opening; the Whitestones had just started their signature long-winded speech they frequented at each and every public signing to their usual philanthropist works for causes such as scholarships for underprivileged students, grants for public schools, charity galas themed around empowerment, whatever they were giving away their blood money for this month.
With a turn, Lev headed to the back of the vast room. In his peripheral he could spot several cameras and guards on each corner, other than that, the security seemed weirdly scarce. “What’s with you all of a sudden?” he finally replied with a soft whisper under his breath, voice overlayed by the deafening classical music blasting from the surround sound speakers.
The security guards gave him a once-over as he went down the hall to the restroom. Upon entering the room Lev locked it shut, promptly entering a stall before stepping onto the closed seat of the toilet. “I don’t know… just thinking about it. I mean, if you’re rich like those bastards out there it sure as hell would be nice." The unclear signal created a rasp of a noise that made Lev shift uncomfortably while he shuffled in his pocket to unveil his screwdriver and proceeded to reach up to the miniscule screws of the ceiling vent. “But then you gotta hold big events like these to give yourself a good name. That surely sounds like a drag and a waste of money if you ask me,” A clink sounded when Lev carefully removed and placed the metal vent cover atop the toilet seat.
One look into the vent and he knew that this wasn’t going to be a pleasant journey, dust littered on every corner of the small way. “I regret letting you in on this,” Lev scoffed despite himself as he lifted himself up into the vent, his body fitting with minimal space for movement, though it was manageable. Lev began hencing forth into the dark abyss of the vents, his pathway clear as he recalled the briefing he had gone through with Pip.
Pip’s arrogant voice rang prouder than before,“Look, I’m only here because I don’t want your sorry arse to get in trouble,”
Lev huffed out an exasperated laugh, it giving off a slight echo while he navigated through the tunnels. “Bullcrap, you just want to watch me fail and get a good kick off of it,”
Silence befalled upon them before a reluctant “Touche…” Surprisingly, Lev somewhat managed to silence Pip all the way until he had arrived at his destination, the fourth floor’s hallway. He peeked beneath him to ensure that there was nobody within a close radius before removing the vent cover and jumping down with a tuck and roll. The fourth floor shared the same marbled walls and flooring; the hallways stretched eerily afar and filled with absolutely no one. Odd.
Past the numbers of carved wooden doors, he could feel his pace grow faster, impatient, desperately running with minimal noise and making sharp turns.“Lev, you really should’ve just accepted the money,” No, Lev didn’t care. He was so close yet so far, he simply needed an answer.
“You don’t understand, do you?” tone thick with his accent as irritation shined through his voice. He halted suddenly, scanning across each door’s name platings.
Pip sounded almost concerned, “Understand? You wrote dirt on the family and they went unnoticed for a reason, man. They want to shut you up, you shoulda done so,”
“What if they’re complicit?” Lev glided down each path before recognising that he was almost there.
“Oh, you’re serious?” Pip’s voice shook with barely suppressed mirth, “Everyone under the wraps knows what goes down, but unlike you they took the bread and stopped asking questions,”
Lev tuned out Pip’s voice and nearly tripped himself over if he hadn’t caught himself in time when he saw something that he had never accounted for beforehand. He leaned against the wall behind him, back pressed as he slowed down his breath and thought. What the hell was he going to do?
A singular guard was right by the archives room with a gun strapped across his chest. He began to hold regrets as he processed the situation and Pip’s words. But there was no other way, he had to get past the man. He was not turning back now, not with how far he has gotten. Without a second thought, Lev ducked out of the coverage of the wall and tackled the man from behind, arms wrapped around the man’s neck as he immobilized him and kicked aside the assault rifle, tying and tightening the strap around the guard’s neck relentlessly, his strength unwavering even as the guard wriggled beneath his grip. After a few seconds of struggling, the guard gave out, breath going slow and even as he fell into unconsciousness. Lev stood up and brushed off the guy’s body, hands jittering as he stared down at them, disbelief in his own actions.
“Lev? What did you just do?” Pip must have heard it.
He shook off his thoughts and Pip, he was on bought time, he wasn’t going to waste it. Lev turned to the archives room, shakily reaching and turning for the door knob. The moment he entered the room, he was immediately engulfed by the shadows and dust of the dull and unkept room. Despite the darkness, racks full of unaligned, unlabelled boxed documents along with several papers scattered across the ground were visible. Lev ignored all this and went straight for the admin computer by the end of the square room, booting it up.
Rows and rows of files popped up. He clicked into the first thing he saw. “I’m in,” he wasn’t sure if he was saying it to himself or Pip, but he found solace in his own words, as if affirming to himself that he was really there and looking through multiple exchanged emails, censored foundation reports, patents, contracts, graphs. It was all so stimulating for his brain that when he was done skimming through the hundreds of files both his hands froze from the keyboard and mouse from the sheer unmoored sensation that clouded his senses.
“Lev, we’re running out of time here, did you find anything?”
Thousands. The Whitestones had profited off the death of thousands. Countless fatalities due to the funding of campaigns opposing the reform bill, the manipulation and blackmailing of officials, the cover ups downplaying safety risks, their very own factories causing severe food and water contamination to which they solved by playing their philanthropy role and funding community health clinics in the affected areas. The government had inherently done little to nothing to stop the family’s actions simply because the change in economy caused by the Whitestones meant increased tax avenue, the reduction of debt value, and with their foreign exploitation overseas, it simply boosted GDP. All of the rising in the price of assets caused many to struggle with the cost of living, leading to an uprising in criminal acts. But death was good. Death meant less citizens to worry about. Death meant more money. And in the end to those who survived, it all would simply be covered up with the next posted news title of the Whitestones donating to homeless shelters and heartfelt, empathetic speeches at public government gatherings.
Lev’s thoughts were met with a harsh hit to the back of his head, effectively bringing his body to the cold marbled ground, eyes fuzzy and head throbbing. The door was open with little light spilling into the darkness of the archives room. Through it all, Lev could see two vivid silhouettes by the doorframe, the one closer to him held a gun.
“Yes, sir, we got the insurgent detained, awaiting further orders,” his ringing ears picked up the voice of one of the men speaking into their phone.
“Lev? Lev are you there? God damn it, man, what happened?!” Lev never thought he would’ve ever been this grateful to hear Pip’s loud high pitched voice.
“Pip… we were right… you have to get this to the press,” he uttered with what little words he could put together as he felt blood drip down his face.
“Hey, get rid of the little birdie in his ear,” one voice said before he felt a hand grab at his earpiece, crunching it under the weight of a polished shoe.
“Mr. President said to take him in, no possibility of a trial,”
“And the other guy?”
“We’ll find him,”
One of the silhouettes grew larger, Lev was now facing the end of the barrel of a gun. Black, sleek, a Smith & Wesson revolver, the ones seen in the movies he had always dreamt to hold one day fighting for the right cause and beating up bad guys. Not one pointed at him with the threat of reminding him of his mortality.
But nothing happened. The relief of death did not come, instead his vision was darkened with a bag over his head, sight and mind going blank as he was knocked out cold with the grip of the revolver.