Killbox Episode (?): Performance of a Lifesaver-Time

© 2023 Harry M. Frazer

Killbox Title Card

Taylor’s fingers were moving faster than her own eyes could track them. She wasn’t that good with computers, but she figured that this could actually go way faster if she typed more carefully, as she was typing so fast that she had to keep correcting her own mistakes while entering the command prompts that would get the Lockpick Trojan off her USB Stick and into this computer.
She’d have to remember to later ask Mandy to teach her to get better at hacking, and pray that she wouldn’t be her usual bitchy self about it. Actually, nevermind, Mandy owed her a favor since August this year! Nice!

Taylor was pulled out of her thoughts by warning sounds, as the computer screen began vomiting error messages. To her desk-jobbing colleagues, this would be a horrific thing to see, but right here and now, Taylor was elated at the sight. The Greek soldiers inside her Trojan Horse had waited for nightfall and had now gotten to work, slaughtering the computer’s guards in their sleep.

Finally, the iron shield and laser tripwires behind the terminal opened and turned off respectively, revealing what wasn’t Taylor’s prize, but would now become hers by law (or violation thereof) of theft - a fittingly golden trophy, shaped like a genetic double helix.

It may have been an evil scheme, but Taylor couldn’t help but admire the cunning of this plan. They had rigged the trophy of this privately-organized award for the decade’s best medical innovation with a neurotoxin dispenser, and would have it activate in the recipient’s hotel suite, thus killing the competition’s boss and simultaneously giving the pharmaceutical giants the perfect evidence that the revolutionary medicine he’d publically tested on himself was not to be trusted, saving billions (of dollars).

Taylor pulled out (her USB) with the speed of a drunk celebrity who just noticed they were in the process of making a horrible mistake, grabbed the incriminating evidence and stuffed it inside her suitcase.

Immediately, the innocently white-vested tiles clothing the spacious, circular room were framed for murder, as whirling warning lights painted them blood red, accompanied by an appropriately loud siren. It was the police, coming to arrest the falsely accused tiles for murder, but it was also Taylor’s cue that she’d missed something.
Sticking out from the suitcase she’d hastily crammed the trophy into was a thin piece of string, the same color as the torn piece of string that now stuck out of the base the trophy had been sitting on.
Taylor respected the classical nature of the trick in this high-tech environment, but she didn’t appreciate that, as soon as the siren went off, a handcuff she’d previously been unaware of had now locked the briefcase to her left wrist. She had consented to crazy secret agent stuff, but she hadn’t consented to James’ Bondage!

SRY

the cleverly hidden display on the briefcase flashed in blue, digital letters.

UR OUR MOST VALUED ASSET NOW

it continued.

GLHF :)

Taylor rolled her eyes. She was gonna have a very friendly and peaceful conversation with her handler about this.

Right now, and not at all peacefully, burly guardsmen and -women clad in black suits and shades stormed down the corridor leading to the doorframe behind her while locking their pistols.
Taylor had spent so much time slowly and carefully infiltrating this festival hall without raising any suspicion, and now she was gonna have to dash out, the way she’d come in…

She took off, briefcase swinging wildly from the wrist it was chained to, ran up a staircase, then through a door and out of the vault room while the opposite door was temporarily jammed, as all the guards had tried to enter simultaneously while seemingly being unaware of their comically wide shoulders.
Taylor took out her pistol from her tweed blazer’s inside pocket, and also a hard right down the similarly sterile-looking corridor.

Two guards, one male and one female, had just taken a hard left at a corridor intersection that lay a few meters ahead, apparently to avoid the traffic jam on the other door into the vault room. Before the man knew it, he had a bullet hole in his head, and before the woman knew where to dive for cover, she shared the fate. Taylor complimented herself on her reflexes and aim, vaulted over the burly body and carried on.

Hasting up more staircases was easier than usual now that she was pumped up on both adrenaline and the Crack that her handler had apparently slipped into her food a few hours earlier, which she now felt kicking in. Yeah, that conversation with him would be VERY peaceful…
Through another open door, Taylor found herself in the backstage area. From behind the curtain in front of her, she could hear confusion and shouting, as well as warning shots.

Crap! Those guards must have been paid with money instead of the usual potatoes, as they weren’t messing around!
Taylor had sadly not taken her Deus in Machina on this mission, so she would have to improvise.
She spotted a glamorously outfitted musician sitting in a comfy chair reserved for him a few meters to her left. He hadn’t yet noticed the confusion, as he seemed to be listening to music on wired earbuds while polishing his electric guitar.
That meant they were noise-canceling, and that they didn’t have a wireless connection. She’d also seen wireless earpieces on all guards so far.

Taylor ran up to the man who seemed entranced by the music and gently prodded him on the chest with one finger.
He opened his eyes and took out his earbuds.

“What? Who are you? Where’s the good stuff I ordered forever ago?”

Taylor had been meaning to firmly, but politely rob him of his guitar and earbuds, but now she heard the awful German Gangsta Rap music coming from them. He was gonna get it for this war crime against taste.

Escalating her chest-prodding, she pressed the muzzle of her pistol against his chest and barked in her most commanding tone

“Your earbuds, guitar and cell phone! Now!”

Petrified, the man immediately complied and handed her the items.

Taylor, after knocking him unconscious with a swing of the briefcase against his head, put her gun back into her blazer's pocket, plugged the earbuds into her ears and the electric guitar’s data cable into the cell phone.
Having noticed the phone’s brand immediately, she unlocked the phone and input a secret master passcode which had been designed for and sold to the government by the brand themselves, in order to immediately get full access to the phone’s software.
It was connected to the Gala’s VIP Wi-Fi, which allowed her to quickly tap into the Guards’ communication channels and register her phone as an input device.
Though she heard hardly anything through the earbuds, she figured that the guards would by now have surrounded the stage like the excited audience they were.

Taylor placed the phone inside her blazer and fumbled her way through the thick velvet curtain.
Up on the stage overlooking a spacious concert hall, Taylor had her suspicion confirmed, as a lot of pistols and rifles were pointed in her direction. She even spotted a few guys with rocket launchers!

Guitar in her left hand, she raised both arms.

“I surrender!” she shouted into the crowd.

“But, before you inevitably torture and kill me… Can I have one last moment?
While I’m on stage, I want to play my favorite song. Okay?”

Using her audience being caught off-guard by this appearance, she snapped her right hand over to the guitar in her left and strummed the cords with all her strength a few times, sending a painfully off-tune screech into the phone in her pocket, through the Wi-Fi and into the earpieces of all guards in the building.

They all cried out and collapsed to the floor simultaneously, writhing in pain while holding their aching heads.

“Thank you, thank you! You’ve been a great audience! What a wonderful evening we had!” Taylor posed with the guitar in her left hand gesturing the victory sign with her right.

“Sorry, I’m way too tired for an encore. I’m heading home now.”

She finished her bit, carefully laid the guitar down on the stage floor, then threw the connected phone and earbuds to the ground beside it and crushed the phone and earbuds with the heels of her shoes. If someone found that the phone had been unlocked with a government passcode, her plausible deniability would be plausibly denied.

Taylor dropped down onto the concert hall’s floor, jogged past the audience, which was still stunned by her performance, then made her way out through the reception area, which was similarly lined with people who whimpered near the ground, either because their ears were still ringing, or because the armed guards had commanded them to take cover.
Feeling the pressure subside, Taylor allowed herself the unprofessionalism of stealing a nearby, expensive bottle of wine and left through the front door.
Parked right in front of the entrance, as she’d arranged with the valet, Taylor found the navy blue limousine that had brought her, engine still running. She opened the driver’s door, gently pulled out the sleeping valet which the car’s hidden security systems had knocked out after he’d noticed that this was no ordinary limo, stuffed a one-hundred pound tip into his tuxedo and then sat down in the driver’s seat.
Registering the briefcase's presence, the car’s glove box spat out a small key, which Taylor then unlocked the handcuff with, allowing her to safely stow the briefcase away.

“Driver? I heard shouting inside, what’s going on in there?”

Taylor’s blood froze as she heard the male, teenage-sounding voice come from the back seat.
She turned her head, and faced a slightly pale-skinned boy of around sixteen, with short, blonde hair and thin glasses.

“Wait, who are you?? Did I get in the wrong car?” the boy asked, seeming similarly perplexed.

Taylor took a second to recognize the face.

“Oh, Mister Martinez! How lucky am I! Listen, you’re gonna have to come with me now.” She said, pressing a button on the dashboard which caused all doors on the car to lock immediately.

The boy swallowed dry.

“Oh God, I suspected that they were going to try and kill me tonight. I hired all those extra guards and paid them with money instead of the usual potatoes, and then it turns out they just wait for me to leave the ceremony…
Girl, really, whatever the Hell they’re paying you-”

“Oh no, you’re mistaken!” Taylor interrupted, turning further in her seat to face the boy while giving him a warm smile

“If I was the one trying to kill you tonight, you’d already have died hours ago. I was the one who saved you!
…See, my bosses are way more interested in seeing you succeed, than to see the Pharma industry nip your invention in the bud. Financial monopoly is nice and all, but being the government of the country where the cure for cancer was invented…”

Credits roll

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AUTHOR’S NOTES:

This is part of a prequel to We Just Run (Link below) which may or may not become a single-season Spy Flick-like affair. I quite simply need to get some of the ideas I have for Taylor and comedic Spy-Fi, which aren’t compatible with the main plot, out of my system.