[Location: The Brig - Level 9] [Time: 02:00 Hours. Night Shift.]
Two days in the glass box. They fed us nutrient paste through a slot. They didn't let us sleep much; the lights buzzed at a frequency designed to induce anxiety.
Vesper was sitting cross-legged, staring at the guard patrol. She hadn't moved for four hours.
"Caelum," she whispered. She didn't look at me. "Do you see the third guard? The one with the limp?"
I looked. A heavy-set guard was pacing the catwalk.
"Yeah. What about him?"
"His patrol cycle has a deviation," Vesper murmured, her eyes tracking the movement. "Every 42 minutes, he stops at the vending machine for exactly 90 seconds. The camera above him has a blind spot during its reset cycle—0.5 seconds every minute."
She turned to me. Her glasses were smudged, but her eyes were razor-sharp.
"If we time it perfectly, there is a 12-second window where no one is watching the maintenance corridor."
"Great," I grunted, testing the magnetic cuffs on my wrists. "But we're locked in glass cages, Vesper. Unless you can do magic, we're stuck."
"I don't do magic. I do calculus." She tapped the glass. "The resonant frequency of this polymer glass is 440 Hertz. If we can generate a sonic vibration at that pitch..."
"Lyra," I realized. "Lyra broke the facility with sound."
"Exactly. But we don't have a violin." Vesper pointed at the ventilation grate above my cell. "However, the air cycling system fans vibrate. If you can jam the fan blade at high velocity, the motor will screech. If it hits the right pitch..."
"The glass shatters," I finished.
I looked up at the vent. It was ten feet up.
"I need a boost," I said. "And I need a way to jam it."
"Rook," I whispered.
Ten minutes later, the kid—Rook—came by with his mop bucket. He looked nervous, sweating bullets.
"Sir?" he mouthed.
"Rook," I whispered through the air holes. "I need your mop handle. And I need you to disappear for five minutes."
"My... my mop?" Rook stammered. "If I lose it, the Sergeant will kill me."
"If you don't give it to me," I said intensely, "Dr. Aris is going to cut open a girl who saved this planet. Do you want that on your conscience, soldier?"
Rook looked at me. He looked at Vesper. He swallowed hard.
He snapped the mop handle over his knee. He slid the jagged wooden piece through the food slot.
"I... I was never here," Rook whispered, and ran.
I held the wood.
"Okay, Marshall," I stood up. "Let's make some noise."