The Collective

“Hello!” Izzy called out in the dark warehouse. “Is anyone here? Hello!” she called out again. She pulls her brown hair away from her eyes. The young woman walked slowly through the deep darkness. “Why didn’t I bring a freakin’ flashlight?” she mocked her own stupidity at that moment.   Her hands extended outward. She had already ran into four things that were probably old warehouse equipment. This place seems abandoned. She thought. Out of nowhere a massive spotlight hits her face stopping her in her tracks. She was no-less blinded than when she was stumbling through the darkness. The intrusion of the light caused her to jump a little and quickly shield her eyes with her forearm.  She couldn’t let her fear seep through. She came this far. She followed the Dark-Web prompts for weeks to this warehouse. Izzy had nothing to lose at this point. Her life wasn’t going as planned as is, but her incredible intellect led her to this very warehouse on this very night. She looked down at her watch and used the beam of the light to read it. Midnight on the nose! She thought.   

Izzy heard footsteps. She couldn’t see or tell where they were coming from, just that there were two different sets of shoes approaching the young woman. She reached in her sweatshirt for a knife her brother gave her years ago before he went missing. She held the handle tight in her hands, ready to lash out if anyone touched her.

The footsteps stopped abruptly. “Put the knife down Miss Anderson.”  The voice was obviously deep, covered up with a voice changer.

“How do you know my last name? Tell me who you are first.” Izzy held her knife tight and brought it up to the light on her face so whoever spoke could see it in the room.

“Very well.” The voice replied. The light shut off throwing her world into darkness again for a few seconds. Then three lights hit the floor a few feet in front of her. Two masked individuals stood on the other side of a table by two chairs on their side, and one on Izzy’s. “Please take a seat young lady,” the person on her right spoke. “You may put the knife away as well. We need to present a proposition to you.” The one on Izzy’s left spoke using the same voice changer. One person was shorter than the other, but no less intimidating with the dark ski mask covering their faces. They wore two very distinct black suits.

Izzy approached the table still holding the knife with her left hand. She reached for the chair with her right and pulled it out slowly. As soon as she did, the two mysterious individuals pulled their chairs out at the same time in unison and sat as she sat. Each individual placed both hands on the table and folded them in front of them. Izzy kept her chair back from the table still assessing if she needed to run out of the room.

“Your name is Miss Isabella Dawn Anderson. We know a lot about you.” The one on the Izzy’s left spoke.

The right one continues the conversation as if on cue, “There were 350 persons attempting to crack our code, and yet you are the one in front of us now.”

“Okay. So, do I get a prize or something?” Izzy looked at each masked person still unsure of the situation. She held her knife under the table by her lap not letting it go.

“You get something much more lucrative than a prize, young lady.” The one on the right continued.

“We have an invitation we’d like to offer you.” The left individual pulls out a file from his suit coat and lays it on the table. They pushed the folder to Izzy. “Open it, please.”

She opens the folder and inside is a few pages of documents. At the top left corner is a photo of the Francine E. Mills Museum. Izzy looks curiously at the next few pages. The second document shows a photo of a large emerald about the size of a tennis ball. The third document simply says at the top, ON THE 6^TH FLOOR. THIRD ROOM ON THE LEFT FROM THE ELEVATORS.

The person on Izzy’s left speaks. “Steal the emerald from the Museum. Come back in three hours to this same warehouse to this same table. Put the emerald on the table. All will be revealed.” The guttural tone of the voice changer sounds ominous in the dark warehouse with the only light on the three people sitting at the table.

Izzy looks up and closes the folder. “Who are you people?”

Both individuals look at each other at the same time. They nod to each other then the one on Izzy’s right speaks. “We are a collective of gifted individuals in every city across the world. We only choose the best of the best and so far, you have shown us that you have what it takes. Do not let us down.”

With that, the lights shut off. Izzy is left in complete darkness. She is startled a little by the sudden change in lighting. She sits there in pitch blackness as her eyes adjust a little in the darkness. She does not see any silhouette of anyone sitting across from her. She felt around on the table and there was no envelope. Izzy calls out again, “Guys?! Where’d you go? Hello?!” She’s left with no answer.

Izzy stood from the table and walked around the table. She held her knife out in front of her. She very softly reached out her free hand and felt the back of the chairs, but no one was sitting in any of them. “How did you . . .?” She stopped herself. “Okay then. This is crazy.” She stumbled slowly away from the table in the direction she entered the warehouse. “Right. Just steal some stone on the 6^th floor of a museum. Easy Peasy”. She walked a few more steps. “I did all that work to crack this code for some mystery theft. Some bull, I got myself into.” She whispered to herself as she felt around for the door. When she got the knob in her hands, she turned it and stepped out into the lights of the city. No one was on the streets.

The cold air nipped at her body like an invasion. She shuddered and pulled her beanie out of her sweatshirt. There was a piece of paper in there as well. She reached for it and when she unraveled it there were only a few distinct words written. You will finally have the family you’ve been searching for. You will be one of us.

Izzy’s eyes nearly flew out of her head. “Who put this in my pocket? When?!” Realizing that no one would answer her. She looked up at a sign on a building. FRANCINE E. MILLS MUSEUM. “Of course they planned this.” Izzy laughed to herself as the words spewed out. She looked up. The entire museum was six-floors. “So, the emerald must be on the top floor. Smart Izzy. You’re the smart one.” She mocked herself. “I really have no idea how to. I’ve never. . ."

A homeless man comes out of nowhere and bumps into Izzy from behind. She is nearly toppled over and reaches for her knife again. It fell. She turns and the man is walking away from her, but he’s mumbling just enough so she can hear. “Everything you need is in the bag. You will be our family.” He walks around the corner. “Izzy picks herself up and runs after the man.

Izzy rounds the corner but there is no one there. “Hey!” but no one answers. She looks down and by a dumpster, there is a black bag. She looks around before approaching the bag and unzips the main opening. She reaches in carefully and finds climbing rope, carabiners, climbing spikes, a glass cutter, some picklocks, and a flashlight. “I don’t know how to use picklocks or a glass cutter.” She mutters to herself. “Still though. The rest I do know how to use.” She attaches the bag around her body and straps it in.

Izzy approaches the building but not before pulling her hood and her beanie low across her forehead. “Hmm. Doesn’t seem to be any cameras” She wraps the strand of rope over her shoulder and climbs a dumpster out back. Izzy had never climbed a building before, but she and her brother Jack who gave her the knife used to go rock climbing when they were teenagers. That was just seven years ago. I still got this. Izzy takes the rope and wraps it around her waist. She sets the carabiners to the rope and then freestyle climbs on the first ledge of the building. She places her first spike in the brick between the outlet of the window and the building itself. She then intertwines her fingers on the next outcropping of the old brick. She makes her next step and repeats, climbs, spikes, set, and next step up.

By the time she gets to the fourth floor, her fingers start to go numb. “Shit, it’s been a while. This cold isn’t helping either and you should have brought gloves goofball.” Izzy laughs to herself and nearly falls. Her left foot slips off the top ledge of the fourth-story window and her right arm quickly catches herself. Her entire body bangs into the window and cracks the glass. She looks at the glass, her eyes huge. “Oh, now you done it.” She tilts her head to the side then looks up. Still two stories to go. She looks back at the window and makes a quick thought. She grabs the rope and pushes both feet to the glass. She shakes her weight, and the crack starts to travel up to the top. Izzy breathes before taking her left foot and stomping on the window.

“Hope there is no alarms.” The glass gives way, and she crashes into a room of the Museum. The rope then drags her entire body back up over the ledge to the outside, but she catches herself on the window ledge cutting her hand on the shards of glass. Her determination keeps her from flapping back outside. Izzy catches herself with her one sneaker and pushes herself back inside the building. She unties the rope from her waist and flops onto the floor.

“That was loud but no alarms from what I can tell. This old museum probably doesn’t have any,” she whispers. Izzy felt the pain. Her hand is bleeding. She could see that in the dim lights of the Museum. “I have to . . . “She reaches in the bag still attached to her torso and pulls out a rag. She ties it around her hand. “That will have to hold for now.

Izzy looks around the museum. She’s in a small room with children's paintings of dinosaurs. She sees the exit sign of that room and silently runs to it. She stops in her tracks as a voice from the other side of the hallway calls out to someone on the radio. “Yeah, I thought I heard something. Going to check it out. I’ll check in then.” The voice came over from the radio. Copy. Let me know. The security guard’s flashlight is bright. Izzy has to think fast. She looks to the right, away from the guard and there is a sign for the stairs. She shoots down that hallway and into that door quickly. She closes the door as silently as possible and sees the ascending stairs. She darts up the stairs like a bullet to the sixth floor. Izzy doesn’t realize how out of breath she is and is breathing so loudly from nerves and the quick run up two flights. She opens the door slowly.

“What did that file . . . Yes,” Izzy recalls. “Third room on the left from the elevators.” Izzy rounds the corner and sees the sign for the elevators. She walks up to it at the end of the hall then counts the doors. She sees the third archway and runs to it. It’s a room of all sorts of geological digs and crystals and gems. She grabs her flashlight and shines it through the glass of each of the displays. “Where is that freakin’” The flashlight hits something large and green. She stops. She signs the flashlight on the plaque near the display. Fourth Largest Emerald in the World “This is it.”

Izzy reaches into her bag and pulls out the glass cutter. “Okay,” she mutters to herself again. “So, I guess you suction this thing onto the glass then move the cutter . . . clockwise, I think.” Izzy does just that. The glass doesn’t break though. She turns the crank around again. Izzy shines her flashlight and there is a line, but the glass is too thick. There isn’t a way—suddenly she hears ALARMS. “Shit. I bet the guard found the broken glass.” She quickly looks around. There's a small stone statue on a pedestal near the display. She takes it off and smashes the glass. Izzy grabs the emerald and throws it into her bag quickly.

The girl runs out of the Geological Room and back to the hallway. She hears someone yelling, “HEY YOU! STOP!!” Izzy takes off toward the opposite end.

Izzy rounds a corner where another guard is standing. He pulls his taser out of his belt clip and forcefully yells at her, “STOP RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!” Izzy is running to fast toward the guard to stop. By the time she does, he’ll grab her, so she doubles down on her run. He’s to big to knock over, but he may be too slow too. She fakes a leap over the man, but quickly changes to a slide and her entire body moves under the guard’s legs before he realizes what happened. He turns and she is more than twenty feet away from him. He points his taser at the girl, but she already rounds another corner and the electric current misses her by inches.

With no time to spare, Izzy has to think on her feet, literally. She sees a window at the end of the hallway. She runs toward it grabbing at a small bust of Caesar on a pedestal in the hallway. She uses her body weight and flings the statue at the window. It breaks upon impact. The bust flies out and lands on a parked down below causing that car alarm to go off and add to the alarm of the Museum. 

Izzy leaps onto the ledge and looks down. Way too far to jump. She grabs hold of a nearby drainage pipe. On the other end of that is a fire escape. She curses to herself. She probably could have used that on the way up had she taken the time to canvas the entire building. Either way, she sees it now. She jumps toward it. Her bag nearly flies off her shoulders, as she catches herself from falling six floors and pulls herself up on the iron bars.

The girl skips steps on the way down. She hears the sirens in the distance. Third, then second, then First. She vaults onto the ground and switches toward the warehouse. She looks down at her watch. It’s 2:47 am.

Izzy darts inside. This time she uses the flashlight given to her to peer into the warehouse. She points it at the table where the two individuals are standing. She aims in that direction pulling the emerald out of her bag as she runs. She gets to the table with a slide and slams the stone down out of breath. “There is your emerald. What now?”

The two stoic beings look at each other and back at Izzy. The one on the shorter one speaks first, “Well done. If you please, follow us.”

The taller one leads the way to the back of the warehouse outside to a dimly lit alley. There is a limousine waiting for them. The two individuals motion her inside. They do not follow. They walk to the back of the alley just as the lights of the cop cars round the corner. A beam of light shoots out from the shorter one.

Izzy quickly turns to the person sitting beside her in the seat, her mouth agape in astonishment. “JACK!” she gasps.

“Hey, sis. Long time no see, huh. We need to go.”  Jack taps the glass between him and the driver, and he speeds off.

()()()()()

A YEAR LATER TO THE DAY

A beautiful Hotel bar in Mumbai sit's a blonde woman sipping a vodka and cranberry as she looks at her phone. She looks up as she hears the two gentlemen beside her talking.

“They know who did it. They got her DNA from the break-in at that Museum. Isabella Anderson. This is exactly a year later. They never caught her.”

The other guy takes a sip from his drink as his friend is recounting the actions of the anniversary. “I wonder what she’s doing now?”

“Wouldn’t it be crazy if she was here at this very hotel considering this is the unleashing of the biggest Ruby in the world” the other one laughed.

“Crazy indeed my friend, but crazier things have happened.”

The blonde woman wore an earpiece. A voice came over it saying, Show time dear sister.

Izzy smiled and took a last sip of her drink as she stood. Her beautiful dress hit the floor. She answered back with a smirk, “Let’s do it.”