It was so calm, so peaceful. I had melted into a realm of nothingness. I was at ease, giving my body the rest it needed, until whispers floated into the void.

"Is this dude really asleep right now?"

"I can't believe he used to be that famous hacker."

"Do you really think he can do the job?"

"Of course he can, you heard him. He programs tech now. Besides, you don't just lose decades worth of skills overnight. And you remember what the boss said. Jordan is brilliant. He's likely putting on a show of weakness because he doesn't want to be associated with any crime stuff, no matter what it is."

"Look, I even see some drool on the corner of his mouth!"

Drool? I drool in my sleep? I felt my cheeks growing hot. This was worse than when I went to camp, and the boys in my cabin decided to pour ice over my head. I woke up screaming for my mom, and they all laughed at me. Needless to say, I did not return to camp again.

But at least that was with kids. Right now, grown adults were making fun of me. And I didn't like it.

"I'll wake him up. It's already 3:15 a.m." A hand planted itself firmly on my shoulder and began to shake me. I felt like my arm was about to fly off. My eyes popped open.

"Ah!" I yelped. I hadn't been expecting him to be so vigorous. I turned to see Cougar beside me. Of course they would have the muscleman wake me up.

"We got to go now," he said. "Remember, we only have forty-five minutes allocated to get in there, grab the goods, and get out."

I nodded. My jaw stretched into a yawn. I still wished I could have slept more. At least you got some shut eye on the plane. That was a good three hours of sleep. I would have passed out by now if it weren't for that.

Cougar stepped onto the sidewalk, in front of the fence on the side of the Mayhad's Mansion. Calico was still in the front seat of the car, but Parrot was already waiting outside, studying the fence. I slid across the seat and into the cold night air. I shivered, regretting the fact that I was only in a blue suit jacket and pants.

My jaw nearly dropped when I noticed that the others were only in black, leather, long-sleeved tops and pants. Their clothes looked even thinner than mine. And I had heard that leather is very cold. How come they aren't shivering? I supposed that if they were used to doing crime by night, they would get used to the temperature.

I glanced around. A line of mansions towered over me, casting shadows on the dim road, lit only by a streetlamp. Though most of the windows were dark, I still felt like everyone was staring at me. The whole situation set me on edge. I nearly jumped when Falcon started the motor of the car. The black BMW pulled away from the curb, the car lights fading into the night.

"Falcon's going to location C," someone whispered. I turned to see Calico standing right next to me. Now I really did jump. The last time I had seen her, she had been in the front seat of the car. She hadn't made the slightest noise. Her brow knit together at my startlement, but she didn't say anything.

Really, you oughtn't sneak up on people.

"Good," Cougar said.

"I'm going to my hiding spot," Parrot said. Without further explanation, he pulled a stick out of his pocket. He pressed a button on the end, and it lengthened by several feet. Parrot planted the end of the stick firmly on the ground, took a running start, and vaulted himself over the side of the Mayhad's fence.

"What did he do that for?" I asked.

"He's watching for any signs of activity in the back of the home. He needs to watch the alleyway."

"Ooh. But what if the neighbors saw that?"

"I'm sure that they've seen stranger things happening at the Mayhad's at three in the morning," Cougar muttered. "Now come on."

I followed Cougar and Calico to the front of the house. To be honest, the front of the house wasn't quite as luxurious as I had been expecting. Sure, there were two fountains on either side of their vibrant, green lawn. They had a front pediment with what looked Greek statues holding up a semi-circular balcony in the front of their home. Two ancient trees grew on either side of the home, their branches funneling the light of the moon so that the light bathed the front entrance. But it was kind of basic. I had a few friends who were architects, and their designs always blew me away with their ingenuity. To me, this house was just an everyday, run-of-the-mill mansion, nothing special.

Calico reached into her pocket and pulled out a bobby pin. With expert precision, she inserted it into a silver lock on the front gate and turned it. The lock clicked, and Calico pushed the door open. She and Cougar marched right up the front walk, leaving me to run to catch up.

"Isn't it a little suspicious walking up to their house from the front entrance?" I wondered aloud when I caught up to them on the front porch. I felt very exposed in the moonlight.

"Not as suspicious as going in through a window," Calico stated.

She made a good point.

Calico pressed a small, metal box against the side of the house. She moved it along the wall until a red LED light began flashing. In the corner of my eye, I saw Cougar facing the street, gun in hand, hand on the trigger.

Calico punched in a series of numbers on her device, then continued to slide it along the wall. After a minute, she snapped the device onto her belt.

"All clear," she said smoothly. "The front alarm has been disabled."

I frowned. "How?"

"I used a honing device to locate the source of the alarm's electrical power and shut it down." She pulled out her bobby pin again and slipped it into the door's keyhole. Before I knew it, she was pulling the door open.

"After you," she said.

I stepped inside, half expecting the alarms to go off. Much to my surprise, they didn't. I sighed in relief.

"Come on, Jordan. We need to get to the sixth floor," Cougar said. He darted to the staircase, his feet barely making any noise of the wood floor. Calico bounded in front of me and followed him up the stairs. I tried to catch up, but by the time I reached the edge of the stairs, they were already rounding the corner of the second flight.

Haven't you ever heard that 'slow and steady wins the race?

It was physically taxing to lift my leg onto the first step. Don't they have an elevator? I mean, they're living in a mansion. You'd think they'd be able to afford it. My feet hit the stairs in a clumsy rhythm. Each soft thud, each creak of the stairs, made me cringe. The only thing that drove me forward was the fact that I didn't want to be around if the Mayhads woke up.

I was huffing and puffing by the time I reached the sixth floor of their house. My leg muscles screamed from the exertion. I rounded one last bend to come face-to-face with Cougar. His face was stone cold, practically glaring at me.

"Dude, how did you literally take seven minutes and forty seconds climbing a flight of stairs?" Cougar demanded.

Seven minutes didn't seem like that big of a deal. Actually, I was surprised at how fast I was. I thought for sure that it had taken a century to get through six flights of stairs.

"It was a bit of a hike," I murmured. "I've never had to climb so many steps before. I usually take the elevator."

Cougar shook his head. "You know, turning away from a life of crime didn't have to mean getting out of shape." His blue eyes narrowed, like they were piercing right through me. "Unless, of course, you purposefully took a long time."

"What? No!" I whispered fiercely. "You think I want to die here? To never go home?"

"You'd better not be trying to delay things." Cougar glanced at his watch glowing '3:33 in red numbers. "We have less than half an hour to get stuff done. Come on."

He clamped his massive hand around my wrist and practically dragged me down the hall. I bit my tongue to keep from yelping in pain. My feet stumbled as I tried to keep up.

Calico had already unlocked the control room. My eyes went wide as I entered. The walls were covered in screens and white control panels, each panel littered with keyboards and buttons.

Woah, that's...a lot. I felt like a little kid who just walked into a super cool museum. I wondered what all of these buttons did, or could do.

My initial awe turned to dread as I realized one crucial detail: I was supposed to navigate all of these buttons and keyboards to pull up the surveillance footage.

All this for one stupid box! And I'm helping criminals of all things!

"Get to it," Cougar said. "Work your charm." He gave me a nudge, which felt more like a shove. I stumbled into an office chair. For a moment, I sat frozen, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of electronics. I never thought I would say this about technology—tech was literally what I did for a living—but this too was joining my fears under my bed.

Calm down, Claude. Everything will be fine. Just take a deep breath.

I closed my eyes and inhaled through my nose.

"Yo Jordan," Cougar said. "Not the time for meditation."

My eyes flew open. I couldn't help but feel annoyed at Cougar for interrupting my attempt at being calm. "I'm not meditating. I am...simply centering myself before I begin hacking. It's something that I always used to do, and was the only reason I was ever successful at hacking stuff." I added that last part because...why not? If they were so convinced that I was this infamous Jordan guy, then surely they wouldn't try to get in my way.

I scanned the collection of screens. My eyes zeroed in on a red power button in the middle of the desk. According to all of the training I had done, a red button means one of two things. First, power on. Second, certain death. I hoped it was the former.

I placed my finger on it and closed my eyes. Here goes nothing. I pressed the button. The room began to hum. I opened one eye just in time to see a ripple of light overtake the keys.

The screen in the middle of the layout powered on, its white light blinding in the dark room.

"Ah!" I exclaimed, throwing up my hand to shield my eyes. "Can we turn the overhead light on? I can't work with light blinding my eyes."

I turned around to see Cougar shrug.

"Whatever, dude." He flipped the overhead on. The room seemed less intimidating than before. I could actually see the different buttons and wires in front of me.

I turned back to the screen. It had turned blue, with a black box in the middle saying 'password.'

Oh great, now I have to figure out what the password to this thing is. I placed my hands over the keys, trying to think of how to go about doing this. I had never even dreamt about hacking into something.

There were a few ways that I knew of when it came to hacking. One was just to guess random words or combinations. So naturally, that's what I tried first. Hmm, let's see. We'll try 'Mayhad' for starters. Denied. Um, maybe 'Mansion.' Nope. I thought about the family for a moment. They lived in a home with greek columns outside, making me think that they considered themselves well cultured, perhaps even a bit stuck-up. I tried the word 'pediment.'

Bold letters scrawled the words 'Access Code Accepted' across the screen. What? I actually did it? It was that simple? I felt more guilty than proud at the moment. Why am I doing this?

My attention was diverted by the image of two people sleeping in a humongous room on the screen. That must be the Mayhads right now. On the left side of the screen, there was a column of tiny images of different rooms. The current date and time of 3:41 was displayed in the upper right-hand corner.

"So...how do we go about doing this?" I asked.

"You have to skim the videos and find the box," Cougar stated. I caught a hint of exasperation in his voice. Hey, I never asked to be here. Be grateful that I'm helping you...no matter how much I regret my decision.

"What's a good date to start with?" I asked.

Cougar thought for a moment. "Maybe last week on Wednesday? I don't know."

I cocked my head. He must have had some reason for choosing that date. I wondered what it was. But now was not the time to ask him about it. He probably wouldn't tell me even if I did ask.

I clicked on the search bar and entered the day. I manipulated a few settings so that it showed all of the rooms in the house at once and fast forwarded through the entire day. I pressed enter. The whole screen filled with tiny boxes that were moving at rapid fire speed. There was no way I could possibly watch all of the rooms at the same time.

"Come and help," I said. I could sense them moving closer behind me. My eyes grew dry from trying to catch all of the movements. After a minute, the images froze, the time saying that it was 11:59 p.m last Wednesday.

I turned to the others. They shook their heads.

"Nothing," Cougar said.

"It's too many rooms," Calico pointed out. "Run the system again, but with fewer rooms."

"Which ones should I prioritize?"

"Do the first three levels of the house first. I'll watch level one, you level two, and Cougar level three. Slow down the video, too. If we don't see anything, then we'll switch to the last three levels. I'll take four, you five, Cougar six."

I adjusted the systems and ran the videos again in the exact way she had suggested. I didn't see the box in any of the video cells.

"Try Monday," Cougar suggested. I set the system up again and watched each cell closely, trying to miss even the slightest detail.

"There!" Cougar exclaimed. I paused the videos. Cougar pointed to a tiny box on the third floor level. I clicked on the image, and it enlarged so that it filled the screen. A man in a suit was holding a wooden box just like the one from the photo. It was the study room on the third floor. I pressed play again on the video.The man stuck the box into a safe in the wall. He pushed a titled book back into place on his book shelf. I zoomed in on the keyboard.

"The safe is activated by the pulling book The Metamorphosis forward."

"Good work, let's go," Cougar said.

I jumped to my feet and followed the others out the door. Cougar grabbed my arm and started to dash down the stairs. I went flying forward, my knees hitting the wooden stairs with a thud.

"Woah!" I gasped.

He stopped and held a finger to his lips. "Come on, we don't have time for this." He looked at his watch. "We only have ten minutes to get the box."

"But I can't run as fast as you," I protested. "Pulling me down the stairs will make too much noise." Cougar huffed, but he and Calico went ahead of me. I forced my legs to carry me faster down the stairs. I could feel adrenaline beginning to course through my veins. I couldn't shake the feeling like I was being watched, that at any moment, a person was going to jump out from behind a corner and arrest me. I can't believe I'm here. Why am I here?

Now was not the time to contemplate my life.

By the time I made it to the third floor, I already saw a door at the end of the hall cracked ajar, light streaming out. I broke into a mini run.

I arrived in the doorway, panting. Cougar looked down at his watch.

"Three and a half minutes," he declared. "You're improving."

I was too winded to reply. This was embarrassing. I figured that I should probably start doing some cardio at home, or at a minimum, walk around the park every so often.

Calico stood facing a bookcase that covered the entire back wall of the study, hands on her hips. She didn't so much as twitch in response to my entrance. After a moment, she reached out and pulled a green, hardback book onto it's spine. The books on the shelf below lowered, revealing a safe.

Calico bent down and pressed her ear to the lock. Her fingers twisted the lock rapidly in the left direction, then the right. The lock clicked in place, and Calico opened the door.

"There's our box," she said, lifting the box out with gloved hands. Cougar shut the safe's door and put the book right side up.

"Let's go," Cougar said. The other two made a break for the door. I almost called after them 'hey, wait up!' But that wouldn't have been the smartest move to make. Instead, I forced myself to jog after them.

I'll probably have to run twice as fast to catch up.

I rounded the hall corner and to my startlement, ran right into a brick wall. Only it wasn't a brick wall, it was Cougar.

"What's going—"

Cougar clamped his hand over my mouth, or more like my face since his hand was so big.

"Back," he whispered.

"What?"

Cougar pushed me back behind the corner. He and Calico pressed their backs against the wall, so I did the same. I saw a light glowing from the staircase. Feet scuffled along the wood floor.

"What's going on?" I demanded in a whisper.

Cougar looked at me, deadpan. "Trouble. Mrs. Mayhad has just woken up."