Leaving Audrey Hepburn’s office, I told Elvis: “I can’t do this.  I’m just a reporter.  I don’t know anything about breaking into a bank.”

   “Don’t worry so much, son.  I’ll be with you on this.”

   “So I don’t have to do it on my own?” 

   “Man, this might be a test for you, but we still need it done right.  There’ll be a whole bunch of us.”

   The upside to agreeing to join was that I was no longer restricted within the compound, except for a few secure areas that seemed to be off limits to most people.  I got to take walks outside, eat in the cafeteria with the rest of the resistance, and come and go from my room as I pleased.

   I came to understand that the place was an old boarding school.  I could never figure out exactly where we were, but it was on an island close to the mainland.

   But for all my freedom, I spent most of my time over the next few weeks in a large classroom that had been assigned to our team.  The only furniture in it was a big wooden table and some folding chairs.  The only thing breaking up its drab white walls was a chalkboard and windows, which looked out over a large courtyard.  And when I wasn’t in that room, I was down in that courtyard running drills and learning how to use the gun that Groucho had given me.

   “Okay son, so I’m gonna be leading this mission,” Elvis said, as we entered the room together on the first of our planning sessions.   “I’ll also be handling the demolitions.  Let me introduce you to the others.  You already know Boris.”

   I stared in open disbelief at Elvis.  I had begun to think of him as a friend – my only friend here.  But I couldn’t see this as anything other than a betrayal.

   Of all the people in the Cavalry, Boris Karloff was the last person I wanted to go on a mission with.  If he had had his way I would have never made it out of Heston Ward alive.  I had been avoiding him ever since arriving at The Fort. 

   Elvis said, “Put your bad blood behind ya’.  Boris is a good man in a tight spot.  He’ll be handling crowd control with Chaplin.  Astaire is our driver.  And the little lady is takin’ care of electronics and security.”

   The woman he referred to was faced as Fay Wray, and she gave a confident nod, as he introduced her.

   “She’s the key to this whole operation.  Before Fay joined the Cavalry, she was a high level engineer with Network.  If anyone can break into a data bank, it’s gonna be her.”

   Elvis went over the bare bones of the plan.  It did seem that everything centered on Fay.  Everyone else was just backup.  Except for me, I seemed be just along for the ride. 

   On paper, it was simple.  We’d break into the vault by blowing through the basement wall of the building next to it.  Fay would bypass the security matrix to open the vault door and get us into the main building.  From there we’d make our way to the Teller’s room on the second floor – this was our target.  There would only be a skeleton crew working in the middle of the night, which should be easily overpowered.  Then, Fay would hack into the main bank.  When that was done, I’d upload my story, and everyone in New Hollywood would know what really happened with the hover barge.

   I couldn’t help but ask: “Why don’t we just put everything out there?  Tell them who the Directors are and what they’re doing?”

   “Baby steps, son.  Baby steps,” Elvis said.  “No one’s ready to believe all that.  At least not yet.  We push too much out at once, and they’ll just say it’s some PGA hoax.”

   “We need to sow seeds of distrust first,” Fay said.

   “Besides, we’re not strong enough to go head-to-head with the Directors, just yet,” Fred Astaire said.  “The only reason they haven’t used the military to wipe us out is that we haven’t posed them any serious threat.”

   “And because they’d rather not acknowledge our existence to the public,” Fay added.

   For the rest of the meeting, we went over maps and blueprints.  Elvis wanted us to start familiarizing ourselves with every aspect of the bank and the area around it.

   After it was over, and I was heading back to my room, my attention was caught by footsteps behind me.  Before I could turn around, a strong arm slammed me against the wall and held me there.

   “Watch yourself, Stewart,” Boris growled into my ear.  “You don’t like me, and I don’t like you.  You’re weak – you don’t belong here.  You just do whatever Presley tells you and keep out of my way.  And if you do anything to screw up this mission, I’ll put a bullet in you myself.”

   Boris never said another word to me after that, despite all the time we spent together.  It suited me just fine.

   The team went over the plan so many times, I dreamt about it when I slept.  But at least, I slept.  I was too busy in the day to think about anything beyond the mission and my training.  And I was too exhausted at night to let a single worry pass through my mind.  In a movie this would be a big montage of the team pouring over maps and sketching out diagrams, and me on the target range or the obstacle course, while upbeat, high energy music played.  But in reality, it was all very slow and tedious.

   The things I remember most about that time were the quieter moments. 

   One evening around sunset, I sat alone with Fay in an empty guard tower.  She dragged me up there, after a long day of running combat drills, to watch the sun go down over the turquoise sea.  Autumn’s chill was in the air, and a light breeze lifted her hair around her face.

   “It’s like a dream come true,” she confided.

   I thought she meant the view, but then she said, “I’ve always wanted to see inside a data vault for myself.”

   “Really?” was all I could think to say.  It was not a place I had ever thought about.  And as far as our plan went, it was just part of our route.  All I knew about it was that because of the narrow maze-like corridors, it was going to be hard to get through, and that the guards in that area used water-gel ammunition.  We had some bullets on-hand as examples.  They were little blobs of goo that were completely harmless to the delicate equipment in the vault but would sheer through skin like high velocity razor wire.

   “All those years of programming and designing, I never had the access level to see inside one,” she said.  “They say it’s otherworldly with all of the Coral-Core memory chips.  They stack them floor to ceiling filling up every spare inch.  Have you ever seen one?  A chip?”

   “No,” I admitted.

   “I have.  They almost seem alive.  They’re no bigger than the tip of your little finger.”  She held hers up as an example.  It was thin and delicate and the nail was painted a garnet red.  It was easy to forget that I was sitting there with a revolutionary.

   “They glow all different colors depending on their data, and they’re encased in crystal cubes for storage.  The cubes end up diffusing the light like prisms.  I’ve heard stories of people being so mesmerized by the beauty of a vault they would only leave by being dragged out.”

   Looking out across the sun dazzled water and listening to her talk, I could almost feel excited about the mission.

   My shooting improved dramatically, but they wouldn’t let me use anything except my pistol.

   One afternoon, I was out on the range with Astaire and Chaplin.  They were getting the hang of the new spine-rifles that the Cavalry had just managed to acquire from a hi-jacked military supply boat.

   I asked if I could give one a try, but Astaire said: “What, you think this is some sort of toy?  You just stick to your popgun there.  When you’ve mastered that, we’ll show you how to use a shotgun.”
   “What’s the big deal?  A gun’s a gun.”

   Chaplin chuckled, but Astaire got serious and held up the bulky rifle with pride.  “This is not a gun.  This is a Borgnine 1138, the latest in assault personnel armaments.  It fires 3.75mm long Elgin steel, spine munitions.  With its pneumatic compression of 2000 psi, it has a rate of ninety shots per second.  It works as effectively underwater as on dry land.  And it packs just as much of a punch against synthetics as it does humans.  When we come face to face with those sentinels, this will cut them down like a scythe through tall grass.”

   I didn’t know much about the man, but I’d learned two new things that day: he was serious about his guns, and he wasn’t originally from New Hollywood.  Only someone from the Territories would talk about cutting grass.

   “All the more reason you should be training me on something more powerful than this,” I said, waving the pistol.  The only people we were likely to encounter during the mission were the workers on the second floor.  All of the guards would be sentinel androids, and regular bullets would be largely ineffective on them.

   “Your job isn’t to be fighting.  Leave that up to the professionals.”  He gestured his head towards Chaplin.  “You just have to stay safe and get your part done.”

   Chaplin nodded in agreement then loaded another clip into his rifle and pounded his target with a spray of the spines.

   At some point later on, I finally got up the nerve to confront Elvis about the fact that it seemed like my role in the mission was insignificant.

   “Son, I thought you didn’t even want to go on this job,” he said, without looking at me.  He was hunched over his large crossbow-like contraption, recalibrating the aim.

   We were standing on the roof of one of the dormitories.  No sun could be seen with the leaden cloud cover that filled the sky in all directions.  The chill cut straight through my suit jacket.  Soon winter would arrive in New Hollywood.

   “But if I’m just tagging along like baggage, what’s the point of me being there at all?” I said.

   Elvis pulled the trigger.  It made a deep mechanical clunk and the harpoon flew across the compound and dug itself in the dirt about a foot to the left of a wooden post.

   “Dang!  That wind’s making this tricky.”

   He grabbed another spear from the pile next to the tripod and started to reload the device.

   “Look,” he said.  “It’s a test.  You know that already.  And we ain’t testing you to see if you can shoot or blow things up.  We’re testing to see if you’ll go through with it when the time comes.”

   I stood there and watched the soldiers practicing hand-to-hand combat down in the square.  They kept well away from the post Elvis was firing at.  I looked at the determination in their faces, as they lunged and dodged against their opponents.  Each face was full of purpose, and each one reflected a god from the vast Parthenon of stars.

   The next harpoon clipped the side of the target.

   “Almost got it now,” Elvis said.

   “Remember when you told me about working for the government?  Were you faced back then?” I asked.

   “Naw, wasn’t even a member of the Elvis cult.  I was with the Yul Brynners.  I only had the surgery afterwards to hide my identity.”

   “So why didn’t you get faced as Brynner?”

   “Couldn’t have picked him.  Wouldn’t do to pick someone you wore an icon for.  The Execs check for things like that when they're hunting you,” he said.  “But I wasn’t just faced – I had the works.  They re-modulated my voice and even adjusted my joints.”  He did a little hip shimmy, as a demonstration.  “Now I can walk through Burton Plaza and not a single bio-scanner would know who I really was.”

   He leaned back over the crossbow and pressed the lever.

   “Bullseye!” he whooped, as the spear imbedded itself deep into the target.

   Eventually the day arrived.  All the planning and preparations were over.  I had spent two sleepless nights writing the exposé of the hover barge attack.  It was the most important story of my career.  It would also be my last.