The Heart of Guinevere
I’ve had this one in my head for awhile now. If you know some of my other stories, you know I have a thief as a favorite character of mine, so what could I do for @MagicalFirefly Carlie that would make a good story?
Carlie surveyed the scene from her vantage point. Her prize wasn’t going to be an easy one this time, but she never did go for the easy ones. Here she was, one of the best, and she was completely anonymous.
She’d hacked the scheduling of the wealthy couple that owned her prize, the Heart of Guinevere, worth around $50 million. Supposedly, this item was to bring good fortune and massive holdings to whoever properly owned it, but, if stolen, would bring some supernatural curse.
But Carlie wasn’t much for superstition. All she knew was that it was going to be hers very soon.
The security keypad was no problem. Carlie had, long ago, hacked into the company that made the keypad and added her retinal scan onto it as well as her fingerprints. Any biometric scan would say she was welcome in. And any code could easily be stolen.
But the problem was that she’d have approximately 90 seconds to disable the internal systems as the laser sweeps and the weight sensors would kick on and the alarm would sound. But that was no problem for her.
In all her 20 years she’d stolen things in much tougher locations than this manor house.
She dropped down to the keypad. “Identify yourself.”
The fingerprint scanner popped open, and Carlie stuck her forefinger on it. The retinal scanner popped open next, and Carlie did her thing. It accepted her as a part of the household.
But then there was the room itself. 90 seconds to get what she wanted to get, although the room wasn’t that big. A brisk walk from the door to her prize and she was there.
The Heart of Guinevere stood at about two feet tall, sculpted gold encrusted in rubies and jewels. It did look old, ancient even, and Carlie could almost imagine the legend.
How Merlin cursed the jeweled sculpture after Guinevere left King Arthur to run off with Lancelot and how it seemed to only hold to one particular family. Carlie snapped out of her reverie, noticing that only a second or two had passed. She reached around to feel the weight sensor, using an old trick of chewing gum to stick across it as she lifted it up.
The security system tripped back on 45 seconds too early. “Damn.”
She had to run for it, no choice, and the thing wasn’t that heavy, so she set for the run when one of the lasers swept across her…
Carlie felt herself fall and tried to stop, but then realized something. Only part of her had fallen. She looked around, wondering what happened and realizing that everything below her waist was no longer attached.
Carlie saw her legs, fallen on the other side. She reached for them but had to stop as she saw her feet twitch. She paused for a moment and experimentally kicked one of her legs, even though they weren’t attached anymore. The leg kicked fine as Carlie lay there, musing on the fact that one of these security lasers obviously cut her in half.
No, it couldn’t be. The curse on the Heart couldn’t be real. She held the thing closer, trying to figure out how to get her body back together, when another laser swept over her…
Her head ended up on the ground and Carlie uttered another curse word. She started reaching for her head, hoping to somehow get it stuck back on, but another sweep had her hands cut off too.
By the time security got there, Carlie had been cut in half, beheaded, had her hands and feet cut off and even had her torso sliced in half below her breasts. She swore as security picked up all the pieces after turning off that blasted laser system, got the Heart replaced in its proper place, then called the cops.
Carlie knew she could make bail easy, even be able to get out of there without any problem. Her other scores left her with enough cash, but, as the cops picked up her pieces, she knew she had another problem entirely.
How was she going to be able to get herself back in one piece to pull the next job?