Bruce Wayne

Chapter 34: Concealed Information

Bruce wasted no time; he jumped up from the desk, pulling himself into the ceiling and onto the catwalk. He shoved the ceiling tile back into place just as the office door opened and the lights switched on. He tried to hold as still as possible, but another problem had arisen. Because the catwalk had been out of use for some time, an enormous amount of dust was present, and it threatened to make him sneeze. Fighting the natural impulse to inhale, Bruce forced himself to quietly breathe out all the air in his lungs. When the sneeze occurred, it lacked any actual power, allowing Bruce to cover his mouth and suppress the sneeze to only a sharp contraction of the muscles in his chest. It was painful but quiet.

Breathing slowly, Bruce listened for any sign of the janitor having taken notice of him, but the sanitation worker collected the trash and departed the office, closing the door behind him. Bruce sighed with relief.

Moving along the catwalk, Bruce crawled on his hands and knees in the narrow pathway toward the office of the CEO. Lifting one of the ceiling tiles slightly, Bruce examined the room with a small spy camera. Bought online, the pen sized camera Bruce used was able to slip down through the opening in the ceiling to view the office. The captured images were transmitted to the small screen he'd pulled from his pocket and connected to the pen with a thin cable.

Seeing the office was empty and devoid of security cameras, Bruce put away the spy camera and attached screen. Lifting the ceiling tile the rest of the way, Bruce opened a gap wide enough for him to use for climbing down. His exit point from the ceiling was above a sturdy bookcase, allowing him to use it like a ladder and descend quietly to the plush carpet of the floor.

The office was dark, but the open blinds let in enough moonlight for him to be able to move around without tripping over anything. Like most offices, a desk occupied the majority of the workspace. A telephone, lamp, and a computer monitor and keyboard resided atop the desk. A set of shelves behind the desk held a printer, stacks of file folders, and jewel cases holding an assortment of CDs.

In the corner of the office, built directly into the wall, was a safe. Bruce thought again about the usefulness of demolition training, but in this situation, it wouldn't be practical. If GothCorp knew they'd had an unwelcome guest, they'd tighten security and bury deeper anything crooked they were already hiding, making it even harder to catch them. Bruce needed to take them unaware, and blasting a safe open would leave evidence of his having been there.

Settling for the locked drawers on the desk, Bruce picked them and sorted through the documents and files organized inside. He failed to find anything of apparent significance and was about to start checking the bookcase when he noticed the edge of a piece of paper sticking up from the bottom of the drawer. The corner of the paper was the only thing visible, and it made him realize the drawer had a false bottom. Examining the drawer closely, he found a release switch hidden under the desk and pressed it. The false bottom on the drawer retracted, and Bruce pulled out the stack of pages hidden inside.

Bruce took a small flashlight from his pocket and clicked it on. He'd added a piece of cloth to cover the light, wrapping it tightly around the end with electrical tape. The cloth dimmed the intensity and prevented it from being too bright and noticeable either outside the window of the building or through the frosted glass of the office. As an additional precaution against discovery, Bruce examined the papers on the floor, using the desk as a further shield against the light.

The papers rustled slightly as he turned them, but Bruce couldn't tell what was wrong with them. They seemed to be ordinary files for a construction project. The fact they were hidden made him suspicious. If there was nothing wrong with them, no one would have gone to the effort to conceal them in a false bottom of a drawer in the CEO's office. Taking out his phone, Bruce snapped pictures of each page before putting the file back in the desk. He made sure the edge of the paper was sticking out as it had been before, returning everything exactly as he'd found it.