This is a short little intro to this idea I had a bit ago but I just recently got the motivation to actually turn it into a story, please follow/fav/review if any of you guys find it interesting so that I decide whether or not to keep it up since it's just planned to be a short story (but could possibly evolve into something slightly bigger) anyway enough talk, on with the story.
-25 days after the Victor Galt mission-
It was an early morning, the streets were damp from a storm that had hit during the night and the clouds still hung in the varying colors of the early morning sky. In the middle of a large fenced off area a seemingly abandoned airplane hangar stood, the old appearance hiding its true purpose from curious eyes.
The main chamber of the SSC remained mostly dark, the lights were still dimmed out to their night setting per their near 24/7 occupant, five members now conformed the Foundation for law and government of which four were at least a couple more hours from waking up while the remaining one had just started his daily routine. In the middle of the still dark room a bright scarlet red scanner came to life with a low whooshing sound as the lights in the room started to slowly increase their intensity up until they were back at their normal strength.
The Knight Industries Three Thousand, a marvel of modern engineering and science, leading ground in artificial intelligence and an overall miracle of technology. Since his first activation a little over a year ago he had gone through many changes and an overall evolution in both equipment, abilities and personality; he himself might not admit it and sometimes even hardly notice it but his human friends and mostly his driver would argue that he had changed massively since they first met.
KITT stretched inside his own systems as he booted back up, making a self-diagnostic as he did so out of habit more than need, once he was done he noticed a slight disturbance in the perimeter sensors but checking the exterior cameras there was nothing that looked out of the ordinary; part of him wanted to leave it as a random system malfunction or glitch but since he himself had recently gone over all of the complex's defenses with Sarah not long ago a malfunction like that was quite unlikely…
Three weeks, over three weeks had passed since his run in with Victor Galt and even with the treatment he still couldn't go through a full night of sleep without waking up after accidentally twisting the wrong way and making at least one of his remaining bruises ache in protest, this time around it had been in one of his arms and after a glance at the digital clock he sat up with a groan 'why did he had to drink that damn serum…'
Standing up from his bed Mike walked out of the room and through the hallways, stopping by the kitchen he grabbed a bottle of iced coffee from the fridge before heading over to the main chamber. Peeking his head around the corner he spotted the jet black Shelby in his place, scanner tracking back and forth slowly; giving away the fact that he was focused on something.
Mike's suspicion was confirmed when he stepped openly into the room and received no greeting from the AI so he went over and walked around him, stopping once he was right behind. He took a sip of the iced coffee before leaning down to peek through his rear window to get a look at what had him focused enough to not notice him.
From his place he really couldn't see much of what the car had on his HUD but he was pretty sure that a few of the screens he had up were the exterior camera feeds from the complex which created a slight feel of worry in the pit of his stomach, had something bad happened? Was someone outside?
"KITT?"
the AI did a virtual jump in himself hearing his driver's voice, he shoved the files he had open away as Mike walked around him "M-Michael, I'm sorry I didn't see you come in"
"yeah…I noticed, is everything okay KITT? Saw you checking the outside cameras"
In all honesty he had not been able to see anything out of the ordinary or even detect any other anomalies in any of the sensors other than that specific one, he did not want to trouble Mike with what most likely had just been a malfunction this early in the morning "It's nothing serious. You're up early and I'm almost certain you were woken up again by one of your injuries from our last mission, correct?"
Pulling a chair over from the main desk to be in front of the car he slowly sat down to avoid any further discomfort "Yeah, it's not too bad, especially compared to how it was the day after but man did the guy do a number on me"
"And it would've been much worse had I not arrived when I did"
"Oh I'm sure of that" he took another sip of his coffee and the conversation started to jump from subject to subject, eventually the rest of the team woke up and one by one made their way to Mike and KITT. The usual bickering and friendly conversation amongst themselves started then and the AI was content with just watching and listening with the occasional comment up until another of the perimeter alarms, this time on the back of the complex, caught his attention.
"Sarah I have detected one of the perimeter alarms of the back end of the complex go off" he accessed the main screen and displayed the SSC's perimeter blueprint and highlighted the area where the disturbance had happened as well as the camera feeds in the same area
"Well the cameras aren't really showing anything out of the ordinary, maybe it's just a malfunction?"
"I would say it was, but earlier this morning there was a similar problem in the front sensors and the cameras showed nothing, having the same malfunction twice in the same day not long after we went over the systems seems to be very unlikely"
Zoe then went over to one of the computers and started accessing the video logs from earlier, watching the replay up until the present time "Well if there IS someone out there and they're smart enough to activate the sensors without being seen I say that there might even be a possibility that they managed to make a loop on our cameras"
At this Billy nearly jumped from his place "That's impossible, they're secured and closed off I worked on their initial setup when I first joined Knight Industries"
"Do you have any other hypothesis?"
"well…not really but I don't think they managed to hijack our cameras"
As the two kept arguing Sarah went over to Mike, who was standing next to KITT's gimbal still wearing the loose shirt and pants he used to sleep "Mike could you go get changed? I have a bad feeling about this" the man nodded and half trotted off, the tech then turned to the Mustang "KITT, if the cameras are on a loop that we can't detect if there is anything out there, the only way to see what's out there is to go, I need you to check the back perimeter of the complex and report anything out of the ordinary"
With a flash of his scanner KITT accessed his gimbal and turned around, opening the doors to the outside and speeding out of the large room.
Once right outside of the tunnel he slowed down as he made his way around the back, he had detected the first alarm here but even on scanners everything did look normal, there were no tire tracks that he could detect other than his own and no vehicles or people were in sight so he hurried out and around the back…
Sarah stood in the main chamber behind Billy and Zoe as they both went over the last few hours of footage and data from all perimeter sensors and alarms, there was no way they had two malfunctions like that in a single day. On a side screen she had KITT's video feed and so far she didn't see anything that called her attention.
She turned around and paced in frustration at not knowing what was happening and it was just then that she noticed that the main entry door for KITT hadn't closed yet, walking over to one of the panels on the gimbal she entered the command to shut the door but even after a few seconds the door remained open "guys?"
The two techs stopped what they were doing and turned around
"we have to go…now"
noticing the serious tone in her voice Billy's face paled considerably at her words "w-why are you saying that Sarah?"
"perimeter malfunctions and now the entry door won't shut down? KITT can't see anything wrong outside so that means that-"
"-That whoever's doing it is already inside…"
