[A/N:]
Part Two.
Caitlyn's face was hard as she quickly ushered Vi out of the office and back towards the staircase. Regardless of whether the patrol was a random occurrence or something had tipped the criminals off to their presence, Caitlyn knew that stealth was no longer an option. They had to be quick now.
The two of them raced down one floor and Caitlyn accessed the blueprints of the bank once more. The control room was here and they'd do well to get the power up and running again before they would be found.
Caitlyn took point this time, leading them through two more hallways and into an open space office that was the EDP department of the bank. The entire office looked like it had just been occupied, with discs and data chips lying around and heaps of cubes upon the desks.
Caitlyn didn't spare another breath before approaching the security hatch at the far end of the room. There were three dampeners plastered to the door, each sending out jumbled signals and traces that screwed up Caitlyn's feedback.
She powered up her tech-tool and began to employ its hacking suite. A multitude of holo screens popped up, illuminating the space in front of her.
Collin had provided her with a set of standard-issue amplification suites for her tech-tool that came with the new job and Caitlyn had to admit she was impressed with how smoothly and efficiently they worked. Within only a few moments, the first dampener was disabled.
Vi was at her back, arms crossed, and watched her. She eyed the security hatch and then Caitlyn's efforts with a critical eye.
"You sure you can get us in there? I'm pretty certain the control room of a bank is nearly as secure as its vault."
"Quiet, I need to concentrate."
"I mean, just think about it. If a dude could just barge in and disable the security measures keeping the vault locked and guarded? Imagine what kind of zoo this place would turn into!"
Caitlyn suppressed a sigh at Vi's apparent insistence on being humoured.
"I'm sure you're correct, Vi," she said with a flat voice.
Vi rolled her eyes and turned away, "Alright, fine. Be a killjoy."
While the hacking suite terminated the dampeners, Caitlyn applied a decoder to the panel next to the door. With a swipe at the interface and a quiet ping, the access protocol of the hatch was sent to her tech-tool.
Caitlyn skimmed over it quickly and noted that the last access to the control room had been this morning, just before the distress signal had reached the Wardens. It hadn't been opened again since then.
Her cheek twitched unhappily despite her best efforts to quell it. While this moment was truly not the best to launch into a debate about banks and their security measures, Vi's argument was actually sound.
The perpetrators wouldn't have needed to blow a hole into the ground to get into the vault if they'd been able to enter the control room and actually disable the safeguards.
Caitlyn's expression darkened. Lives could have been spared.
She filed the access protocol away and was promptly notified that the hacking suite was now done dealing with the dampeners.
"So, just to be sure that I got this right," Vi then began in an entirely conversational tone, "The red dots are the bad guys, right?"
Caitlyn stopped what she was doing and turned around with a frown, when suddenly her own oculars — now no longer restricted by misleading feedback — signalled the arrival of multiple heat signatures flagged as hostile.
Shite!
Caitlyn pushed back onto her feet just as Vi raised her arm and the first few shots were, mercifully, deflected by her protective barrier.
Blinding headlights were exposing the two women and lights danced before Caitlyn's eyes before she dove behind a desk to her left.
"Get to cover!" she yelled.
"There they are!" shouted a male voice from across the office.
A snarl from Vi was the answer as the woman, in blatant disregard for Caitlyn's order, charged the men filing into the room.
With a furious roar suited to a caged animal, Vi ran straight at the closest man.
Caitlyn's eyes bulged, "Vi, no!"
Her breath caught in her throat as she fumbled with the safety on her rifle. Anger rushed through her, but she pushed it away. Now wasn't the time to lose her head.
With a quick look over her shoulder, Caitlyn assessed the situation. Three men; armed and wearing armour. Each of them accompanied by a combat drone; also armed and primed to attack.
With gritted teeth, Caitlyn popped out of cover and fired a precise shot at the man to her left. He had just raised his own firearm and was aiming at Vi, when suddenly his kneecap was blown away. He fell before the pain even registered in his brain.
Caitlyn's rifle hissed and reloaded in a split second. The man's drone zeroed in on her, its lens spinning wildly. The glaring flashlight attached to the main body of the drone blinded Caitlyn momentarily and she growled under her breath.
Caitlyn promptly released a second shot, smashing through the globe serving as the drone's system core and it went down in a hail of sparks. Her oculars signalled two downed hostiles; one injured (severely) but apprehended and one destroyed.
Vi meanwhile was drawing back her fist and delivering a bone-breaking punch to the man she had just closed the distance on. The red outline of the man on her visor flashed, then vanished not a second later. She whirled around, heedless of Caitlyn's repeated order to get to cover, and felt the power of her other ATLAS gauntlet build up.
The massive fingers curled in on themselves and the excessive force propelled her fist forward with such strength and velocity that the air seemed to shimmer from heat. The violent attack caught Vi's second opponent in his chest and he was thrown across the whole room and far into the corridor from which he'd emerged.
The weapon he held was crushed beneath Vi's fist and his powered armour flickered out. His head hit the floor hard and he was out cold before he skidded to a halt a few metres further.
The two drones closing in on Vi were quickly dispatched with a mighty swat of her hand and a brutal left hook. Their gunfire was absorbed by Vi's own tech plating, leaving her unscathed.
The whole fight was over within the span of mere seconds. Vi had effectively ploughed her way through a total of two men and two combat drones in quick succession and Caitlyn could only gape in horror as she kept track of the bodies hitting the floor.
The room went utterly silent after that. The only noises being heard came from the whimpering man Caitlyn had shot in the knee. He was crying and writhing on the floor when Caitlyn approached him.
Now, usually Caitlyn would have taped him and tended to his wounds immediately, but in her great anger she simply kicked him in the head. He fell unconscious immediately.
Vi was coming over, her visor deactivated and a broad grin on her face.
"Nice shot, Caitlyn!"
Caitlyn rounded on her and boomed, "Are you out of your fucking mind?!"
Vi instantly back-pedalled. She lifted her hands in surrender as Caitlyn drew close to her, her eyes positively burning.
"I told you to get to cover! And what do you do? You just run straight at them as if they aren't armed to the teeth!"
Vi pulled her shoulders up and stood there like she didn't understand what was going on all of a sudden, "Whoa, calm down!"
"You could have gotten killed, Vi! You could have gotten us both killed with your recklessness!"
Caitlyn was livid, her heart was racing a mile a minute. She jabbed a finger at Vi's chest, her rifle in a shaking grip in her hand and the unconscious men around them almost forgotten.
Vi's eyes flashed in return, "I didn't do anything wrong! They were shooting at us!"
"You ran head-first into a situation where we had no information about how many hostiles were swarming us, or what weaponry and tech they had with them! What if one of them had a grenade? Would you even have the chance to still be talking back to me then, I wonder? You should have just alerted me sooner!"
Vi gritted her teeth and glared back at Caitlyn, "Well I took care of them, didn't I?"
"It doesn't matter, Vi. Skirmishes like this are dangerous enough, but engaging an enemy literally blind can easily result in someone getting killed. And we don't do that, Vi. We don't kill anyone!"
"I didn't kill anyone," Vi snarled defiantly, but there was a hint of panic in her blue eyes that gave her away.
Caitlyn swore under her breath and stalked away from Vi in an attempt to calm herself, back towards the man on the ground. She crouched and began treatment. The damage to his head from Caitlyn's kick was only very minor, but his leg was completely crushed. It would probably need to be surgically removed and replaced.
Caitlyn quickly went from one man to the next and put them in shackles after applying first aid treatment where necessary, all the while steadfastly trying to reign her anger in. Vi was standing dumbly in the middle of the room, surrounded by destroyed drones, her eyes glued to Caitlyn's back.
When she was satisfied that no-one was dead, Caitlyn snapped her fingers and ordered Vi to drag the men into an adjacent, smaller office that she locked afterwards. Vi angrily kicked one of the drones clean out of her way, but did as she was told.
They didn't speak of the incident after that.
Caitlyn went back towards the control room, finally cracking the security protocol. The hatch opened with a hiss and a pop.
"Watch the door, I'm resetting the power levels," Caitlyn ordered.
She didn't pause to check if Vi would obey, but she did see her take position in front of the hatch out of the corner of her eye. Caitlyn swallowed in an attempt to clear her throat, and set to work on the system.
With the dampeners disabled, Caitlyn's oculars took over the task of scanning and identifying the network. She accessed her tech-tool and began applying overwriting protocols.
Caitlyn's lips thinned as she watched how easily her new upgrades breached the bank's security network and altered it as they saw fit. She presumed only very few systems were not subject to Council authority.
When the task was complete, the feeds began trickling in again. One by one, the cameras came online and the dozen or so screens mounted to the wall in front of Caitlyn came to life. Soon, the entire building was back online and Caitlyn had a splendid look on the hot zone.
She quickly scanned the area and then issued a few more commands, rerouting the visual feedback and setting a timer to the security hatches keeping the building on lockdown.
After her work was done, Caitlyn briskly moved past Vi and motioned for her to come along.
"We don't have much time before the reset. We need to get to ground level before they know what's up."
"What exactly did you do, though?" Vi asked and watched as the door hatch to the control room closed and sealed itself shut behind them.
"I've opened the gateway for the cavalry."
Without further explanation, Caitlyn took point. Vi easily fell back a few paces and raised her fists, back on alert.
Caitlyn noted that, if nothing else, Vi seemed to be properly chastised. She wouldn't want to deal with casualties, and the thought of Vi dying because Caitlyn had failed to keep her in line was utterly unacceptable in her mind.
No, she needed Vi if she wanted Viktor.
With determination in her step, Caitlyn led the two of them back towards the staircase next to the elevators. When they finally reached the ground floor, voices reached them. True to Caitlyn's prediction and to no-one's surprise, there was a commotion on ground level. The perpetrators were issuing orders and harassing the hostages. Someone was shouting.
By nothing short of a miracle, Caitlyn and Vi managed to distance themselves from the staircase and slip into a close-by office unseen.
They had to be careful here, because this level was almost entirely aesthetic in architecture and would offer them precious little cover once the fire exchange began.
Thankfully, thick marble columns lined the foyer and separated a few seating areas from one another. Caitlyn chanced a quick look out of the office and got an overview of the situation.
When she was satisfied, she pulled back.
"This is the hard part, Vi. We need to keep them busy."
Vi didn't respond immediately. She also didn't look at Caitlyn when her body canted forward, poised, like a tiger ready to pounce.
"I'm ready for them," Vi pressed out between gritted teeth.
Caitlyn glanced at her and already felt sweat prickling at the base of her neck. The dizzying thoughts from just before wormed their way into her mind again and even though she didn't allow any of them to even fully manifest, she found herself desperately hoping that Vi was truly ready for this.
Agent Markham's words rang through her skull like a flitting bird and Caitlyn instantly grew agitated at the unwelcome intrusion.
Make sure she does well.
Caitlyn had no doubt Vi would do well with those ATLAS gauntlets on her hands and a few bad guys in her way, but this operation was as much an opportunity to see how well they would work together as it was a trial by fire for either of them.
You're responsible for her and her actions.
The image of a dead body suddenly flashed before Caitlyn's eyes and her blood grew cold. She blinked it away and told herself not to lose her focus at this time.
"Eight hostiles, all armed and all human. Two of them have power armour. There are no explosives on any of them," Caitlyn stated what her oculars told her.
She threw a look at Vi, "Here's what we do: The hostages are located in the middle the foyer, right in front of the reception. We can't risk them getting in the line of fire."
Vi received the visual from Caitlyn's oculars and studied the layout of the foyer already with heat in her eyes.
"The perpetrators have positioned themselves in a half-circle around them. The two heavies are by the entrance and are probably going to be a problem."
"So how do we take care of them?"
Caitlyn checked the timer in her periphery. It was almost time. She looked back to Vi.
"I won't. You will."
That clearly threw Vi in for a loop. Caitlyn met her stunned gaze head-on.
"Go out there and keep them busy. I'll make sure the hostages get out of there safely."
Vi was spluttering.
"There's no plan on how you keep them occupied, Vi. Just make sure they stay away from the hostages, so I can do my part."
Vi was clearly searching her face, but Caitlyn had nothing to offer except for a stony expression. So Vi bared her teeth and grunted an affirmative.
"Just… remember what I told you, Vi. No killing."
Despite the wave of unease washing over her, worrying wouldn't do anything for Caitlyn right now. This had to work, there was no better alternative. So she took a deep breath through her nose. Her nano suit warmed her skin as it responded to her neural signals.
"Wait for my signal," Caitlyn said and kept her eyes trained on the timer that was mercilessly counting down.
Caitlyn raised a hand, level with her head, and Vi was staring at the stillness of her fingers in anticipation. Her entire body was tight as a coil, ready to be unleashed.
Time flowed by in agonising slowness, like back underneath the desk in the office, and Vi's blood was pumping. Her fingers itched and the power core of her armour whirred softly at her back.
Then, Caitlyn gave the signal.
At once, Vi jumped up — and the whole building completely shut down.
[A/N:]
Pull through, dear readers. I did, and I know you can too.