"Alarm level three. New guard patrols. Stay out of their way."
I tune Incognita out. I've heard this schpiel a thousand times before. New guy patrolling around, Operator will keep an eye on that. They'll let us know if he gets too close.
It does mean we should get a move on. After alarm level three comes alarm level four, and after alarm level four, well, let's just say I'd rather not see things get quite that interesting.
Couple of hiccups - and the cold's starting to settle in, slowly, no thanks to that pulse device - but not too bad. So far, this is routine enough.
The universe just loves proving me wrong, though.
"Interesting," Xu says not five seconds later, a little too calmly. "There's a BSL-4 lab on this level."
"Don't tell me you plan on going in," Valdes replies.
"Of course not. I take safety protocols very seriously, and we don't have the time to suit up-"
"Says the guy who plays with electricity." I mutter under my breath, but we're all linked up, so of course they can hear me. "Alright, what do they need with a biohazard lab here?"
BSL-4 is a little more than just 'biohazard', of course; you can't get nastier than BSL-4. But I'm not about to out myself as the kind of egghead who'd know that, and besides, it's not exactly the fondest of memories for me.
K&O is in weapons manufacturing, and I was Chief of Security. As old-fashioned as they are, even they are not blind to the potential of bioweapons.
Things took a different course during the Resource Wars, though, and now I really don't want to go down that memory lane. I snap back to attention. Xu is explaining.
"Well... Based on some of the equipment ouside the lab, most likely for ice core samples. There are a lot of ancient things trapped in the ice. Some of them may still be viable."
He says it casually enough, but a chill hangs in the aftermath of his words that has nothing to do with the corp's thermostats.
Central speaks thoughtfully into the silence. "We have trade records between them and Plastech, but we haven't been able to determine what it is they're trading. Until now."
"Plastech has been expanding their bio-engineering division lately..." Xu points out almost to himself.
Well, ain't that just peachy.
Valdes swears softly in Spanish, and yeah, honestly, same.
"Dr. Xu, Internationale, find out what you can from the lab's terminals," Central says briskly. "Without going into the lab."
"Yes ma'am."
"Copy that, Central."
"'Yes, ma'am,'" I quietly mock Xu. He snorts, and I can hear Valdes rolling her eyes over comms. Let me have my fun, Red.
"The lab terminals are in that side room. Locked away, like the others," the co-Operator says. Come to think, I do know her voice. Violet- no, Vivienne? Valerian? Something like that. New girl, Central probably hovering over her shoulder every second. I can never keep track of the new ones, and sometimes I don't have to try to for very long.
There's a reason an agent's first anniversary at the agency is a big deal. I mean, the survival rates aren't bad - Cental's too good at her job for that, too damn careful, and nobody's gonna send a rookie into something they're not ready for.
But there's no guarantees. Nobody grows out of being a rookie by only doing the things they're ready for, either. It's the catch-22 of living on the edge.
And sometimes the corps throw new shit at us, like guards that can see out the back of their head, or countermeasures that freeze your balls off.
Yeah, sometimes I wonder how I'm still alive. How any of us are.
"I'll get us a keycard," I tell them glumly. And I pull out my disru- my taser. Time for some poor man's sleight-of-hand - our best pickpockets are back at HQ, after all.
"Do it," Central says. After seeing the number of locked doors in this place, I have a feeling she won't be sending in another team without a trained thief anytime soon.
I find the nearest guard with a keycard, take him out, and drag him over to Xu to keep quiet. The man beams at me like I've brought him a present and immediately starts going over the tech on the guard with his little tablet in hand. I watch as the guard starts to squirm awake, and without even taking his eyes off the tablet, Xu surgically presses a knee to his throat until he stops. Jesus, alright then.
Xu's first recruitment anniversary came and went a couple months back. We'll see if he makes it to his second.
I'm support, so for the next (God willing) not more than ten or twenty minutes, it's my job to make that happen.
I unlock the side room for them and scout out the nearest exits to make sure the area is clear while the two hackers do their thing. We don't have much time, but they won't be analysing the data or decrypting it just yet. They just need to find it and download it, and we're golden.
Or so I hope. This is more aimless than I'm used to. No specific target, just collecting intel until things get too hot to stick around. I scout out the remaining unknown rooms near us to keep myself busy, and the team safe.
Valdes joined up near about the same time as me, but you wouldn't think so to look at her. She's got that idealism of a green recruit right on her sleeve, unmarred somehow after all these years. Nothing like me, but we've gone through just about the same shit together.
I'll make sure she lives to her next one, too. If it's the last thing I do.
"Found the exit," I say to no-one in particular. The emergency transport pad is up and running, which is just as well. It's either that, or the roof, and I'm not too keen on that, not in the middle of the fucking Antarctic.
The door to the exit room is locked - though I can spot another low-sec one on the opposite end - so I swipe the card through it as I pass by. Xu and Valdes are muttering to each other about the lab work, but I tuned them out a while ago.
I find something like a locked storage room and swipe that open, too. I peek inside. Even in the doorway, the wave of cold sends me shivering as it escapes the room. I glance at the thermostat and it's set to minus twenty, nothing like the cushy just-above-zero they've got in the main rooms. I watch my breath leave me in puffs of fog.
It doesn't look terribly exciting - tall fridges lined up along the wall, frosted over with condensation. Shelves upon shelves filled with frozen vials and test tubes. I sure hope there's nobody's freaky biological experiment in one of these, or hopefully they'd be better-guarded. I can't see the end of the room, though, and I like to be thorough.
"Alarm level four. New guard patrols." Again.
"That's our cue. Let's wrap it up, everyone," Central says. "It's been clean so far, I'd like to keep it that way. No surprises - finish what you're doing and get to the exit."
"Yeah, sure. Just a sec here, boss," I mutter.
I go deep enough into the room to sneak a peek past the huge fridges and confirm that yup, there's nothing in the corner. No safe containing a valuable scientific experiment, no freaky device for Xu and the other agency geeks to pick apart, no secure terminal. Just more fridges. The one closest to me has a little electronic screen on it showing -79°C. Yeah, I don't wanna know what they've got in here, and even if I did, I'm not equipped to find out.
"Well, this was a waste of time," I mutter as I turn around.
There's a characteristic little click from the door.
"Um," I say. I swipe the keycard by the scanner again.
And there's nothing.
Look, it's not that I'm new to the concept of self-locking doors. I'm not that old. But once Incognita's got her teeth into a system, we usually don't need to worry about little things like that.
"Hostile AI action detected," Incognita tells us neutrally.
"I'm sorry, hostile what now?"
"Decker, Internationale, stand by," Central says, "We'll get you out of there." She doesn't sound worried, but then again, there could be a death squad about to kick my door in right now and she wouldn't let it show, if she thought the mission might be worse off for me knowing it.
"Take your time, boss, I'm comfy," I tell her dryly, and tighten my collar. At least it's only minus twenty. Could have been worse.
"Internationale, use the console near you. See if you can get a read on the system. Xu, make your way to where Decker is."
"Copy that," the two of them echo.
"Wait. Red," I say urgently. "Are you-" The side room. The one I had to get a keycard to unlock. She's not-
"I'm locked in as well." Aw, hell. "Don't worry about me, focus on getting out," she reassures me. Ugh. I hate it that when we're both equally in trouble, she's still trying to take care of me.
"It relocked several of the security doors at once, perhaps all of them. We've never seen mainframe action this coordinated," Xu wonders aloud, sounding equal parts worried and intrigued, and I scoff, because being exasperated at him gives me something to do other than stand there and shiver.
"Save the discussion for the debriefing," Central tells him curtly. "Assist Decker, and finish the job. We'll handle the complications as they come."
"If the door locking routine was prompted by the alarm level, there may be new measures incoming," Xu whispers urgently - he's on the move. I almost snap at him to listen to Central and save it for later, but this is actually pretty relevant for a change. "Internationale, if you can identify-"
He doesn't get to finish. The shout of an alerted guard interrupts him, and I should have seen that coming, because the alarm level four patrol was out there somewhere and I could practically hear Xu go through a door without looking both ways. With cold-numbed fingers, I fumble for my tablet to get a better view of the situation, even as I hear a plasma shot through the comms. Overlay tells me Xu's still up, so he must have dodged it.
Well, great. Some nameless counterintelligence AI has got me and Valdes locked away, the rookie's the only one who can move around freely, alarm level 5 is just around the corner, and the corps have just spotted him. Oh, and he doesn't have a proper weapon. Did I miss anything? Yeah, that about covers it.
I know better than to say that it can't get worse, so I shut my mouth and watch the screen. With any luck, Valdes will still come through with something.
"Well. Fuck," I mutter.
The door's locked, but I can still peek through the glass slats, misted over with cold as they are.
The trouble is, even if the door opened right now, I can't get out. The room outside has turned into one of those unfortunate little social hubs you get in an infiltration sometimes - people keep coming in and out, investigating, and generally clogging up the works. I watch as a hapless patrol wanders in - clearly out of the loop - and stumbles to a halt when he encounters an alerted guard. They exchange shouted warnings for a bit. Then the new guy looks around and makes a beeline for the door. My door.
This could be my chance. I shake the stiffness from my limbs and get ready, press myself into the corner.
He runs in past me without a second glance. The door unlocks just long enough for him to slip through, and locks again before I can make a move. I curse colourfully in the privacy of my mind and stay silent as I watch the guard.
He visibly shivers and takes all of two steps into the room, does a cursory look-around. You don't need a super-AI's predictive behaviour model to tell he's about to turn right around and go out the way he came. I shuffle past him silently so I'm in his blind spot when he does that. I pray to God that doesn't leave me visible through the door.
He runs back out. I make a lunge for the door but it's already locked. I resist the urge to swipe my card at it again and again, and instead shuffle stiffly back into the corner. I breathe on my hands. The tip of my nose is starting to feel more stiff than I'd like, and I pull my scarf over it. Feels a little better with my warm breath against the fabric.
I tuned out the others while I was focused on maybe getting out, but now I pay attention again.
"I can delay the subroutine long enough for Decker to slip out, but it needs to be timed precisely," Valdes is saying.
"I can do it," Xu says urgently. "Distract them, I mean." He sounds out of breath, which isn't a surprise considering he's been dodging who knows how many guards.
"Do it," Central replies. "Decker, get ready."
Right, the "Hey you, look over here!" maneuver. When subtlety fails...
It's a plan, if a risky one. The guards do this ping-pong ball thing when they're alerted long enough, bouncing randomly through the facility. A distraction can break that pattern and pull them all in one direction.
The trouble is, then what?
A good agent can weave through an alerted facility with relative ease, provided you've got enough visibility. But Xu is new to this, and slow enough that it's his tech skills more than anything that qualified him for this mission. If it weren't for the fact that it's fucking suicide, I'd tell him to get to the exit and leave the two of us to figure it out.
Too late for that now. I watch Xu step into the doorway long enough for the guards to notice he's there, and shrink back as no fewer than three of them overwatch him at once. Beams of plasma pepper the door, a second too slow. The guards give chase, and the room is briefly, mercifully, empty. I'm support, but I can't worry about him now, not when he's risking his skin to get me out of here.
"Now," Central says.
Valdes gives the signal, and I pray as I swipe the card through the door again and this time it works. I shove through the door and out of that fucking storage closet, knees stiff with cold, and the just-above-zero temps of the room outside meet me in a warm embrace. I don't waste time, though, and make for the door opposite the one Xu just disappeared through. And I know that way connects back to the exit, which is the only reason this could possibly work.
Plan is simple. Valdes is still trapped near the lab, but that's close enough to the exit. Get down there, set her free, then unlock the security door in the exit room - again - so Xu can come in from the other side. And soon, or he'll be a sitting duck for those guards he drew away.
I can work with this, I think, and naturally that's just when I round a corner and come face-to-face with a guard.
"Intruder!" he yells. Before I can move a muscle - duck into cover, or cloak, or anything at all - the little gun in his hand goes off.
I brace myself for impact, but it's... mild, like getting hit with a paintgun pellet. I glance down at my arm. There's a stinging sensation in my biceps - and a little dent in the fabric that will be hell to fix - but that's it. I can't spot any actual projectile, but that's technology for you. Probably embedded in my skin already. Great, just great.
I look back at the guy when it's been a second and I still haven't passed out. Nobody comes running, which means nobody else was in earshot. That's two more miracles than I deserve.
He just kind of stands there, awkwardly, and keeps watching me.
"So, are you gonna-" I start, scanning him for more serious weapons. "No? Alright. Have yourself a good one."
I unceremoniously shove past him and beat it as fast as I can. He follows me, shouting, but can't keep up.
It's closer than I'd like, though. There's a cold, aching stiffness in my limbs that wasn't there before, like I'm back in the freezer, and my gut tells me it's the thing I got hit with.
"From your biometrics, you got hit with a draining dart," the Co-Operator tells me, like she can read my mind (which I'm really hoping is not the case). "We've never seen them in the field before, so we don't have exact intel. Watch out for any other effects."
Oh, this place is just full of fun surprises, I want to say, but manage to hold my tongue. I duck behind cover to catch my breath, rubbing my arm and watching the room.
Two guards burst in, one of them an Elite. They stop to look around. There's a little twinge in my arm and a high-pitched keen. It can't be louder than a mosquito, but they turn and zero in on my hiding spot.
"Aw hell," I manage. I dart out from behind it like a flushed rabbit and dash through their sights, and through an open door.
Hot on my heels, they follow.