Chapter 2 | Shutdown()
Towards the end of the hall, I stumbled upon a cluster of elevators that only a few people had gathered around. Within a couple moments, my ears flicked around, picking up the soft sound of a lift gliding to a rest nearby. A pair of door set in the wall slid open with a pleasant ding, practically inviting me to come up and wreak even more havoc. And, well, it would have been rude to refuse such an enthusiastic offer.
I filtered onto the luxurious lift last, behind a rather rotund hound who was a wearing a suit that was a few sizes too small for his frame. There were a few other people onboard, but the cabin itself was what caught my attention, rather than the surrounding unaware employees. The entire space was gilded within an inch of its life, complete with impeccably polished mirrors and brass fixtures on the back wall, and rich brown wood paneling framing it all. The buttons for each floor formed a tower of diamond jewels alongside the door, each glittering in the soft orange light radiating off of the twisting sconces lining the walls. It was a stark contrast to the ratty elevators I used in my private station hidden out in Meteos. There were certainly no embellishments in those elevators, unless you counted the copious duct tape I'd used to hold them together over the years. ...What? They were perfectly safe, except for the one in the corner of the base that had given out last year. There were more than enough credits in my account to refit every utility I had in my bunker out of solid gold, but I had more interesting things to build than elevators.
I clicked the button that would take me up to building security as the doors slid shut behind me. A soft song started to play, a rather romantic saxophone solo, if I'm not mistaken. The floor of the elevator shuddered before rocketing away from the ground a moment later, shuttling its passengers up to their destinations. One by one, they each filtered out, leaving to go fill out whatever paperwork they had to type up, or bug some poor IT worker because they'd forgotten their password over the weekend. The portly hound waddled out last, huffing as he pulled his card from his pocket and swiped onto his floor. The doors dinged shut after a quiet moment, leaving me alone with nothing but my thoughts, my reflection, and my equipment. I took a moment to peek inside my backpack and make sure all my gear was in order. A personal defense stun gun, painted an alarming mixture of saftey yellow and, my own personal addition, a few bold pink stripes. A small army of screwdrivers and other tools. And finally, a thick black plastic case, containing my laptop and another toy of the trade.
I hastily zipped my pack back up when elevator let out its final soft ping, letting me know that it had arrived at my stop: security. The doors parted, revealing a dimly lit greeting room exuding a distinctly damp scent. My nose wrinkled when I stepped in. Compared to the sleek, sterile, progressive look of the main lobby, this room was a little more… broken in. I glanced around the space, taking in the stained carpet and dust covered magazine racks until my eyes landed on the only other person in the room. He was a wiry, short dog, dressed in a wrinkled security shirt with his feet propped up on his desk. He had a pair of earphones on, and his attention was fixated on the screen of his communicator. Over his shoulder, I could make out a few shots of two scantily clad women who appeared to be on the brink of exploring a very active love life together. I rolled my eyes. He was that kind of guard. This was going to be too easy.
Before the canine had a chance to notice me, I quickly undid the top buttons of my suit and blouse, airing out the first couple inches of my... "diplomatic assets". I squeezed my chest together with my arms, making sure my cleavage was nice and visible even in this dark room. Subtlety wasn't what I was going for during this leg of the plan. I put on my best coy smile, using my arms to keep the pair of diplomats nice and perky before I stepped up to his desk. The poor guy did a double take when he saw me. Maybe it was because somebody had caught him watching "stimulating" material on the company network, but my own personal ego likes to think my chest might have inspired him nearly falling backwards in his chair.
The guard scrambled to present himself with some decorum, kicking his feet off the table and centering the hat that was perched askew on his head. He straightened his back and puffed out his chest, doing the best he could to take up more space that his diminutive build normally allowed for. His ploy to look more manly might've worked too, if his badge wasn't pinned on upside-down.
The canine cleared his throat, giving me a grimy smile laced with suggestiveness. The bait I had laid for him had obviously earned a bite. I laughed back quietly, beginning to weave my illusion. "Well hey there, angel," the guard started, throwing his voice down a few octaves lower than I'm sure was natural. "What's something as pretty as you doing down here?" For some reason, everybody in that building seemed like they were in a competition to make me gag. I didn't let my revulsion show though, instead giggling with feminine mystery a little louder this time, treating his bland compliment like it was the nicest thing anybody had ever said to me. I strode over to his desk, swaying my hips with every step, making sure he saw plenty of what I had to offer. By the way his eyes widened, I'd say I advertised pretty well. I came to a halt as I brushed up against the front of his station, bending forward ever so slightly so he got a brief, teasing peek down my blouse before I turned to the side again, hiding the goods from view. Like any good entertainer, leave them wanting more.
"My boss told me I needed to come down here to get my badge," I purred in a low tone. A shudder shook down his spine as my alluring voice hit his ears. I swear, sometimes this job was too easy. And too much fun. "If there's anyone around here who can help me out, I'd appreciate it…" I trailed off, lazily dragging one finger across a pile of papers and coming to a rest an inch away from his own. He reached out to try and grab a hold of my hand, but I pulled it back just before he made contact, giving him a tiny smirk. "I can always come back later, if I need to."
The canine snapped up in his chair, his eyes glued to mine with an expression of sudden panic. He leapt to his feet, banging his knee on his desk in the process and letting a few muffled curses out into his shoulder. "No, w-wait," he stammered out in a notably higher tone than earlier, reaching out the hand that had come so close to brushing into mine, only to be left woefully empty at the last second. "I can help you. Here," he said, recovering and lowering his voice down again, trying to regain his composure. The guard bent over his terminal, his hands hovering over the keys. "Tell me your name?" He looked up expectantly, a little hope in his eyes. I gave him a tiny smile as I pretended to deliberate, swaying on my feet ever so slightly.
"Krystal. Krystal Black," I hummed, practically able to hear his heart fluttering in his chest. His hands flew across the keys as he scrambled to type the name in. I couldn't help but notice him having to hit the backspace more than once because of anxious misspellings. Amateur. He frowned after he hit enter, presumably because he couldn't find an entry for my fake name. The dog tried again, typing more carefully this time, but his frown only grew when his search still came up blank. I cleared my throat, having to restrain myself from chuckling at the obvious fluster growing in his thoughts. "Is there a problem?" I asked, a hint of laughter filtering through into my question.
He deliberated for a while, biting his lip as he mulled over a vexing mental decision. On the outside, I was cool, calm, flirty. But on the inside, I was just as nervous as he was. I knew what he was trying to decide. The angel on one of his shoulders was yelling at him to turn me away, maybe even to call for backup. The guy on the other shoulder was telling him quite the opposite, however: take me back to make a permanent ID despite not finding me in the system, and possibly earn a little compensation for his time. The wolf blinked a few times to himself, seemingly coming to a decision. He looked up at me, his expression of false bravado newly plastered to his face.
"No problem," he said, stepping out from behind his desk, taking a few jaunting steps towards me. Even on his tip-toes, he still barely stood at my height, but he certainly tried to make up for it with his cocky grin. "Just follow me this way, Ms. Black," he said in a voice dropped to an even deeper bass than before, gesturing to a security door on the far wall. "My name is Dirk, by the way," he stated, swiping his badge through the card reader and opening the doorway for the both of us. He risked a glance over his shoulder to make sure I was still in tow, and sure enough, he found me right in stride with him, still watching him through half-shut eyelids. I was in.
The door sealed behind us after we'd passed into the next hallway. It was just as depressingly lit and decorated as the room before it. The walls and carpet were a sad dusk blue, with an army of unnecessary plastic file holders bolted onto doors at random. The lights on the wall barely put out enough luminance to see with. One of the bulbs next to me flickered sadly, on its last leg before it would inevitably kick the bucket. The sounds assaulting my ears were in stark contrast to the total lack of life that met my eyes, however. Phones rang and blared gleefully over each other, all seemingly in a competition to be answered first. Indiscernible security and police codes tumbled out of static-ridden radios, intermixed with the equally unintelligible cries of the other guards bustling around the halls. They shoved past each other with arms full of papers, food, or both. None of them were too busy to let their eyes linger on me though. I let out a short breath of amusement. Seems like all those days in front of the screen hadn't hurt my figure too much.
Dirk shot me a quick grin as we paced through the halls, moving deeper and deeper into the security facility. I returned the look as best I could, but most of my attention was devoted to peeking through all of the doors we were passing. I needed to figure out where the security footage and systems were being hosted. If I could get into their server room, I could find some way of disabling it, and move forward with the plan without being busted only one step in. Unfortunately, all I was seeing were reception areas, a break room, a locker, a gym, another break room, a bathroom, yet another break room… I swear, they had more break rooms than actual useful rooms. Part of me wanted to let my defenses down, to be lulled into a false sense of security, because judging by what I was seeing, these sore excuses for guards were well out of their depth in my presence. There was a reason Fara was paying me an ungodly amount of money to pull this heist though. I needed to keep my head on my shoulders, because this place was a wolf in sheep's clothing.
"So," the guard said, turning a corner and nearly colliding into a coworker who shot us a dirty look, "it uh, it is Ms. Black, right?" he tried to ask casually, while utterly failing to conceal the hopeful subtext to his question. I laughed quietly, my tail flicking pleasantly in the background. Now that we were close together, I had to hold my breath because of the rather overpowering scent of his rose-scented cologne. His pitch-black fur was slicked back with gallons of gel. Birdie might have used too much body spray from time to time, but at least he left his feathers free from enough goop and product to make a wax replica of himself. Despite his rather unappealing looks, I pretended to eye him up and down, deliberating on what he had to offer.
"I've already got a partner, sugar," I purred, having to restrain a chuckle at his crestfallen expression he failed to conceal even partially. "My girlfriend and I have an open relationship though…" I added, nearly bumping into him when he tripped over his own feet in surprise. He made a short choking noise before he managed to stand up straight again.
"O-oh, is t-that so?" he managed. I nodded softly, tossing my hair over one shoulder a letting out a soft coo in the back of my throat.
"Fay is great," I said shortly, knowing exactly how to deal the knockout punch. "Of course, we have been looking for a third to join us and help spice things up a little…" I snuck a quick glance at the guard, and wasn't disappointed. He might've been trying to keep his cool, but between his muscles locking up harder than steel, and his blush washing across his cheeks and throat, he wasn't convincing anybody.
"W-wow, that uh, sounds fun," he laughed, taking a deep breath in the process. Poor guy. I'm sure he was plenty confident around women normally, but I was dropping the hydrogen bomb of flirting on him right now. "I don't suppose you two are taking applications, are you?" he laughed noncommittally, while being woefully transparent. He was playing right into my hand, hook, line, and sinker.
I let out a series of admonishing tuts, pretending to scold him while still lacing my words with plenty of sugar. It was go time: I needed to lay it on thick, and secure the kill. "My, my, is somebody asking for an application?" I purred, weaving a sultry growl into my words. I lifted one hand up, trailing it across his shoulder before dragging it down between his shoulder blades. I could feel him shudder with delight. He spun around, looking at me with hunger and cockiness. Perfect. I was tapping into his emotions, getting him to think with his junk instead of his head. I could see it in his eyes. He wanted to do something stupid. And I was going to be ready to take full advantage of that when the moment came.
"Well, how about I take a little break," he growled, wrapping one hand around my waist, pulling me in close to him, doing his best to look muscle-bound and studly. The preposterous sight left me wanting to burst into hysterics, throw up in disgust, and lay him out flat all at once. Unfortunately, I needed to keep the ruse up for just a few more moments, so I let out a loud purr, brushing up against his torso. I bit my bottom lip and ran a teasing finger through his hair, subtly wiping the residue off on my clothes where he wouldn't notice. "And while I'm off, we can go do a little interview?" he murmured, his lukewarm breath bounced off my ears and cheek, forcing me to resist recoiling away from the smell of leftover lunch on his breath. Instead, I nuzzled up against his cheek, gripping the inside of his thigh with one hand.
"Let's see what you've got," I whispered into his ear.
That was the last straw for the poor guy. He let out a noise somewhere between a growl and a whimper, almost melting into to me. In under a second, I felt him dragging me towards a nearby closet, flinging the door open and shoving the both of us in together. The moment that he had it sealed shut behind us, I let out a low growl, pushing him hard up against the wall. I could see his beady eyes eating up all of my curves, his sight lingering on the valley of my cleavage.
"Just lean back, honey," I murred, grabbing him by the tie and licking my lips. "And let me do all the work." All the poor guard could manage was to nod once, breathing heavily, a noticeable tent already in his pants. I bent forward, burying my nose in the fur of his neck, dragging my barbed tongue up the length of his throat. I had to use a bottle's worth of mouthwash to get the taste of his fur gel out after that. It had exactly the effect I wanted however, and he went limp in my arms, totally surrendering himself to me. I had him precisely where I wanted him.
Slowly, still holding onto his tie, I slid one leg around his, grinding up and down against him with the rest of my body. I leaned into his muzzle, watching his eyes close and lips pucker as he expected the fun to really begin. He was out of luck.
Before he had to chance to realize what was happening, I shoved him hard to the side, throwing him to the ground by his tie and tripping him over the leg that I had entangled around him. He hit the floor with a shocked yip and a heavy thud, gasping as the wind was knocked out of him by the sudden impact. His eyes went wide as he looked up at me, horrified, clutching instinctually for anything to hold onto. I wouldn't give him a chance. I threw my weight on top of him, pinning both of his arms to the ground and slamming his chest back down. In one fluid motion, I slid a heavy iron wrench out of my pack, gripped the handle tight in both hands, and slugged him on the temple with as much force as I could muster. A loud metallic clank resonated around the room, and suddenly, Dirk was out cold underneath me.
I sat on top of him for another several seconds, my wrench readied above my head in case I had to give him a second helping. He was going to be under for a while though, after a blow to the skull like that. I stood up once I was absolutely sure he was unconscious, brushing the dust off my suit and flicking my hair back behind my ears. I quickly redid the top buttons of my shirt and pushed my tie back into place, resuming my professional appearance as easily as I had undone it. I took a deep breath, holding the musty closet air in my lungs for few moments before expelling it back out. So far, everything was going according to plan. I was inside the security floor, and nobody knew I was here. Unfortunately, I hadn't spotted anything more complicated than a refurbished laptop on the way in here, so now, I'd have to do a little sleuthing to find the server racks I needed.
I slid one arm out of the backpack I was carrying, and then the other, tossing it on the floor unceremoniously next to Dirk's crumpled figure. After feeling around inside, my fingers closed around a cool plastic handle, and I yanked the unmarked black case it was attached to out into the open. Snapping open the two metal clasps holding the box shut, I took inventory of the different items I had stored in there. My laptop, a few assorted pieces of hardware, data spheres, and scrap. And, of course, my favorite little partner in existence. I grinned a silly little smile when I undid the short velcro strap securing my quadcopter in place, bringing it out into the open and weighing it in my hands.
At first glance, it might have just appeared to be a small novelty for a child to play with, perhaps crash into a tree in a park and never see again. This piece of machinery, however, couldn't be bought in a cardboard box. Its sleek, curved body had four branching arms, each one connected to a tiny, downwards-facing propellor meant to help it hover in midair. I clicked the circular, indented button on its underside, and was rewarded with a series of bright flashing lights and happy chirps as it booted up. I giggled a little at the chipper hover bot. It was definitely coded to be one of my happier pieces of hardware, and it showed in everything from its bright pink plastic to the ecstatic blips it let out during its boot sequence. Don't let its pleasant demeanor fool you though. This little bot had a nasty temper whenever I needed to get a job done. It could sneak around a building without getting noticed, but he was more than just stealthy. I'd loaded it up with plenty of firepower to defend itself when things went loud.
I tossed it lightly into the air over my shoulder, not bothering to watch where it was going to land. Moments before it was about to dash itself against the cold concrete underfoot, its propellers whirred to life, sending out a short gust of wind and bringing itself to a steady hover millimeters from the ground. I cracked open the lid of my laptop while it waited patiently, connecting my computer up and starting my remote controls. Once my laptop was properly synced up with the bot, I pressed a few keys to bring it to a hover right in front of me. The tiny machine obeyed instantly, floating gracefully right in front of my face. I giggled again, poking it lightly with my finger.
"Good morning, Pinky," I said to it as it recalibrated from my touch and came to a halt again. It chirped happily back at me, bobbing up and down in the air, excited. ...Yeah, I programmed my robot to talk to me. So what? It gets lonely, being cramped up in my base by myself all the time. Anyway, after running a few basic exercises to make sure Pinky still had full mobility, and had run diagnostics on all of his tools, I prepared to send him out into the wild.
I rose to my feet, looking around the compact closet for a vent of some sort. I could try to send Pinky out to fly through the hallways if I needed to, but in such close quarters, it wouldn't take long for somebody to notice him. If that happened, at worst, the floor would be locked down and I would be trapped, and at best, somebody would get a butterfly net and steal my expensive hardware. Luckily, my hunch was correct, and I found a small ventilation shaft near the ceiling at the back of the room. I grabbed a screwdriver out of my pack, and quickly undid the bolts holding the cover over it. Behind, I saw a long tunnel that quickly faded into total darkness. I could barely fit an arm into the vent, let alone try to squeeze my curvy figure in there, but luckily, it was just the right size for Pinky.
I knelt back down in front of my screen, clicking a few more buttons that brought Pinky right in front of the passageway. I wouldn't be able to use its flashlight, not without every single other vent on the floor seeing bright flash of light as it floated by. Instead, I flipped his camera onto infrared mode, and suddenly, everything became clear in front of the drone. I turned to face the bot, blowing it a final kiss goodbye.
"Fly safe, my adorable little killbot," I said, pressing a button on my laptop, sending him sailing onwards into the darkness of the tunnel.
Now, it was time to lose myself in the camera feed and the controls. It took a few minutes, and a few more instances of bumping Pinky into the vent's walls than I'd care to admit, but eventually I fell in sync with the system. The walls of the shaft were close-quarters at first, presumably because I was still at the outskirts of the security floor when I knocked out Dirk. After drifting along the winding path for a few minutes, thankfully, the narrow passage opened up into a larger path, with other tunnels like mine feeding out of it. Good. That was exactly what I wanted. Ideally, I wanted to trace all of this ventilation back to its source, because where there was massive amounts of cooling, there was something massive that needed to be cooled. Such as, for example, a large server array. And as it turned out, my hunch was correct again.
After several more minutes of bonking against walls and fighting against an increasingly turbulent headwind inside the vents, my thermal camera was blinded by a sliver of white streaking across the screen. Flipping the feed back over to my normal cam, I let out a sigh of relief at finally encountering the end of the road. The ventilation system had reached its origin point. Which meant, ideally, I'd now find my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I inched forward, slipping myself through the wider gaps of the industrial cooling vents. Emerging from the darkness of the snaking vent system, my camera needed a moment to readjust to the blinding light of the sterile server room I'd popped into. The more the view came back into focus, the more I could discern about my new surroundings. The square tiles spanning the floor were pure white, looking as though a very fastidious janitor had devoted a lifetime to cleaning each one individually. The space was minimally decorated, sequestering as much room as possible for the rows of servers churning in the middle of the room. They nearly deafened my poor little bot, their whirring and groaning assaulting Pinky's audio levels. I twisted around a few times, trying to get a lay of the land, hoping to spot something useful. Thankfully, after buzzing along a wall of blinking lights and titanium casing, I arrived at the far end of the room, and was greeted by two things. The first was a door, presumably to let technicians or guards come and go. The second was a small table with a monitor sitting atop it, complete with a bright, shiny port just dying to be plugged into.
Clicking a few more buttons on my keyboard, a small silver connector emerged from the side of the bot. I flew over to the desktop, taking one more look around before hooking into the system. Everything looked quiet and still. There was nobody in the room, and it didn't appear as though I had set off any alarms by slipping in through the vents. Everything was in order, save for one little detail that made me uncomfortable. Directly across from the computer that I needed an uplink to was the door. A door that any guard on a patrol could open up and see a very suspicious quadcopter jacked into their mainframe, if they were observant enough. The time I would need to be connected to their system wasn't all that long, maybe just a minute or two. But if somebody strolled through that door, it was going to be hard to avoid a fight.
Still, I had come too far to back down now. I inched Pinky forward, giving myself the quick burst of I needed power to couple up to the port. After a quick snap and a jostle to the camera, I was connected. A small wheel started spinning on my laptop as Pinky began establishing a bridge between their computer and mine. I swiveled the camera around to take a glance at the door one more time. Still sealed tight. With a deep breath, I hit the button that had just popped up on my screen, taking control of their security terminal remotely. It put up a fight, but clearly, most of the effort had been put into keeping people out of the room storing the machines, rather than installing high end security software on the machines themselves.
After a few minutes of shuffling around in their system, I finally stumbled onto the feeds that were streaming all of their cameras and other sensors. With a little more effort, I managed to pick out the thread for the floor that I needed to get to: floor 256. It wasn't hard to do, considering that a good third of all the security devices in the building seemed to all by housed on that floor. Cameras, trip wires, sentry devices, thermal imaging, even passive radioactive particle counters. I let out a long, low whistle. Whatever Fara wanted me to get for her off of this level, Artec clearly didn't want to let go of. Still, it was nothing I couldn't handle. If I could disable all of their sensors, it would blind everything on that floor. And a security system without eyes isn't much of a security system. Best of all, they wouldn't even realize they couldn't see. I clicked a few more buttons on my keyboard, and initiated the process of killing each of those live feeds, and instead replacing them with a short ten-second loop of boring, uneventful footage. Somebody would notice the discrepancy eventually, but by then, I would be long gone. Once the connection was firm and Pinky was churning away doing all my dirty work for me, I leaned back, resting my head against one of the cold metal shelves behind me. I let my eyes close for a second time that operation, reveling in how relaxing this job could be sometimes.
And for a second time, I was jolted back to alertness by an unexpected noise.
My eyes flashed back open at the unmistakable mechanical grinding of a door opening. My muscles tensed to steel, my hand leaping back to my wrench, ready to spring into action. When my eyes locked onto the door however, it was still shut tight, and the only other person in the room was Dirk's splayed figure. That was when I realized the door opening wasn't in my room - it was opening in Pinky's. Snapping my vision down to the camera feed, I saw what I'd known was bound to happen. The lights on the server room door were flashing green. The whine of electronic locks disengaging and hiss of hydraulics unclasping hit my ears. With a gulp, I saw the door slide open, and two Artec guards stride in with rifles in hand.
Instantly, my mind jerked into overdrive. Had I set off a silent alarm? Was this just a random patrol? Judging by the fact that their weapons were drawn, I doubted it was a random search. I must have tripped an alert that I hadn't noticed. But then, why hold their guns so casually? Whatever the case, I couldn't afford to disconnect Pinky now. It was so close to finishing the upload… At this point, I'd have to cross my fingers and hope that they didn't see me. If I could just finish the alterations, I could improvise from there. I bit my bottom lip, my fingers hovering over the keys but knowing that, ultimately, I was at the mercy of their perceptiveness.
"I don't know why we're even bothering to investigate this," one of the two guards muttered aloud. I sized him up quickly. Medium height, solid build. He looked distracted, but he held his weapon with professional rigor. "This room sets off more false alerts than a smoker in a fire alarm factory."
The door shut behind the two of them, sealing but not locking. The other guard came into full view after a moment, but what I saw didn't make me any more comfortable. Tall, muscular, and he carried his weapon with similar casual caution. These two weren't the same cannon fodder I had seen so far. These were the Artec agents that I needed to be worried about, the ones famed for their brutality. "Suck it up," the second one said back in a short, gruff tone. His eyes were scanning the room from side to side, checking any point he thought an intruder might stow away in. He didn't seem to expect anything to meet his efforts, but he appeared wary nonetheless. "This room goes down, we lose our eyes everywhere, so just do your job and figure out what set the alarm off."
I grunted to myself unhappily. So, I had tripped an alarm somewhere along the way. It seemed like there were plenty of false positives to cover my tracks though, so at least they weren't on red alert. I glanced down at my progress bar, the readout making my tail flick unhappily behind me. I was so close to being done. Just a few more streams needed to be diverted, and I'd be in the home stretch of this infiltration. A cold bead of sweat trickled down my back. I couldn't fail now. I couldn't.
"Fine," the first guard said unhappily, holstering his weapon at his back and taking a few brisk steps over to the vent I had slipped in through. "It was this one that set it off. Probably just a piece of dust, or a chip bag that one of the IT nerds left behind." He pulled a screwdriver off his belt, twisting the bolts a few times and loosening the grate covering the entrance. After that, he needed to get through the magnetic fence, which was sealed with a keycode. He sighed with his hand hovering over the number pad, trying to remember the code, but clearly not recalling. He mumbled a few more choice curses under his breath as he reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone. A series of blips hit Pinky's speakers when he unlocked the device, and presumably, navigated over to a document where he had stored the relevant code. I smirked when he set the unlocked phone down next to him as he worked.
An unlocked phone was a very useful asset that he'd just given me.
I clicked a few more buttons on my laptop, starting up a routine to try and wirelessly connect Pinky to his phone. Sure enough, I was able to couple up with it by mimicking his home computer's address, fooling it into thinking that it was communicating with a safe device. Unfortunately, it was communicating with me now. I downloaded every file I could scrounge up. Who knows? Could come in handy.
The first guard was preoccupied running diagnostics on the alarm I had tripped, but unfortunately, the second guard wasn't so relaxed. I held my breath as he paced within the frame of my camera, checking a corner here, a spare parts locker there. I let out a silent, frustrated hiss. Why did this guy have to be so persistent? If he kept his search up, it would only be a matter of time before he spotted Pinky hooked into the network. My fists clenched when he turned around, facing directly into the camera. My finger hovered on the abort button, ready to unleash Pinky's claws at a moment's notice. He stared at the camera for a long, unending moment, torturing the voices in my mind that were screaming that I should neutralize him now, while I still had the chance. I just needed a few more seconds though…
"There, see?" the first guard said, forcing both my and the other guard's head to swivel over and look at him. "It was just a split second beam interruption. We get those all the time, it's nothing. Can I get back to my lunch now?"
"You know the drill," he said, readjusting his grip on his gun. My sights were still dead fixed on his chest. If things went downhill, I'd need to drop him first. "Sweep the room once, and then we can leave." The first guard groaned, slamming the grate back up and twirling the screws back into place.
"Whatever. But you have to check all the awkward corners up here, I get the long, easy hallways back there." The second guard grunted in agreement, but the other was already stomping off, not leaving any room for argument. I sat with baited breath, watching him move methodically around the room, checking everything he could find. I gulped, continuing to rotate Pinky's camera around, tracking his every move. My finger rested on the execute button, ready to strike. It felt like a spent an eternity monitoring his movements, just waiting for him to spin around and take a shot at my drone. Just waiting to go loud, and need to book it out of the floor.
By some miracle though, after it felt like years had gone past, Pinky finally finished modifying the streams. Now, Artec was completely blind on the floor I needed to hack into. Slowly, carefully, I disengaged the Pinky from the desktop's port, coming to a silent hover behind a stack of burnt-out hard drives on the desk. Once I had waited out their search, I could find a safe place to decommission Pinky, and be on my way. I let out a quick sigh of relief, thinking that maybe, just maybe, I had pulled this off. Everything was going fine. I was hidden, and the guards were about to finish their sweep.
Unfortunately, as with everything else on that mission, I was out of luck.
I gasped when, suddenly, my camera feed was cast into dark shadow by the second guard stepping right in front of the desktop I had just hacked. He had kept a healthy distance during the entirety of his sweep, but now, he loomed huge in the camera, towering over Pinky. I could see every stitch in his clothing, from the creases made by the bulletproof vest he wore beneath his uniform, to the gun holstered at his side. My knuckles turned white as I had to use every ounce of willpower not to blast him right then and there, and send him stone cold unconscious to the floor.
"Just gonna check the cams real quick, then we can go." I let out a stream, a river of solid swearing. He was about to open up the streams for this room. Streams that, very clearly, would show a plethora of unauthorized modifications that I had just made to them. There was no avoiding it now. It was time to go loud. The guard squinted his eyes, peering close at the screen. He opened his lips in shock, reaching for the gun at his side. "Hey! What the hell is th-"
He never finished his sentence.
A piercing zap punched through the room as I hit the kill switch, slamming twenty thousand volts of blinding electricity into his chest. His eyes snapped wide open and his mouth contorted in pain, but no sounds escaped his lips as he hit the ground with a solid thud, knocked out. I pounded my keyboard, adrenaline surging through my veins. The previously pleasant green light on Pinky's chasis flared blood red, and every ounce of electricity flowing through him was redirected to roaring his motors into overdrive, into cramming as much energy as possible into the momentum that would drop the last guard. His other guard spun around on his heel at hearing his partner drop, his hand smoothly ripping his weapon out of its holster. I growled, baring my teeth. I couldn't let him fire that gun, or the entire floor would transform into an inescapable bunker.
I threw everything into sending Pinky hurtling across the room, sprinting past servers fast enough they morphed into a blur. The engines smoked with effort, as I passed far more energy through them than they were ever designed to handle, but everything worked just long enough to finish the job. The final guard had his rifle shouldered, but it didn't matter. All he had time to do was flinch before Pinky's girth smashed him directly in the forehead, speeding faster than any car traveling on the highways. The poor drone lost control in the impact, flipping and slamming against a nearby wall, crippling everything but its most basic functions. The guard didn't fare much better. The force of the blow jerked his head back, and he sank to the ground unceremoniously, unconscious.
I let out a long sigh of relief when the last guard slumped to the floor. I leaned back once more. Nothing could go right for me though, and so of course, as soon as I thought I had finally made it out of the jungle, one more noise buzzed through my earphones to drag me right back into the fray. Even through the battered hiss of Pinky's microphone, critically damaged by the impact, I heard a woman's garbled voice in my ears.
"Come in, Delta 2," her gruff voice like sandpaper over the guard's communicator. "Server room status? Over." Only the fact that I was camped out behind enemy lines stopped me from releasing a monstrous, fraught groan. In all the excitement, I had neglected to realize that these two guards would likely need to report their findings. I would have to report in for them, somehow.
It took a few attempts and a lot of depressed blips and beeps from Pinky, but eventually I managed to lurch the bot over towards the guard's body, despite the fact that one of its four motors was malfunctioning, and the camera lens had a web of cracks across snaking across it. Pinky's short range transmitter must have been busted, because I couldn't seem to find his walkie-talkie over my scans. Instead, I had to drag the quickly fading bot over towards his communicator, and physically push down on the talk button.
"Server room clear. Over," I stated with a few words as possible, lowering my voice into a deeper bass. I'd hoped that would be enough to assuage their fears, but unfortunately, the pesky, grating voice came again over the coms.
"Confirmation code?" she asked, clearly on a short fuse. The blood in my veins instantly ran cold as ice. How was I supposed to know what the confirmation code was? If I didn't say something, they would send even more guards to check in on these two, and I wouldn't be able to keep the ruse going then. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat with little success. I was backed into a corner, and every millisecond of silence where I couldn't produce the code was an instant closer to blowing my cover. I was sure that I had finally bitten off more than I could chew.
But that was when I remembered the guard's phone.
A surge of adrenaline blasted through my frantic mind. I had downloaded the contents of the guard's phone. He'd had the vent code on it. Maybe he also had the confirmation code. With hands that were only steady because of years of rote experience at a keyboard, I searched the entire contents of the guard's phone, looking for anything labeled as a confirmation code. And, once again, my quick thinking was rewarded with a way out. I nearly jumped for joy, barely restraining myself from doing a little dance over Dirk when I found an ten digit code, entered into his phone right before he left to investigate the mess I'd made. I hopped back onto the coms, stating it out loud.
"48-61-6C-65-79. Over," I nearly gasped, trying to hold my voice at a level volume the entire time. The woman on the other end thought for a moment, and finally came back with a response that made me want to melt into the floor with sheer relief, four words that finally put me in the home stretch of this mission.
"Acknowledged, Delta 2. Out."
I was in the clear. I had fooled everyone in their security division, from Dirk, to their security feeds, to the patrol, and even to this woman. They were totally blind on the 256th floor, and they didn't even know it. I was in. Now, all I had to do was get up there, and steal whatever the hell Fara and Artec were making all this fuss about.
Before I could though, one last, soft beep came over my speakers. I looked down, and saw an armada of deep crimson warning lights flashing on Pinky's display. A pang of sadness clawed through my heart. His system was broken beyond repair, and I knew that he wouldn't last more than a few more minutes before he finally petered into nonexistence. I smiled a sad little smile, putting my hand up to the screen, letting my fingertips brush over his dire diagnostics. "You did good, Pinky. I'm proud of you," I said softly, bringing up the final button that would send him his permanent shut-down signal. A few broken, but still miraculously cheerful beeps came over the channel as one of his motors finally gave out, sending him clattering to the floor, immobile. "I'll see you again soon. I promise," I whispered. With just a moment of hesitation, I sent the shutdown signal out. Across the building, a powerful electromagnet pulsed with electricity for a moment, scouring his hard drives clean, and finally putting him to rest.
"Good little robot," I said to the darkness of the room, nothing but me and my computer left to finish the mission. And it would be a hell of an uphill battle.
/
A/N: Poor Pinky. It's a tough business. Luckily, he's just an AI, so I'm sure Katt can reconstitute him after this is all said and done! Just one more chapter of this story, and then it'll be done! I've almost got that one done, just a little more writing I've gotta do for it. And then, onwards to Fox and Krystal fun times!