Slavegear 2 - Katsura's Mask

Kaylee Brown wrote:The access panel came off with some effort and considerable metalic noise. You glance quickly back to the technician, weary of him noticing. The man only frowned into his joysticks display and continued to hammer at it with his fingers. It seems there's enough noise coming from his earpiece, that he didn't hear the panel come off.

Geoff gently places the now-removed access panel on the floor by his feet, and inspects the wiring inside the now-open lock.

Upon hearing him talk, Inferno glanced at him, slightly annoyed. When he spoke about his views on prisons he shook his head.

"We're all prisoners, no matter what angle we take on it." He replied. "There's no way to escape it, only to accept it and find what joy you can find in the prison. If I have to guess, you believe these folks are prisoners to the standard work week, except you and those other idiots chose to serve someone because of your fear of death." His eyes narrow, and disgust is clear in his voice. "Inflicting pain as bread and butter, but running away when it seems it comes close to you. The hallmark of cowardice."

He began to go down. "Let's go."

Slasher stares down the sewer, she checks the map on her datapad to see which way they are headed, "Mmmhm... Here." she says idly.

"We are here"

The Twins also check the map and start heading in that direction right away. The screens of their data pads providing just a small amount of light. Enough to let the natural night vision of their feline genome kick in.

Inferno wrote:"We're all prisoners, no matter what angle we take on it." He replied. "There's no way to escape it, only to accept it and find what joy you can find in the prison. If I have to guess, you believe these folks are prisoners to the standard work week, except you and those other idiots chose to serve someone because of your fear of death." His eyes narrow, and disgust is clear in his voice. "Inflicting pain as bread and butter, but running away when it seems it comes close to you. The hallmark of cowardice."

"I do not fear death, child," the cultist spoke serenely "I do not fear pain, nor ten thousand men, should they set themselves against me. For I carry God with me, He is my Sword, He is my shield." His eyes glossed over, he sounded like he was a thousand miles away:

"A phoenix cannot be reborn, without suffering the fires of death. And as the Prophet Audrey Swan suffered, so too shall I suffer, to help this world enter, its next cycle."

You felt the cultists gaze on you, as you began descending a fire-escape ladder on the side of the building:

"I feel much turmoil in you. Bitterness and hopelessness and resentment. A resignation to remain chained.

Free your mind, first. And then, you can free the world from its prison." The unicorns voice grew hasty, determined, as he spoke in a quick whisper:


"Accept a purpose, higher than your own existance. Listen to the words of Audrey Swan and help us free this world.
I do not serve her, I serve beside her, for we all have the same goal - the freedom of the human soul."


Even through the invisibility cloak, you felt the unicorns piercing gaze on you quite vividly. Apparently the mage decided to use the moment away from the rest of the group, to convert you into his Uroburos cult.



Slipping down to street level in silence you finally crossed the venue, where traffic was still absent, owing to the police barricade further down the road. The unicorn spoke no more, but you still felt his constant gaze, burrowing into the back of your skull as you climbed a neighboring building across the street and continued your rooftop track to the enemy HQ.

Rain had started with a renewed fervor, the downpour growing hard enough that you could now clearly see the cultists silhouette in the rain, as the water bounced off his stealth suit. This spelled trouble, at least down the road. The rain gave away your position quite clearly, the only saving grace was the lack of illumination on the roofs and you were no more distinguishable than a pair of shadows in the dark.


Minutes passed, as your traveled several kilometers like this, before you stopped on the edge of a roof, looked across the street and consulted your data-pad.
This was it.


A featureless, unpeculiar building of 8 floors stood just across another venue, separates from other structures by two-laned roads on all sides. It looked just like any other office building beside it, flat, rectangular and lacking decoration. A person could walk right by it and never even know, that an office complex seemingly designed for stock exchange, was actually the office of military intelligence in Sakamundu.

To your trained eye, however, the hallmarks of a spy agency were unmistackable. A subtly parked hatchback down the street with its engine off, its occupants casually observing the road. A pair of young men in civilian clothing, smoking on the steps of the building. A woman gazing across the road on the roof of the office with a vacant expression.

Agents. The perimeter security detail. Blending in with the crowd and subtly watching for trouble. And those are just the ones you spotted at a casual glance.

The main concern of an intelligence agency, was a rivaling intelligence agency, and these operatives were trained to spot enemy personnel attempting to infiltrate or gathet intelligence from outside, be it by photograph, or a directional microphone.

They'll be watching the roofs too, looking for someone spying on them across the venue, and you heard Krys promptly ducking under the concrete divider on the edge of the roof.


"...how thorough of them." He mumbled "I imagine they have hidden surveillance cameras and snipers watching the perimeter too. A flying drone maybe."

You saw his silhouette shift in the rain, his muzzle moving in your direction:
"...perhaps we should try making contact with the rest of the team. Their hackers and personnel may be needed to cause a distraction or sabotage the enemy surveillance equipment."

He looked up at the stormclouds, as raindrops fell on his hood and balaclava:
"The rain is unfortunate... we could try waiting it out, but the sun will be rising in an hour, its best we make our move before then."

Slasher wrote:Slasher stares down the sewer, she checks the map on her datapad to see which way they are headed, "Mmmhm... Here." she says idly.

Gamma & Epsilon wrote:
The Twins also check the map and start heading in that direction right away. The screens of their data pads providing just a small amount of light. Enough to let the natural night vision of their feline genome kick in.

Upon self reflection, the twins recall they no longer have feline eyes. Their original, organic bodies were discareded long ago, their consciousness ripped out violently and transfered to a complex, circuit filled Tilerium crystal called 'Plume of Dusk'. As long as that crystal remained intact, the rest of their bodies could take any amount of punishment and be repaired with no permanent consequence.

Their new bodies were completely metalic, not a shred of biological material left. Their eyes whirred silently as the lenses adjusted to the lack of light in the sewer. Unfortunately without a specialized night vision cybernetic, your vision didn't improve by much.

You made a mental note to nag Shi Tong to allow you access to more advanced cybernetics before the next mission. Hopefully by then, you would have proven your skill, making him more open to investing into more expensive cybernetics for you.


For now, you discovered your stealth suit came equipped with a flashlight, strapped to your left temple, sewn into the balaclava. The flashlight was very lighyweight and small but shot a strong projection of light, up to a good 30 meters ahead.
It did admitedly reveal your position though.


Not bothering with stealth anymore in the pitch black tunnels, Matej fully de-cloaked and turned on his flashlight, moving forward in silence with his SMG raised, periodically checking in with his data-pad.

Having a schematic of the sewer system helped, but not by much, it was a confusing maze of twisting tunnels and smelly junctions, and with the GPS having poor reception underground, you wandered off in the wrong tunnel several times and had to stop, verify your position and double back.

The tunnels were quiet and void of people. No construction or maintenance crews worked here at 4 in the morning, the only witnesses to your presence were rats that squeeked in the dark and scurried off when the flashlight hit them, leaving behind presents for you, in the form of round droppings.

Your footsteps just barely echoed in the sewer and soon became near inaudible, as you adjusted your gait, faint splashes became audible, as water lightly dropped from the ceiling and walls.

For almost an hour, you made your way through the foul maze, when, just before rounding a juncture, Roksana suddenly jerked back, somehow still seeming graceful, hugged the wall and raised her fist, pressed her finger to her lips, silently turned off her flashlight and switched on the invisibility cloak again.


"...we have a problem." Her voice was so quiet in the earpiece, you really had to strain to make out her words. She was speaking subvocally somehow, making her digital voice manifest in your radio, without actually using her metalic vocal cords.


"...good news and bad news." She continued:

"We are 100 meters away horizontally, from the target location, and 20 meters away vertically. That's good.

Problem. There's only one tunnel heading that direction and its packed with more surveilance equipment than Santas house is with toys.


I saw a passive SONAR sensor, pointed down the tunnel. Its basically a very sensitive microphone that picks up noise. Voices, footsteps, clanking of equipment on your vest, it can hear everything, maybe even a heartbeat...

That's our biggest issue right now.

Everything else is childs play, a pair of hidden CCTV cameras at the far end of the tunnel, just under the ceiling. An infra-red laser wall that covers the entire width of the tunnel and detects anything passing through, and I'm pretty sure I saw at least three hidden panels: two on the ceiling and one on the floor, whatever comes out of them is probably not something we're going to like...

Suggestions?" Roksana asked, slightly turning toward you.


"We got separated from a few guys from our team." Matej said "Maybe we can try raising them on the radio, see if they can help."

"We don't have to infiltrate the building through the sewers you know." Barker shrugged "We could go topside, try our luck there."

"You're assuming they don't have as much surveillance up there." Roksana replied "Probably have more, from unpredictable angles.
Down here we can at least anticipate where they'll place the surveillance equipment and where they'll be coming from."

Geoff wrote:
Geoff gently places the now-removed access panel on the floor by his feet, and inspects the wiring inside the now-open lock.

The wiring looks pretty solid and neat. Top of the line tech. Also predictable and easily traceable. You found the wire responsible for locking the rig's cage, short circuiting it and preventing its opening. Cutting this wire will lock the murder-bots in place, they'll have to tear open the rig to get out and the technician may be hesitant to do something so drastic, unless there's heavy cause for it.

It will cause confusion and delay their deployment either way.

Before Geoff cuts the wire, he double-checks for any security systems that might be triggered if he does so.

"Can someone get a recording of the sewer's ambient sounds?"

"We could try to hack the SONAR and loop the sound"

"Similar to looping camera footage"

The Twins step back to hide the blue light and start a local hack. Only looking to break into the systems of what is in the tunnel. Starting with the SONAR and then moving on to the remaining security. For this particular hack Gamma takes full offense while Epsilon makes sure her sister is as invisible in the network as possible.

As you scan the local area for wireless traffic, you find, nothing. You tried several times, scanning every broadcasting frequency on the spectrum, looking for even the smallest bursts of data, encrypted however they might be, over and over, before you were forced to admit, the surveillance equipment in the tunnel, was unreachable.


"No dice, huh." Roksana nodded "I figured it wouldn't be that easy." she looked at the juncture, weary of even peaking around the corner:
"The best system is an analog system. You can't wirelessly hack into something, that doesn't broadcast wirelessly.

If the surveillance equipment is unreachable to you, it must mean its connected by a landline. Old fashioned wires.
An isolated network. Unhackable from the outside.

To hack into something like that, you'll have to physically jack into an access port, using a cable. Jacking into a computer inside the building might help. The problem is, I doubt they'd leave any access ports anywhere near this tunnel, specifically to prevent hostile intrusion."



"Okay, so," Matej thought, whispering faintly "If we can't hack it wirelessly, how do we disable it?"

"If we can find the wires and sever them, it should stop the signal from broadcasting." Roksana proposed "But we'll have to travel all across the tunnel to do that, while being watched by CCTV, SONAR and scanned by that infra-red wall.
In addition, the loss of signal to their CCTV cameras and SONAR will alert them to trouble. Even if they don't think they're under attack, they'll still send someone to check why the signal was lost."


"Might as well just destroy the surveillance equipment at that point." Barker scratched his ear.


"Not the ideal solution is it." Roksana pondered dreamily "I wonder if there's something else we can do. A way to cross the tunnel without being seen perhaps, or confusing the surveillance equipment somehow... thoughts?" she asked, looking at everyone.

Geoff wrote:Before Geoff cuts the wire, he double-checks for any security systems that might be triggered if he does so.

As you check the system for anti-tampering measures, you do find that severing the wire will cause the rig to flash a warning on its display screen, alerting the user to the error with its opening mechanism, but its not going to help the technicians release the bots any faster. And you're not sure if the warning will have an audio chime, or just a visual alert message.

You could stop this from happening by cutting the power to the rig entirely, but the technician could theoretically notice its warning lights going out, that currently periodically blinked on its corners a very dim red, growing brighter and dimmer with time.

Bargaining on the technician being too distracted with controlling the drone to notice a tiny light stop flashing, Geoff opts to cut the power before he snips the wire.

Inferno looked at the man preaching at him, unimpressed.
"Next time you try your rhetoric on me, maybe you should actually believe in the words you use on me." He says coldly. "Justifying your actions through someone's else's words to avoid responsibility. Cut the crap and say you hate humans, it's far easier for people to resonate with that."

On the location, he takes a look, with a small grin. "Now, how heavy would the reaction be, if I dropped some heat on them?"

"Well get a move on then!" The deer waves the two roombas forward, "I'd like to try and off this guy before the others get there!" She scoffs, "They wonna split up?! I bet boss popped their brains already!"

(Inferno)


"A word to the wise," The unicorn spoke serenely, his tone of voice seeming completely unaffected by the conversation:

"Avoid judging people so harshly, if you didn't take time to get to know them.
One day, your hasty assumptions are bound to be mistaken, and the consequences can be dire, indeed..."


The mage dared to poke his head above the concrete divider and surveyed the office building from the roof:

"...well... I dare say, the reaction won't be so much heavy, as it will be subtle. This is an intelligence office, not an army base.

Unleashing an open attack on the building will alert the local police department, and the military garrison stationed on the edge of the city, but those two organizations will take time to respond and deploy. No, what will happen first, is a subtle attack from the undercover agents, on the buildings perimeter.

We can expect a drone attack, sniper fire, agents in civilian clothing trying to flank us, random civilians on the street drawing weapons on us, as we pass by... but the biggest concern, will be the rapid response team of the intelligence office."


The aging unicorn sighed "I'm talking of course about a black-ops team, military trained and armed with state of the art gear. Such intelligence offices usually have at least one, on stand-by. You can expect them to have cybernetics, combat mages and weapons with upgrades we can scarcely imagine.

All in all, drawing their ire should be a last resort. Not to mention," The unicorn squinted, surveying the building's perimeter:

"If we unleash an open attack on the building, they are very likely to lock it down, seal all entrances with... various security measures and possibly blast doors... and lock down their most sensitive data inside special vaults... if not purge it completely... they are an intelligence office, after all, and those who attack it, must be after intelligence.

I dare say that starting a major confrontation at this stage would be detrimental to our mission objective..."


The older man looked at you sideways: "...shall we attempt to contact, or link up with the rest of the team? Not to doubt our abilities but I'm feeling a little outnumbered here..."







(Geoff)


A tiny spark emanates from the circuit panel, the rigs' lights flash red one last time and go fully dark. The technician chose this moment to press a button on his joystick and you heard the echo of a distant gunshot, inside the bank.

"Status." The sergeant called.

"Subject neutralized, SWAT team moving in to secure." The technician reported "No wounded among the hostages. The only injured is the hostage taker, gunshot wound to the shoulder... SWAT team secured the firearm, they have him in custody."

"Good work." The sergeant breathed a sigh of relief "Alright boys, lets wrap this up, mission complete."

"Wonder what drugs he was on, that guy was off his rocker" The technician said, lowering his joystick and looking around "Hey sarge, these flying gun-drones are really something, the stability in the air is unreal. Wish we could have more."

The technician is folding his joystick and now looking around.







(Slasher, Gamma, Epsilon)



"How should we disable them though?" Roksana asked "Cutting the hard-line will send a 'Lost Signal' message to their security room, even if they don't think they're under attack, they'll still send someone here to check what happened. They'll notice the cut wires."

"Sure, but it will give us a narrow window of time, to infiltrate further into the building." Barker shrugged.



"Perhaps we can do something creative to fool the system into thinking that something harmless had happened? Or a natural accident? So when they send agents down here, it won't look like an attack?" Roksana asked:
"You know, that SONAR is so sensitive, we may actually deafen it with a very loud noise... and those cameras are working in night vision mode, very sensitive to even the smallest light sources...

That infra-red laser wall though.." Roksana pondered "I wonder if we can do something to trick the lasers as well... what do you think?"

With the power now down, Geoff immediately cuts the wire and replaces the access panel. Once it is securely in place, he steps back from the cage, pressing his back against the wall and going completely motionless.

"Given where we met and that you have it literally written all over you, I think a pretty good picture has been drawn. And if you are telling me you're gonna show me those consequenses..." He flashed a grin. "Come and get me."

He also looks. "Let's pick off some stragglers then. It's not much fun, but it's lowkey enough. I doubt they would purge data just because a bird didn't see a window or someone is taking extra time for a shit."

He looked at the other. "As for the others, let them be. Any contact we make can be intercepted."

"Dont you worry im gonna be right behind you." She says to the twins keeping her thoughts of using them as cover to herself, and just following up on their plan.

Slasher is using the rumbas as meat shields

(Geoff)


"Alright, lets start loading the gear back." The sergeant removed his police cap, scratched his scalp and placed it back on, moving toward the driving cabin of the SWAT truck.

The technician folded his joystick, attached it to his belt and approached the rig housing the murder bots. He punched in some sort of code on a keypad, at the rigs front, then waited. Whatever was supposed to happen, didn't and the technician punched in the code again, then sighed in exhasperation:
"Now whats wrong with this thing," he smacked the rig on the side "supposed to be new." He looking around the rig.


As you watched him, a sudden bright flash of light appeared before your eyes, startling you. Blinking rapidly you tried to re-orient yourself, but the red light would not disappear, even when your eyes were closed. It took you several seconds to realize you were staring at red text, that was seemingly projected right into your retina, from inside your eye, as nobody else seemed to notice this red text.

Focusing on the letters, you read:





NEUROCHIP WARNING!



- MISSION DEVIATION DETECTED

- RETURN TO MISSION OBJECTIVE



- NEUROCHIP WILL ACTIVATE IN 60 SECONDS, UNLESS MISSION OBJECTIVE IS RESUMED


60
59
58


The text disappeared and only the countdown remained. The numbers became small and lodged themselves into the top left corner of your field of view, so they no longer obscured your vision, but you could still keep an eye on the timer.














(Inferno)



Krys melancolically sighed:
"Your mind is closed, how disappointing."

He narrowed his eyes at the building:
"Well, lead the way. Its time we thought seriously about infiltrating the building." The tapped his lip in thought:

"As for our radio transmissions, I believe Shi Tong assured us our transmissions are encrypted. At most, the enemy might detect radio traffic in the area, but they won't be able to hear much more than white noise."

He sighed "Well, let us be off before the dust settles on us."










(Slasher, Gamma, Epsilon)



"Lead the way, Roksana smiled, switching her invisibility back on again.

Matej and Barker held their weapons at the read and faded from view, as they hugged the wall, standing single file behind her.

"Hang back until I have the system disabled"

"Better one of us detected than the entire group"

Epsilon reengages her own stealth and sneaks forward. Each step methodical and carefully placed. She moves forward until she reaches the closest security system. Carefully examining the outside for a way to manually break in. She pauses and listens to the ambience of the sewer to figure out how loud it was. Specifically listening for the sounds of traffic on the streets overhead and if they might provide any mask for her sound.

Once she's found the best moment to mask the sound, or if nothing is there silently prays to a god she doesn't believe in, as quietly as possible opens the panel of the system. Using whatever she has on her to get the job done.

With the panel off she moves quickly. Blocking the light with her body she uses the datapad as a proxy to manually break into the system. Once inside she starts by setting the SONAR to loop the audio of the sewer instead of picking up new noises and the camera's to loop the same visuals. She sets the loop to only occur for 30 minutes before regular functions resume. The IR scanner she sets to 'ignore' anything passing through it. Also on the same timer.

After that she looks for any other systems and disables them in a similar way. Each task is done carefully and she double checks her presence in the system each time. Before finishing she removes part of the datapad that allows wireless communication and keeps it hardwired into the system. Allowing for her and Gamma to break in again if need be.

Once she has finished up and placed the panel back she radios the team

"The security system has been disabled and will remain that way for 30 minutes. Wireless connectivity has also been established if we need more time"

His task complete anyway, Geoff simply shrugs at the red alert, and quietly exits the alleyway in the direction of the avenue, keeping close to the wall and making sure he does not disturb any litter on the ground.

When he gets to the avenue, he stops and looks both ways before stepping out, to check on the police movement in the area.

(Geoff)


There was quite a lot of litter on the ground, empty soda cans, broken beer bottles and wet newspapers faintly rustling in the wind. Prudently stepping around them, you inched slowly toward the venue.

There was no traffic here, no cars moved in either direction as the police still had the roads blocked. Only police jeeps and squad cars silently flashed their blue and red lights, as they stood haphazardly parked on the venue, creating a rough semi-circle around the bank.

The cops looked a little more relaxed now, as the hostages funneled out of the bank, accompanied by SWAT personnel who tried to wrap them in blankets and four ambulance vans tried to get passed the police barricade and soon began driving down the venue toward the bank.


Some 30 cops at least were dispersed about the venue, looking around with tired eyes and a police drone buzzed somewhere above, but you couldn't see it.


The counter in the corner of your eye didn't stop however, displaying:


38, 37, 36












(Gamma, Epsilon, Slasher)


Barker quietly whistled "Daaiumn, you Rumbas sure are hand- I mean, uh.." he cut himself off, apparently feeling Roksana turn in his direction:
"You uh... uhhhh..." you could almost hear Barkers gears grinding inside his head in real time, before he coughed into his fist:
"Good job... yes."


"You are so polite today!" Roksana audibly beamed, before rounding the corner and following Gamma.


Hacking into the closed network proved challenging, time consuming and very enlightening. This wasn't the typical firewall the cities CCTV or even the local PD used. This was military grade hardware.

The encryption was top of the line. It would have taken an average human being some 50 years to crack this algorythm and get inside their sysyem. Thankfully, you weren't quite human.


Adapting and weaving a clever trojan horse into the system, you managed to seize control over the surveillance network inside the whole building. Cameras, SONAR microphones, infra-red motion sensors and one more security feature you didn't account for.

Concealed turrets. Inside the walls, floor and ceiling.

Dispersed equally throughout the building's corridors and vital locations, these turrets could slide out of concealment and pepper their targets with 23 mm round bullets or flamethrowers.

Two such turrets were in fact, concealed inside the ceiling, just above you.

Seeing as they didn't turn you into swiss cheese, you hadn't tripped any alarms yet.

At any rate, you roughly mapped the path to the buildings server room and looped all the surveillance systems in your way. All that's left is to actually get there.

And the only thing left to worry about, was the human factor.




Looking further down the sewer tunnel, you notice it curving to the right. In near perfect silence, you feel your team mates stalk the tunnel beside you, as you begin to move. Trying to avoid the sewer water and stepping as quietly as possible, only your footsteps are visible on the ground, as they displace the water.

Moving for another 10 meters or so, you come across a tube in the wall, rather large, almost a meter in diameter. It curved into the wall and up, at a 45 degree angle and smelled quite foul, as a thin trail of liquid streamed down.

This appears to be the tube that releases all the waste from the buildings many toilets, and it smelled and looked accordingly.

Glancing up the 45-degree-angled tube, you notice some sort of access hatch, some 7 meters up the tube, in its ceiling.
If the building's schematics that Shi Tong provided, are to be believed, getting through that hatch will have you emerge in the buildings basement on the -1 floor, housing the buildings maintenance section.

According to the schematics, the hatch is a whole meter thick, of solid steel and opens using some sort of a magnetic lock. Whether the schematics are up to date, is a different question.

The tunnel seems quiet and empty at any rate. Only a few CCTV cameras watch you with their dark colored lenses for eyes. And a flamethrower turret sleeps under your feet.


The ambient sounds of the city are all but inaudible here, only the distant echo of water is heard, as lonesome water-drops fall down from the ceiling and splash in the shallow waters below.

The walls were green with moss and fungi, with foul and suspicious looking substances literring the floor. Matej inhailed too deeply and fought off an urge to gag. Roksana's silhouette silently chuckled.

With the coast clear, Geoff starts to cross the street, weaving between the cops and medics as they come and go.

As he approaches the target building on the other side of the road, he keeps an eye out for any agents that might be keeping watch.

"The irony." Inferno quipped.

"As for Shi Tong's words, he didn't even got it right if my answer was "yes" or "no" to his offer, so if I'm a little more skeptical of him then you are, you'd understand, right?"

He began to make a move, to see anyone who might be unseen or unprotected by other guards or camera's.

The office building stood forebodingly in the darkness, deathly silent in the night. Most of the windows were dark, but a few floors were illuminated with a ghostly orange light, revealing no people within. This was the building you had to infiltrate.

It took Geoff the better part of an hour to get here on foot, dodging traffic and the rare pedestrians on the streets. The oppressive red timer at the corner of his vision eventually paused and vanished at the 3 seconds mark, and it only did so, after Geoff had started on his journey toward the building at a considerably brisk pace, that almost resembled a jog.


Now he stood in front of the building, across the street, surveying its perimeter. As he did so, he heard a very faint clattering coming from the fire-escape ladder to his right and saw the telltale signs of a pair of stealth-suits: two silhouettes, just barely barely visible in the rain, as it lightly hammered their hoods at their cloaks, roughly betraying their position.

If Geoff hadn't observed this effect earlier this night, he wouldn't have noticed it now either, it was that subtle. Even now, he struggled to track the figures as they descended the ladder, as they periodically faded from sight so completely, he had to strain his eyes in the dark, trying to catch even the slightest movement or disturbance in the air, created by the rare drops of rain.

He became certain however, at least two invisible figures had just descended down the ladder to street level, just a few meters to his right. And since he was standing perfectly still, it wasn't at all clear that they were aware of his own invisible presence.




Inferno and Krys meanwhile descended to street level and looked around once again, taking in the office buildings subtle security.

There was a subtly parked hatchback a few dozen meters down the street, its engine off and two occupants casually observing the road.

A pair of young men in civilian clothing were smoking on the steps of the office building itself.

A lone woman stood on the roof of said building, gazing down the road with a vacant expression.

Although they all wore plain, civilian clothing, they all stood out to you. Subtle as they attempted to appear, you noticed them glancing across the street, subtly enough to avoid notice, but to your trained eye, their behavior screamed 'Undercover Agents' at you.

Apart from them, about 5 other civilians mingled across the street, either just moving by or stuck by cheap liquor store, trying to buy booze, cigarettes or terrible coffee.

You slowly realize that everyone, had everyone else in their field of view, and a scuffle with any one of them, was unlikely to go unnoticed, as they all stood more or less in plain sight.


Krys sighed into his microphone a little too loudly and his data-pad automatically picked up the sound and broadcasted it onto everyone's earpiece.

Slasher glares at the acrid tunnel in abject disgust, "I wasn't aware how dirty this job was going to be." She huffs as she looks over how tight the space is and how quickly the might get through it, "I'd've prefered to make it through with my hair intact... but aside from that, we're all clean right now, we dont smell like anything, but if we go through... i fear someone with a keen enough nose..." she cringes as she thinks, "An intelligance agency would most certainly have someone with a dog gene... right? We go through there, someones gonna litterally sniff us out."