Chapter 51

This time it was not possible to act so simply by relying on an external access point. Knight Road had a much more responsible approach to the matter and the connection to the external point had a very serious ice as protection. So I had to get out of the car and head towards the building.

"Am I going?"

"Come on, be careful out there..."

Judy nodded at me, but the other girls looked at me with the same scrutinizing gaze. There was a touch of excitement in their gazes.

I walked quietly through a few yards as Tortik parked some distance away from the corporation building, then quickly looked around and noticed an open window and activated the sandi. Luckily I didn't have to use the harpoon here, because the neighboring building was close enough for me to jump from it, then from the Knight Road wall, then from it again, and finally, catching my hand on the open window, I threw myself inside the building.

One of the corridor cameras was aimed directly at me, but I was moving very fast and my appearance had not been detected yet, so I quickly moved to the side so that I was out of the camera's line of sight, after which I already looked around with my optics.

There was no one in one of the neighboring offices and I quickly slipped into it, before slipping a chip into the nearest computer and shutting down the sandi.

"Work. I need a map and maybe some camera monitoring. I also need to clean up the security tapes, since I've been spotted. It's not enough to trigger an alarm, but if the tapes are checked, I could be found."

"Working..."

The minutes of waiting dragged on.

About thirty minutes of waiting... all this time I was on pins and needles, ready at any second to turn on the sandi and knock out the corporatist who entered the office, but luckily I was lucky... How many times? But it didn't matter, what mattered was that I was lucky, and when the girls finally got access to the cameras and the floor plan, I wasn't discovered, and I wasn't forced to use force.

"Quiet, catch the map..."

And I got a message that I immediately looked into. And I needed to go to another floor of the building. Only if the floor I was on was supposed to be for maintenance staff. Not janitorial staff, but the kind of staff that serves the needs of those who run the servers. This includes accountants and various representatives of technicians who maintain the building itself, and specialists who travel to the location of cameras in case of their failure... The floor I needed was the server room, and that's where the security was on a completely different level...

"Tychonya, you'd have to use type 3 chips there..."

"Got it..."

The third type of chip means that the chip has a self-destruct program. Not physical, but a system for destroying its software. And it was supposed to be used only if the work was going to be extremely long, at least a day, which means that my presence in the place of work will be compromised with a huge probability. And to avoid that, after installing these chips, I would leave the building.

The girls have done a very good job with these chips and protected them as best they can and now, in order to learn their software, you have to connect to them, which is only possible if they have not been inserted into the hacking slot before. And after that the girls have full control over the chip and can destroy its software in one second, or it will be destroyed if the chip is pulled out.

"What's with the camera control?"

"It's a dead end from here. we've barely accessed the map of the building, but if you give the okay, while you're sneaking around, we'll thin out the personal accounts of the corporation's employees a bit..."

"Ordinary people?"

I shook my head.

"It's not our style."

"Well... on the whole, yeah."

The girls agreed with me, and I activated the sandi and left the office I was in, before retrieving the chip I'd used to give the girls access to the building's systems. Carefully I walked down the corridor, crossing the camera view sectors as quickly as possible.

Literally three minutes of personal time and I'm already near the stairs I'm descending, but my optics tell me that I'm being met by some reasonable...

I freeze on the landing and wait... two minutes of personal time and here is a girl who is looking at some tablet and starts climbing the stairs to the interfloor landing that separates the floor I am on from the one below. Why haven't I moved forward yet?

I don't know...

But my gut was just screaming that I should freeze and not move. Irrational fear, in front of a fragile girl...

And only when she reached the landing between floors did I jump down at the maximum acceleration available to me without injury, without moving on the stairs themselves. I jumped down and immediately pushed off the wall to hide under the stairs, which should have blocked the girl's view.

I kept watching the girl until the last moment and noticed her arm twitching very quickly. just a little slower than I was moving. And I followed the direction of her hand and noticed a knife that was literally digging into the wall...

Fuck...

Another push and I fly lower hiding under the next staircase and then another...

"What the hell was that?!"

My brain kicked into overdrive and soon I reached the lower tier where the servers were located. At this point my optics could no longer distinguish the girl through the mass of stairs, but I didn't turn off the sandi. No, I opened the door and immediately disappeared into a vast room in which I had to turn off the optics because the signatures of the servers prevented it from working.

Hiding between the tall server cabinets I finally turned off the sandi.

"Quiet?"

"Tss..."

I pressed myself against the server. The only thing that saved me was that I was already in acceleration, and the girl acted more on instincts rather than actually noticing me. But even so. such speed of movement. such precision.

"Knock, knock, knock..."

The server room door opened very quietly and I heard a woman's voice.

"Stranger-kun, are you here?

I flinched and quickly put a couple slivers into the servers, then quickly moved to the side trying to get closer to her. Why get closer? Well, precisely because in most cases everyone would try to get as far away from such an opponent as possible. That's why I got close, and I froze... I estimated I was about one server away from her.

Sandi went on instinct. And perhaps that was the only thing that allowed me to freeze in place, only to crouch slightly when the girl's hand pierced through the server ten centimeters away from me and tried to grab me by the throat. And right after that, I turned off the sandi.

"А?"

The girl's hand with a slightly worn fingerless glove fumbled somewhat lost in the air.

"Was I wrong?"

I very quietly shifted to the side and quickly hid behind a neighboring server, continuing to listen to what the girl was doing. And she abruptly pulled her hand out of the server and started moving in the opposite direction from me.

Who the fuck is she?!

Now realizing what I've seen, she has chrome instead of hands, which is what the gloves are wearing... but that's not what's important, it's that I have no information on her! I've been collecting information on all the less powerful corporates and solos, just to get an idea of who I might run into when I'm doing my next job.

Fuck...

I shifted sideways into splinters and literally prayed I didn't run into her. Not that I doubted my ability to handle her... but I really didn't want to fight her. That's not why I came here.

"Hey, I know you're in here."

I shifted again with exasperation listening to where she was going.

"...are you really that shy? I just want to meet you."

I barely restrained myself from snorting. Did that ever work?

"Tsk. Why doesn't this ever work? I'm beautiful."

For another five minutes she walked around the server room and I shifted so that I was a short distance away from her at all times.

"Tz... is it really a glitch in the optics?"

She sighed. She left the server room, but when I activated the optics, I saw that she didn't leave, but froze in front of the entrance.

Fuck...

"Ladies, I seem to be in trouble... look for old blueprints of the building."

"What's wrong?"

"There's some lady here. and she's pretty damn strong. She spotted me, but I was operating at my current maximum speed and it looks like her optics couldn't accurately lock on to me. But she hasn't gone anywhere and continues to stand at the exit of the server room..."

"So maybe..."

"No..."

Becca was interrupted by Kiwi.

"We're not here to attract attention, and something like this is gonna draw the attention of the big boys. So it's better to wait and find another way out..."

"That's why I need you to look for old plans, maybe there are some old tunnels around here somewhere...that I could leave the building through?"

"Let's look..."

I sighed and hid behind the servers, staying in the "zone" where I would realize that someone had entered the server room. And it turned out to be for good reason, as just twenty minutes later the door opened and workers came in.

"Fuck. That crazy woman did it again."

"Be quiet. he'll hear you!"

"Come on, it's so soundproof. and what the hell is she doing here?"

"Said the optics were glitchy..."

"Well, at her age, it's not like she's human anymore, she's not human for a long time, one of the first Borg..."

"One of the first? What about Smasher?"

"Well, he's more famous, but Mystique, she's always worked quieter, so she's not as famous, you know, among the common people. But she was one of the first successful Borg."

"Okay, enough talk, let's get this server fixed and get outta here..."

They didn't say anything further like that, the usual talk of technicians swearing at those who broke the equipment.

"Girls?"

I contacted my girls.

"How are you doing in there?"

"Uh... that's weird. I wasn't really talking about that, look up Mystique. the techs said that's the name of the lady who spotted me."

"Okay, uh. as for your request, no, there are no old tunnels, but there are sewers, interested?"

Kiwi's voice was mocking.

"You know, considering that I don't really want to meet a legend, and she's probably one of those legends, I don't really have much of a choice. So, yeah, give me the sewer line."

I sighed.

"And don't forget to find the info on Peter Pan..."

"It's a work in progress. There's a lot of data, but knowing where and when he was caught, we can reconstruct his route very quickly, we just need to find the location of the files. I think in about 40 minutes we'll know everything we need to know..."

"Okay, work..."

I had just received the sewer data, and with a sigh, I walked around the room and froze at the point where the sewer should be closest to the building. The sewer tunnel is quite large and I can safely walk through it to the Knight City River...

I sighed.

Do I have to do this?

I looked around and, with a sigh, pulled out a knife, then picked up one of the slabs that covered the floor and lifted it slightly with the tip of the knife so that I could slip my fingers through. After that, I carefully lifted and pushed the slab aside. This allowed me to get to the concrete floor, which I began to literally chisel with my knife...

Naturally not just like that, but listening, so as not to attract anyone's attention...

After forty minutes, the girls reported that they had already reached the location of the information, while I struggled to break through the concrete for another thirty minutes and only then made a hole in the sewer tunnel.

As I climbed in, I pulled the slab I'd pulled away and closed the opening behind me. It was only when I was in the stinky tunnel, where communication was very poor, that I breathed a sigh of relief. Now it was just a matter of getting to the tunnel exit... and also count on the girls, who had found the location of the data, but they still had to be carefully extracted...

I didn't get out of the tunnel until two hours later...

"Girls?"

"Tihonja, are you okay?!"

"Alive, well, stinking. It's lucky these tunnels haven't been used for a long time, but even so, there's a smell..."

I shook my head.

"...what about you?"

"Well, uh. okay, we decided we could work from home, so now we're sitting on the first floor working quietly."

"Okay, I'll make my own way home..."

"Or maybe..."

"No, don't, or I'll stink up the cake. so I'll stop at a cheap motel on the way, clean up and then go home, and you work in peace, but don't let Bookwoman let her guard down. Because if there's one incredible solo, there could be a roner. legendary."

"Roger that. waiting for you at home."