16 [Beginning of Sanctuary]

After gathering his belongings Haley spent the next ten minutes looking for the old man but could find no trace of him. After another five, this time using drones, but nothing. "How does such an old guy move so fast." He muttered but he decided to give in and just leave after directing the ten drones he'd reprogrammed over the last year to carry his things.

'If only he didn't find out about the others.' Haley thought but shook his head to discard the thought, a few months ago James had discovered his mini 'army' of drones that he had programmed with the intention of taking them with him the old man had berated him for half a day before somehow using his admin-controls to reset them to their base settings.

At that time Haley had promised, a promise he had obviously broken, to not do it again but he had again reprogrammed a few drones to perform some menial tasks for him outside of the duties James had tasked him with. He had also discovered how to cut them off from the outside world so they could only operate with commands directly from the 'central hub' which was himself.

'I wonder how he found out about these ones though, I made sure to keep them hidden outside of the farm.' He wondered, but without the old man around to question there was no way he was getting any answers.

With a soft sigh he finally noticed that he had reached the end of the dirt road leading to the old mans home, he turned to look at the building that had been his home for the past year and gave a soft smile as he engraved its image in his mind, something he could quite literally do considering his brain was practically a super-computer, then started the trek towards the city.

…

James had been right that Haley had been preparing to leave but Haley doubted that even he could've imagined exactly how much preparation he had done with his remote control over the drones, he had been able to scout out many potential locations for a home meeting his requirements.

Those requirements of course were quite basic for someone like him who wanted to remain off the grid for the time being: Isolated, few entrances, easy to monitor and easy to defend.

With those few conditions it limited his options considerably but he had settled on a few possible locations which included the sewers and an abandoned warehouse so there was most definitely not much choice in the matter.

Of course, he could easily have brought a building under an alias but doing so would attract the rats of the city who worked for the syndicates and government officials – anyone spending so much money would be unable to remain anonymous and untraceable.

'My funds will be limited for a while anyway, ModCo will be on the lookout for an account that tries to sell Medical Analysis and will most likely shut me down before I can even try – my only option is to find a way to encrypt my code so that even those god level-hackers would be unable to discover how it was created' He thought with a troubled expression, but based solely on these facts buying a building was off the table entirely.

'The warehouse has a large basement to work with and expansion is always possible, there's also no need to deal with the stench of the city. I might be in hiding but I'm not going to put myself through such torture.' Haley contemplated silently as he lurked in the back-alleys of the city with his face covered by his hood.

He had ordered his drones to land on the top of a near-by building with his equipment and wait for further instructions.

Haley was only dragged out of his thoughts when he discovered that he was already in front of the warehouse, it was on the outskirts of town and practically a disaster waiting to happen; even the homeless wouldn't stay in such a death trap.

"Let me check out the basement first." He muttered while pulling up the building schematics.

It didn't take him long to find the basement entrance, the rusted metallic doors had a simple iris lock on them which was easily bypassed by the Data Link. He couldn't find any signs of it having been tampered with previously which meant that he shouldn't find any unexpected 'surprises' but just to be safe he heightened his guard so that he could retaliate if needs be.

Crrrr….

With a high-pitched creek the doors slowly opened themselves to reveal Haley a descent into darkness, they looked like the gates to hell itself but Haley confidently descended into the darkness without a second thought and watched as the last bit of light faded away as the doors closed behind him.

The darkness didn't affect him in the slightest, his body hadn't just experienced an increase in physical strength but an overall increase in all attributes. It took him less than a minute to fully adapt to the darkness and although he wasn't able to see in the dark, he could accurately make out the shapes of everything despite the basement being vast.

"Lot's of space to work with, this could work." He said softly, he had almost completely made up his mind at this point – apart from the structural damage which he would have to slowly repair while keeping the derelict look to ensure people maintained their distance all he had to do was upgrade the security of the front entrance and have a couple drones act as lookouts and guards.

'It's not much but at least it's better than living in the sewer like a rat.' He thought silently, with a mental command he had already ordered his drones to come and try to ensure that they weren't spotted by analysing the surroundings with their cameras before moving.

Crrrr….

The doors opened once more, he had created a small signal that as soon as the drones got within a certain distance of the iris scanner the door would open regardless, it was easy to reprogram the iris scanner after having been connected to it even for a brief moment.

It was eerie as the drones flew around in the darkness putting his equipment down, with another order he let got them to set down in a small box square around his equipment and boot up their lights which created a 'haven' in the encompassing abyss.

It would take a while to have things fully setup and running, including several anonymous materials purchases here and there to build up this place as a sanctuary for him in the future but it was the beginning.

'The beginning of the first step towards my revenge and controlling the entire city.' A vicious grin crossed his face as he stared at the holo-desktop that was booting up as he sat back in his chair, the silent humming of the generator in the corner was the only sound in the darkness but it was somewhat comforting despite its eeriness.