Chapter 188 - Golden Dawn Secret Lab

*(mood song: "Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me)")

It took five days of travel, but they finally approached a gigantic building that rested on the shallow thirty meters deep ocean floor, completely surrounded by stone pillars.

Erik: "Hmm... a sloppy job"

Rose: "Hm? What is it?"

Erik: "If it's supposed to be secret they should have made an island or something to camouflage it or underwater..."

Rose shook her head: "There's a point where costs are unreasonable to make something perfect, this is good enough, with their security systems and patrols, no one unrelated would find it anyways..."

Sarah: "Shouldn't we have been detected by now then?"

Rose: "No, they automated the system, so I used Sarlex's code to let us through, but yeah they do know Sarlex is here... or that's what they will think"

Erik: "Huh? Didn't you sell all he had in exchange for reinforcements?"

Rose shrugged: "well yes, he's now just a normal employee, but it should be a couple of weeks to months until they update his credentials, bureaucracy is thankfully slow~"

Erik nodded: "I see... what's the plan then?"

Rose: "The living Sarlex would have never dared to do something like this as it would have got him killed later along with his family and his secret family, but now it's fine, we are gonna boast and get to see their data, and he will plant a small ball of my nanobots inside their system, with that they might as well be working for me as I will know all their data~"

Sarah: "Their data, but what about the rest? like tissue samples or technologies?"

Timberly: "Yeah, and weaponry"

Rose: "Sigh, any technology they may have, if I know what it is I can just make it myself and better, as for tissue and extracted samples I was thinking of faking a request or seeing one once I'm inside their system, and when their boat with the samples sails off we just need to capture it~"

Erik: "That... is a pretty good plan, okay what does each need to do?"

Rose: "I could do it by myself, but I guess you guys could control some of the bots"

The submarine surfaced and was promptly surrounded by small golden leviathans mounted by lizardman jockeys.

Sarlex (Rose) came out of the hatch first, followed by some bots remodeled to look like Golden Dawn guards.

Sarlex: "I've come to do an inspection!"

Raider captain: "We haven't been notified of something like that-"

Sarlex took a card out of his coat, completely made of nanobots: "Scan this then"

The Raider captain easily jumped onto the submarine deck, surprising everyone, and took the card: "Allow me a moment then sir" he took out a device from a backpack and put the card inside "Hmm the card isn't- euk! Gol... GOLDEN PASSAGE AUTORISATION! YOU CAN GO INSIDE SIR!"

Erik: [You hacked it?]

Rose: [Instantly~ but we need to get deeper into their system, I blocked them to call someone else to confirm my authority, but I need at least an administration terminal]

Erik: [what excuse will you use though? cause i do have an idea]

Rose: [I was just gonna use my hacked authority... but pry tell]

Erik: [say there was a data breach and I'm an engineer and I need to take a look at the server. It's believable and easy to do~]

Rose: [What if they have their own engineers?]

Erik: [then use that authority to make them fuck off?]

Rose: [hmm it's a good idea, although that would limit our path to just the server room, but since we would have access to the central server we would essentially know everything there's to know... yeah, let's go with this, my nanobots can then extend along the cables to the entire base anyway~]

Sarlex walked to the front of the submarine's deck, and the submarine was followed by multiple guards as it docked on the dock

Twelve bots acting as Sarlex's bodyguards went down the submarine, and walked away from the port and to a pair of huge steel doors with four guards in front. The guard from before had followed them and rushed to show the authorisation to the guards on the door, staying outside as they all made way for them, instantly opening the doors for them.

Inside the doors stood dozens of guards in an empty room full of automated turrets and reinforced barricades.

Erik: [A proper kill room]

Rose: [Indeed, to not let anything in or out...]

Erik: [we should implement one at our base]

Rose: [agreed, I will relay the orders, the first big construction bots should be arriving there too]

Erik: [oh? does that mean they can start putting together the entire structure for our base above the water?]

Rose: [we could even make a floating city along with it~ though refining that amount of metal would take too long, it would be more efficient to steal one and repair it...]

Erik: [indeed]

After the kill room, they walked to a closed room that shot hot air from all directions at them, removing dust from outside. The octopeople almost took out their weapons in surprise, but luckily Rose was quicker, locking their bot bodies in place and reassuring them that everything was okay with a mental message.

A pair of metal doors opened to the sides as they came to a hallway, a soldier was waiting for them there.

Soldier: "Greetings sir, I'm the captain of the security team, I'll personally escort you, what area do you wanna inspect first?"

Sarlex (Rose): "Yes, we need to do an inspection on the server room, guide us to a control panel the technicians can check" pointing at Erik.

The Security Captain looked at Erik up and down: "Is that so..., alright follow me" turning around and guiding them through lots of pathways.

Erik: [is he going the right way? I don't like his look from before]

Rose: [He's actually going the right way, being cautious is part of his job after all]

Erik: [hmmm right]

After thirty minutes they arrived at a room with twelve computers and lizardmen technicians. The guard captain pointed at one of them and the technician stood up and stepped aside.

Rose: [let me change bodies with you for a minute]

Sarlex (Erik) looked back: "Go ahead, check the system"

Technician: "Understood sir" and sat on the computer, while multiple hair-like strands moved all over the floor in all directions, thankfully no one noticed anything inside the dim room.

All the bots that had come with them became lighter and lighter as more and more nanobots left them and infiltrated the technician's systems, stealthily taking control and starting to replace everything with themselves.

Rose acted perfectly as she navigated the different control panels and menus, checking all access ports to the server, and all recent connections under the watchful eye of the security captain and other technicians. Even Sarlex became light as his body became a mere shell, all the nanobots inside now coating every single cable on the room, the infection was through.

Rose: [Distract him for a bit]

Erik: [got it~]

Sarlex(Erik): "So, where's the server captain?"

The security captain looked back at Sarlex: "It's some rooms below us, sir"

Sarlex(Erik): "And the security measures? very dangerous creations are kept in this facility, the server is well protected right?"

The security captain looked suspicious but still answered: "As you already know, the server is protected by three layers of firewall for data breaches, as well as a manual disconnection button. As for the physical dangers it is protected inside refined leviathan oil, and encapsulated on abyss bio metals, so nothing should be able to damage it without destroying the entire facility..."

Sarlex(Erik) nodded: "I see... that's good, anything else that could have caused the failure? did anything happen recently?"

The security captain seemed to think deeply: "Not much that I'm aware of... everything is under control now"

Rose: [I'm in~ got permanent administrative access level six to their server hoho... they are doing quite a bit of things here~]

Erik: [is that so, like what?]

Rose: [lots of hybrid lizardman experiments, monster breeding, turning monsters into bio armors, lobotomized leviathan hybrids, the locations of herds of creatures they extract DNA from, their weapons development is also developing mussels and clam with extremely hard bioalloy shells to extract metal from... interesting, they also have a lead researcher, hmmm... oh, one of the herds of creatures they are monitoring is the reason for their golden armors]

Erik: [...thats a lot to process, but what are those creatures?]

Rose: [apparently they were first witnessed when one tore a hole right through a floating city, according to the file they live like carnivorous polyps on the bottom of the ocean, and when they grow they develop a shell that gets more and more full of air until it rips them off the rocks from the bottom and launches them at high speeds to the surface, where they become filter feeders that float on the surface of the ocean, spreading their eggs on the currents to land everywhere... interesting]

Erik: [How do they know all that?]

Rose: [Simple, they studied and raised some young specimens here in the lab, according to the results the final specimen was way smaller than those found in the wild even if fed generously, so they determined it would require the depths somehow]

Erik: [I guess the high pressure water plays a huge role if the lab results were different... anyway, I'm running out of topics to bullshit about, if you are done let's switch places.?]

Rose: [Sure, so do we wait until I take over the place slowly, or anything else you wanna check?]

Erik: [what about those hybrids? anything interesting?]

Rose: [...the first one apparently was the result of a leviathan escaping containment and eating lots of researchers, becoming a huge swimming lizardman creature that loved lizardman flesh, so they dropped it in acid until it completely dissolved, since then they just created all kinds of semi-intelligent war beasts and lobotomize them to decrease aggression... hmm... they seem to be developing lots of ways of killing enemy aristocrats... from making hybrid assassins, by pumping lizardman DNA into a creature until it's almost like a lizardman and then training them with torture to do their bidding. To undetectable poisons and brain eating parasite eggs that can be put on the food and drinks... disgusting]

Erik: [...and what about the bio armors?]

Rose: [give me a moment... hmmm, it seems they found a specimen of a parasite stuck to the bottom of a floating city, the parasite covers the host like a suit of armor making it much stronger while it consumes it slowly, keeping the host alive for as long as possible by an insatiable hunger for high energy foods... some of the content is redacted... now, apparently it had the codename flesh eating armor parasite, and they led an entire city to be blown to bits to contain it, but the Golden Dawn group secretly capture a dozen subjects... Bio Armor plan, let's see... objective, turn the flesh eating armor parasites into obedient armors with only the most basic of sentience to keep itself and the host alive... and then it says all the failed procedures until now, like electrocution, or destroying part of its nervous system and brain...]

Erik: [could you do it? it might be useful for the octopeople]

Rose: [probably, but making power power is safer and easier]

Erik: [true, it is for you thanks to the nanobots, it's also alive in a way]

Rose: [although, its DNA might be a good base to synchronize with your energy arm if you absorb and refine the DNA of some of them, and have the arm copy and adapt to that DNA...]

Erik: [Hmm then introduce on their server a request for the transfer of one of the bio armor subjects, as well as DNA samples that could be useful, and plenty of golden shell pieces, it would be cool having golden bones and scales~]

Rose: [Sure, and done, they will depart in three days, and I even implemented a fake response AI connected to me, no matter if they call their superiors or do a video call, everything will be fake CGI~]

Erik: [Alright, let's get to it then]

As Erik now masqueraded as Sarlex, he turned his attention back to the security captain, who remained vigilant. It was clear that the captain was growing increasingly suspicious, perhaps sensing that something was amiss. Erik had to be careful not to arouse further doubts.

Sarlex (Erik): "Captain, I appreciate your cooperation. Now, if you could take us to the server room, we'd like to inspect it thoroughly just in case"

The security captain nodded, albeit reluctantly, and led them deeper into the facility. With each step, they drew closer to their ultimate goal: the central server, which held the Golden Dawn's most closely guarded secrets. Even if they had gained access to some of it, if they planted nanobots near it then the infection would be much faster. Once they controlled their main server the Golden Dawn group would be puppets dancing on their hands.

Unbeknownst to every living being there, the nanobots were silently spreading throughout the facility's systems, granting Rose and her team unprecedented access. They were like shadows in the dark, infiltrating every nook and cranny of the Golden Dawn's technological infrastructure.

As they approached the server room, tension hung in the air. The security measures were undoubtedly formidable as turrets and armed guards lined every wall, but with the advantage of surprise and the power of Rose's nanobots, Erik and his team were well-prepared for whatever lay ahead.

As they turned a final corner they finally came in front of a pair of huge metal doors, they slowly opened and they walked to the middle of the huge room with an enormous pool full of grey fluid.

Sarlex(Rose) turned to the security captain: "So the server is down there?"

The security captain nodded: "yes, inside a capsule of refined bioalloy is the server core, connected to the outside only by a high speed quantum refractor"

Sarlex (Rose) bent down and touched the fluid that surprisingly was boiling hot: "Is this pool properly refrigerated? should it be this hot?", secretly dropping a huge amount of nanobots in the shape of balls inside, ready to sink to the bottom.

The security captain nodded: "Yes, no need for alarm, the server uses an internal heat exchanger with the oil in the pool, the hot oil rises and cools down while the cold oil flows back to the bottom"

Erik: [hmm... like on a nuclear reactor]

Sarlex (Rose): "Hmm, everything seems to be in order, I guess this ends the inspection"

At that moment the security captain tapped his ear: "Hm, understood" looking at Sarlex "Sir, the lead researcher Tsutsu would like to meet with you"

Sarlex (Rose) nodded: "alright, lead the way"

Again they walked more, but going up this time, and came to a half-open door. A husky voice then said from inside.

"come in"

Once inside they saw an ancient-looking lizardman, the scales few, the eyes cloudy, and wearing a lab coat along his hunched back, there was nothing remarkable about the feeble old man, but the glint in his eyes examined them thoroughly.