Chapter 142

Retromustang drove into the parking lot, which was about a kilometer away from the Biotech office and parked on the first floor. But it was only an illusion, and as soon as we stopped, Triss immediately began to cast the next spell, which was necessary to hide the Mustang's parking spot from view.

Half an hour of work and now a spell is cast on the area, which literally blocks us from cameras and people with a wall. Except that this wall is invisible and from the outside it looks like there is just a car already parked in this parking lot.

It took Triss about an hour to calculate the earth magic spell and create a small sloping tunnel with it. In the meantime, I placed small storage units around the perimeter of the illusion spell, which would power it for the next three days.

Once all this was done, getting to Biotech was a matter of two hours, during which Triss lowered us almost fifty meters underground with the help of a tunnel, reinforcing the tunnel with excess earth, and then raised us to one of the basements of the corporation, about which Bestia had information.

"Triss, you stay here, keep an eye on the car."

I could see that the work I'd done had exhausted the girl, so I didn't take her with me to the corporation. But Becca, dressed as I was in a stealth suit, for which we had to give up stylish suits, would go with me. Thankfully, we've both become mid-runners in the interim, so we should be able to handle the security systems inside the compound... at least until the alarm goes off.

Naturally, the first thing we did was look in the basement...

Except that there was nothing interesting here, except for the server, which we carefully connected to and downloaded a bunch of some arcane stuff to an external drive.

There were no cameras in this room, and the protection was ridiculous, apparently no one from the corporation's Security Service had counted on the fact that someone would be able to get to these rooms undetected. So they put up protection against fools, and a little-trained raner bypasses such a thing at once...

It's funny. However, once we left the basement, it was no longer funny...

A shitload of cameras, sensors and other security systems. And here we were very lucky in that we had an extremely advanced cloaking system and optics that allowed us to see the sensors hidden in the walls and floor.

So down the corridor we went quietly enough, after which we found ourselves in a rather busy hall.

"Where are we going?"

Becca turned to me over the intercom. I shook my head with a sigh, though she could only see the gesture in my avatar.

"Didn't you study the data?"

There was disbelief in my voice.

"Well, why not? it's just that you're the boss. maybe you don't want to go to the lab on the fifth floor, maybe you want to stop by some office on the way..."

"No..."

I shook my head again, which was again reflected in my avatar as well.

"...first the cyborg body. Then everything else. Still, the first priority is to fulfill the order from Bestia, and after that we can think about our enrichment. And you and I aren't such great runners, so we don't have much to go on. It remains only to think about stealing equipment, well, or find a couple more databases that we can steal..."

You could hear the sadness in my voice.

"Yeah. Snowflake or Mentor, or Clever Girl, and our skills are just enough to bypass these defenses from the inside, when the alarm is not raised. But they could bypass all these systems when the alarm is raised. Not quickly, of course, but they could."

"Exactly..."

I agreed with what Becky had said. And I wasn't ashamed to admit that I didn't know how to do something. I was a stealth operative, Becca was an assault operative, Panam was a sniper-driver, and the rest of the girls were runners of different orientations.

Yes, we are all trying to develop in different ways, especially after the coffin in which you could get the bulk of knowledge and even skills, only slightly fixing all this in practice. However, this does not change the fact that we all have a basic direction of development.

"...so we'll do what we can do..."

We climbed the stairs to the right floor, dodging the overly hurried representatives of the corporation. After that we got to the laboratory, where, behind the transparent glass panes, there was the body that Bestia needed so much.

"So, how do we get in?"

"How--how--

I grinned and looked around quickly, asking Becca to step aside a little, then walked to the nearest office. There was already a staff member there, arguing furiously with his superiors about something. I didn't even try to understand the topic of the argument, I just waited until the end of the conversation, during which I realized that the guy was on a very bad account with his superiors. And I was lucky that they were communicating not through chrome, but through the internal intercoms of the corporation.

"Fuck!"

The guy got up from his seat and throwing his mug at the wall began to pace his office.

"I'm so fucked up!"

I meanwhile had time to look around the office and made sure there were no cameras in the office and that was a good thing.

I swung my arm using Axius, I didn't have to be seen to use it, so in the next instant the corporal froze slightly swaying in place.

"Can you open a lab with a body for the Borg?"

"No..."

"Who can?"

"..."

There was a long list of names the guy was listing in an emotionless voice, but those names didn't mean anything to me, so I decided to interrupt him.

"Enough...who can you call with clearance to that lab?"

"No one..."

I sighed and shook my head and decided to give the next order.

"You'll forget about talking to someone, if you have logs written on your chrome, you'll erase them, after that..."

Do you have alcohol in your office?

"Yeah..."

"and then you're gonna get drunk as a pig. Do you understand me?"

"Yeah..."

I quickly left the office, and as I closed the door behind me I heard the guy's annoyed voice.

"А... to hell with this! Fuck it! I'm gonna get drunk! I just need to clean up my logs before I drink so no one realizes where my stash of alcohol is..."

In this way, I checked seven more offices until I found a person who had access to the laboratory. And so, together with this Biotech employee, I went back to the lab.

"Quiet, there's a lab coming in..."

Becca turned to me on the intercom.

"I know... found a lab technician who works with some of the data from this lab and decided to use his clearance, so you go in right after him."

"Got it."

Soon we were already in the laboratory, but there were a lot of cameras in it, but it was a matter of technique and it was not so difficult to loop the records from the cameras already in the laboratory and having direct access to them. That's what we did when the lab technician left us after ten minutes.

"So, uh. all the cameras are looped?"

I asked Becca a question.

"I guess so..."

She answered and we took another optical look at all the cameras to make sure they were all looped.

"Yeah, that's right everyone..."

"Great, then let's get another camouflage suit on the body and we can say the first stage is done."

I began to pull the suit over my body, then activated it and threw the Borg's body on my shoulder.

"Hmmm..."

"What?"

Becca was quick to respond to my thoughtful hum.

"It's just that Maine was a little more heavy-handed back in the day...

"Okay. I'll go through the offices and pick up some goodies?"

I looked thoughtfully at the spot where I thought Becca was standing.

"Come on, but you don't have more than five or ten minutes, then back to the car. Because later, they might notice the absence of the body and an alarm will be raised."

"Why don't I carry the body, then? You and your Sandy can get through this place a lot faster."

"Phew..."

I couldn't hold back a chuckle, though, I squelched any desire to actually laugh at the root of it, so as not to offend my petite Becca.

"What?"

"Becca, I just imagined exactly what such an action might look like from the outside, my sweet and petite little girl dragging a giant body that is resting on her shoulder and dragging its arms and legs along the ground."

I still hadn't managed to completely hold back and a sneer could easily be heard in my voice.

"You..."

There was a fury in Becky's voice, but it was so contrived.

"Pfh..."

She still couldn't hold back a chuckle.

"Okay, you're right, that would look ridiculous. But I still insist that I take the body and you look at the rest. I have a sandy, too, but, uh. it's not like yours. So, uh."

"Okay, where you're standing there..."

"Near the exit of the lab..."

I walked toward the exit.

"Put your hand on the doorknob."

Becca complied with my request, and I immediately found her hand, touching it, and afterward found her shoulder, upon which I hefted the body.

"Kha..."

"How about me?"

I realized that Becca was shocked by the weight of the Borg's body and so I decided to ask if she really wanted me to carry the body myself.

"Uh, no. I can do it myself. although if it wasn't for the synthetic muscles I wouldn't be able to lift it, I wouldn't be able to hold it..."

"So..."

"Quiet, don't start. I said I'll carry it myself, so I will, although you're right, if it weren't for our costumes, the picture would be VERY comical."

Becky's voice was determined to fulfill her own desire to carry the body herself. When she spoke of the picture, however, she sounded like she was holding back the urge to laugh.

"Okay, uh. I hear you."

I sighed and activated the sandi to max, then walked down the floors...

Naturally, first of all, I went around the floor I was on, but on this floor I found nothing useful except for some number of chips in the offices of managers. The fact that these were the offices of executives, according to the luxurious furnishings.

It may not exactly be executives, of course, but at least it's someone important.

Then I went to a floor above and another...

But I didn't find any biological implants there either, but I kept seeing chips, and I kept collecting them. But I got a little carried away, and after a while I found that a siren began to sound.

"Quiet?!"

It was a voice I heard as soon as I stepped out of the acceleration in one of the corners of the biotech office.

"Scribes, it's okay. Go away..."

"But..."

I could hear the displeasure and disagreement in Becky's voice.

"Scribe, we've been studying the plans so both you and I know that the passageways to the basement are blocked off. So I can't get to you right now."

"Yeah, but, uh."

"Knizhnitsa, Ogonek ..."

"Okay, we're leaving. We'll deliver the package to the fixer..."

Triss, realizing I was telling the truth was forced to go along with the plan.

"That's right. And don't worry about me, I'll get out."

"We hear you..."

Becca agreed, but neither of them broke the connection. But at my speed, it didn't matter.

Inhale... exhale.

"Attention intruder. you cannot escape! The entire building is sealed off! Surrender now and you'll live... Return the Borg body, and I'll name the customer... It's not much to live for."

I couldn't help but snort. Not out loud, of course, but I did, and after activating the sandi, I headed for the floors, looking for a way to get out of the building. I had an idea, though. But I didn't really want to do it, so I decided to save it for last.