After parting ways with Alana and getting my range time out of the way, I retrieved my armor and headed over to the block where the corporate hit squad had vanished. It was close to the back edge- not quite on the ridge, where wealthy people would have staked their claim on account of the view, but relatively close. In a larger city I doubted low-income apartments would have been placed anywhere close to the upper class areas, but this one happened to border the eastern wall and no one of any influence wanted to be first on the menu in an Antithesis attack.
That anyone managed to infiltrate the city so close to the walls spoke to exactly how thinly our forces were stretched during the siege. Between the gunfire and the all-out assault on the walls, it wasn’t surprising that no one heard the corpos enter, and none of them had had the leeway to look in that direction at the time.
“Juny, are you able to detect any dead zones in these buildings? Spots your scans don’t penetrate that should be empty space on the schematics, or maybe rooms missing from them entirely?” I asked my companion as I stepped out of the hovercar I’d arrived in.
“My sensors indicate that these buildings are an exact match to the blueprints!” Juny replied, bobbing around excitedly.
“Yeah, didn’t think it would be that easy,” I muttered as I headed inside the first apartment building. The fact that the blueprints matched and there were no zones blocking Juny’s sensors told me that I could restrict my search to the first floor and any basement levels, as anything connecting to the upper floors would have shown up. “What about the basement?”
“It has only half the square footage of the upper levels, being smaller around the edges, but that appears to be the norm in this section of the town according to other building schematics,” she reported. It didn’t make the basement less suspicious in my opinion, but it could plausibly be a design choice.
I headed down to the basement first, taking the stairs. I checked all the fixtures I encountered on the way down for those hidden passage gimmicks people like so much, then went for the elevator doors when nothing turned up.
“Juny, could you send the elevator up if it’s on this floor and then open the doors?” I requested, intending to check the bottom of the shaft for hidden levels.
“Of course!” she agreed as the doors slid open. I peeked in, my newly-enhanced eyes doing a good job of allowing me to make out details without a flashlight. Nothing; the elevator shaft ended right where it should. I didn’t take that at face value though, dropping into the shaft to knock on the floor myself. It didn’t seem to be a false floor. Shrugging to myself, I moved on to searching the rest of the basement level, which seemed to mostly be dedicated to laundry and utility equipment.
“Let me know if you detect anything that might be a hidden button or switch,” I told Juny as I poked, prodded, and pulled at anything remotely suspicious. I came up empty, but this was only the first building, and I still needed to check the first floor as well. Once I’d finished with the basement I headed back up, intending to check the rooms- but I could probably escape having to check every single one with a little detective work. “Juny, did any of the tenants of these buildings report a break-in during the siege? And are any of the first floor apartments terminally empty?”
“No reported break-ins, but several apartments have never been occupied!” she answered cheerfully, marking them on my mini-map. One was in this building, so I headed right for it, finding it locked. A forceful twist of the knob later and I walked right in, looking around the empty room. A thick layer of dust had settled everywhere, telling me everything I needed to know. No one had entered this room in years.
But I wasn’t going to get hung up on searching just the first building- there were three more of them making up this city block, after all. I moved on to the next and repeated my steps, carefully examining all the machinery, fixtures, empty rooms, vending machines, and anything else that could contain a disguised activator or cover up a concealed door. During my search I encountered only a few of the people living in the buildings, but they mostly ignored me, save for one old man in a camo hat that gave me a small nod. I replied with a casual two-finger salute before moving on.
Once I’d finished looking through the forth building, of course, I had begun to grow a bit frustrated. After speaking with such confidence it would be pretty embarrassing to go back empty-handed. Still, I had one final place to check: the two alleyways running between the buildings, intersecting in the center.
“Shut down any alarms on this door, please,” I requested before immediately opening a fire door and walking out into the alley. It probably hadn’t taken Juny one-hundredth of a second to handle that.
Looking around, I found the alley much more crowded than those in the outer city, unsurprisingly. These buildings had actual fire escapes grafted onto their sides, and trash that had missed or escaped the dumpsters littered the pavement. I found myself glad I was wearing armor because the smell was surely indescribable.
“Any loose bricks…? No, probably too obvious. What else is there out here…” I muttered to myself as I slowly walked down the alley towards the spot in the center or all four buildings. I was starting to get a feeling in my gut; some part of me had noticed something I wasn’t consciously aware of yet. Then my eyes stopped on a utility box. It was nothing special, just the typical locked cabinet that wasn’t of much interest to anyone but building maintenance.
On a hunch, I broke the lock and opened the cabinet. There were a lot of switches and buttons inside labeled with little more than numbers, so I tagged Juny in.
“Any chance one of these doesn’t belong?” I asked the AI, trusting her to have access to even the most minute of details about the building’s construction. Sure enough, she did.
“This one is present on the schematics, but does not appear on those of any other building in the city!” Juny informed me as she highlight one of the buttons on my augs.
“Dylta didn’t notice that?” I asked curiously, thinking that if Juny had then surely Dylta would have.
“They did, however, it would appear that every building in the city possesses minor differences in places that would ordinarily be standardized, none of which would stand out without cross-referencing the blueprints with others in the city. Even now I cannot be certain this button is of any significance!” she explained. I hummed an acknowledgement and pushed the button.
Nothing happened.
“…I might just be wrong, but let’s check the other boxes to see if anything else stands out,” I told her, an itchy feeling inside still insisting I was onto something. The next box I checked contained nothing unusual, but the one after that had an extra switch, which only reinforced my suspicions.
Eventually I found a total of five additions made to the panels dotting the two alleyways. Once I’d turned one final dial- it was easy to figure out what to change it to given it had only two options- Juny immediately detected a change.
“The floor just rose up in a nearby hallway, telescoping into an unused second story bedroom above it! It appears the floor was thick enough to disguise that it was hollow, so it needed extra space in order to move out of the way! Even now I am entirely unable to detect the mechanisms involved with my current sensors. Fascinating,” she reported as she marked a nearby door that fed into the alleyway. When I opened it, no trace of the normal hallway was there; all I could see was a staircase leading downwards.
“Clever bastards…” I muttered as I descended the stairs, cautious of any traps. The way seemed to be clear, though, and after entirely too many steps I found myself in an underground tunnel leading northward. That meant it would end somewhere on the opposite side of the ridge Boone was sat up against, which had been carved out on that side to create a sheer cliff for the city to abut. I decided to make a call to Alana immediately to let her know what I found.
“Good news I hope?” she asked after picking up the call, jumping straight to business.
“It was in literally the last place I looked, but I found the tunnel,” I informed her proudly. I let her in on the way to open it before continuing. “Can’t imagine what anyone would build one here for, but it had to have gone in when the building was first constructed. I’m going to take a look at what’s on the other side and the decide whether to collapse it or trap it. Might need to get Hailey out here for that part.”
“You don’t think anyone was alerted when you opened it?” Alana asked, homing in on the suggestion to place traps, I think.
“Oh, someone absolutely was. But Juny told me she can’t detect the mechanisms even after they activated, so the tech used to build it had to be Class II minimum. I’m thinking…it’s more likely this tunnel was built by a Samurai the corpos just took it over,” I theorized in a low voice.
“And the only way that could have happened is if that Samurai is rogue or dead. But if they were alive they’d probably have gotten involved by now, and if they’re dead, the corpos don’t necessarily have access to the entire system,” Alana replied, finishing my train of thought. “Either of which is more likely than them having reverse engineered Class II tech.”
“Exactly. So I think there’s a chance they might not be able to receive alerts from the security system, depending on how it was set up. Might make it worth laying traps instead of collapsing the whole thing,” I continued, explaining my reasoning.
“You could be right, but be careful. That overly-complicated entry setup probably means that’s an entrance to a base, not an escape route. It would take too long for one person to use in an emergency. There could be automated defenses down there,” Alana cautioned me.
“I won’t be letting my guard down, don’t worry. I don’t think it’s likely though, not unless the corpos have complete control of whatever is down here,” I assured her.
“Just remember Murphy’s Law. Anyway, I’m worried there might be more tunnels now that we know for sure there was one, but the city is too big for us to check buildings one by one. If there are any computer systems down there, there could be a facility map,” Alana suggested, although her tone said she doubted it.
“If there is, you’ll be the first to know. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though; it’s just as likely there’s nothing more than an exit on the other end,” I pointed out as I started walking. “Either way, I’ll know soon enough. Talk to you later.”
Personally, I thought we were lucky just to have located this tunnel. Even if we did nothing but place surveillance over it, we’d have neutralized the threat of another sneak attack coming through it. Now that Alana had mentioned it, though, I was definitely worried about the potential for other tunnels. Considering that, it might be time to upgrade Juny’s sensors to something in the Class II range.
> as I started walking. ... “I won’t be letting my guard down, don’t worry.
Class II tech was used to make it, and it was just exploited by a hit squad tooled up to hunt samurai. A hit squad directed by a moderately cautious party capable of making plans and considering contingencies.
Without Class II sensors, ideally on some remote control drone/ robot avatar, "keeping her guard up" is as useful as keeping her guard up in a minefield haunted by lingering suicide drones, or cheap cloaked bipedal robots with armor piercing firearms, without detection gear. The problem isn't nice juicy shootable meatsacks. The problem is, mostly, all manner of effectively invisible victim activated weapons, especially exotic ones. Considering she still can't spot the hidden door mechanisms.
Her behavior is completely without sense, and her peers should be calling her out on this. After she survives, presumably.
> Considering that, it might be time to upgrade Juny’s sensors to something in the Class II range.
Before doing this tunnel, not after.
There just wasn’t enough time left in the chapter to get to it, but that’s precisely what she’s doing next. That said, she’s definitely gotten too used to her armor being able to tank most things, and that’ll be addressed later on.
... when does she remember to use her drones? Or someone remind her of it ^^
When her mother hits her with a baseball bat to make it stick
@Furkiller That’s pretty much spot on.