Chapter 35 - Decoys and the Data Centre (IV)

Unfortunately, the important chats were encrypted, as he suspected they might have been.

Uari had consulted Yan Guowen the night before his entry into the data centre to glean some advice on how they roughly worked. A quick, protected search had revealed digital complaints from employees about windowless rooms and computers that did not allow freedom as well as sporadic data encryption by users, to ensure that even employees would not be able to view chat histories.

Yan Guowen affirmed he could break most encryptions but would need the encrypted files after all. He walked Uari through a rough process of how to unlock administrator rights on his Interface, which would then allow the files to be sent.

He also helpfully supplied information on how to wipe the traces of how the files were supposed to be sent. Yan Guowen was one of the best investments Uari had ever made in his life.

After reassuring Uari that he was still digging into a potential third identity linked to him, Uari began his mission armed with Yan Guowen's instructions still fresh in his mind.

Over the course of the workday, Uari had Kirvan Socte stalk various people on the software to disguise his intentions just in case, downloading the data of everyone he filed a submission for and then compressing everything into a file.

He unlocked administrator rights, sent the file directly to one of Yan Guowen's discardable identities to bypass any middleman tracks, and then wiped everything and restored administrator rights.

No one said anything as he left the place quietly as part of the leaving file of people, face tucked back into his portable Interface as soon as everyone got up to leave.

As soon as he returned to Kirvan Socte's home, he checked in on the bound woman (still asleep) before making himself at home and borrowing her shower to clean up. Once he was done, he made sure to leave no trace of use by cleaning everything he used and then opening the window to air everything out.

Yan Guowen contacted him only a little after midnight to send him the de-encrypted files and to let him know that there was a third identity after all—probably the one he was using before his mission.

He left the identity alone. As much as it probably contained a significant amount of information, he didn't want to risk alerting Ghost that the older identity had suddenly come online. He could use it for something else, later.

He settled comfortably near Kirvan Socte's sleeping form to browse the de-encrypted chats between Valen and everyone else, sending Ima Bish a message while he was at it. She didn't respond, so he assumed she must still be dealing with whatever in Wren.

The chat histories made his scalp go a little numb. While it was only from the last three months, and while most of it had been filled with recent rage-rants about the stunts Uari had pulled, there were still hints of other missions being carried out.

The first was that Valen had 'collected' radioactive nucleogenic bacteria from a university. He'd seen recent article coverages regarding the theft, every single one of them wondering how anyone had bypassed the security system and why they had stolen only a tank of energy source bacteria. There were cries of potential security threats and terrorism, but no one had appeared as of yet.

What were they going to do with it?

The second, much more alarming thing was that this tank was going into the development of something. Based on what Caera had told him, it was probably something Ghost was working on to bring them all back to their original universe.

The problem with that was they mentioned needing a testbed and potential test subjects to verify if things would be alright.

Valen had suggested Wren.

She had noted that it would be easier to get testers from there due to a variety of reasons, including the fact that they were all vagrants and therefore easy to miss.

His heart lurched a little at the calm, detached way they spoke of other human beings as though they were objects. The histories noted the easy draw of at least four different subjects from Wren already.

It seemed that their demographics and details hadn't mattered, because none of the chats had described the details of these test subjects. Uari only knew that they were from Wren.

He fired another message off to Ima Bish, requesting that she ask around discreetly about anyone who might have gone missing in Wren and whether or not they had returned. The chats made no mention of whether said test subjects had returned or whether the tests had been successful at all.

The most recent histories displayed information on the fakes he had distributed across Southernland.

Almost all of them had been discovered to be fake, and there were a set of long rants from Io detailing how annoyed he was that he had to do so many memory wipes in such a short amount of time.

Luckily enough, Uari had already informed the decoys that they would be undergoing such a procedure. They had accepted anyway because he was paying them extremely well, so at least it wasn't non-consensual.

They would be narrowing down on Caera soon enough since almost all of the decoys had been discovered. If the timing was right and Caera had managed to speak to the individual she'd mentioned, the Gravts could potentially be held up even further in Wren for even longer.

Uari could do three things from here:

One: if he didn't have enough information, he would be able to return to the data centre a few more times to get more.

Two: if he had enough information, he could withdraw, call Caera off, and they could both reconvene and maybe escape.

Three: if he had enough information, he could get Caera to stay in Wren, reveal herself as the 'real' Uari, and force the Gravts to descend upon her and vacate the base as much as possible while Uari re-infiltrated the base.

He could pop in deeper to figure out what they were trying to do.

Nuclear energy. Test subjects. Another universe.

Absurd! Ridiculous!

Uari had never felt quite so alive in the past few months.