Chapter 3: Alarm

Jin looked down at the device in his hand, scanning the area around him with his Hermes. The entrance Gregory and Jacob had been guarding had been purposely highlighted by Jacob on the screen, meant to detail any activity that had gone down around that area. It was about a mile off…

Jin turned back for a moment, looking at Gregory's corpse that lay only a couple of meters away, before turning back. "They shouldn't have gone so far from their post on a hunch."

Neither of them had any real experience as mercenaries, clearly. Going off from their post on hunches, getting into arguments while treading near a potential threat… Jin almost couldn't count all the rookie mistakes they'd made on one hand, and that irritated him ever so slightly, as someone who'd spent his entire life training for this kind of work.

"Though, neither of them were probably in this business for long…" Jin thought to himself as he began swiftly jogging. They were probably just taking a risk for this "Julia" person. What a bunch of idiots. If you were going to risk your life guarding the most powerful drug ring in the world, at least make sure you know what you're doing instead of relying on fancy Martial Arts or cyborg enhancements.

Jin quelled his thoughts, and picked up his pace. He looked down at his stolen Hermes. At his current jogging speed, he'd crossed about a quarter of the distance to the entrance. So, he began speeding up, breaking off into a sprint. He was bound to get detected this way, but, even if he did get detected, it was easy for the average person to mistake his movements for that of a wild animal, or simply that of one of their comrades. Although this bet on the possibility they were as inexperienced as Gregory and Jacob.

It took Jin about 3 and a half minutes to get close enough to the entrance that he could see it through the darkness and rain. He stopped in his tracks and immediately ducked down, hiding his presence as before, merely observing as he immediately shut off the Hermes.

"Gregory and Jacob aren't picking up… You think they got made?"

"Who knows, probably? Should we go check?"

"If we go check and find out they did die, then that's worse off for us. We'll be next."

"You're right…"

Jin took in his new surroundings. 5 guards, all in the same uniforms as Gregory and Jacob, all with different voices. Two of those guards were particularly talkative, talking about Gregory and Jacob. The other 3 were completely silent, mostly focusing on scanning the perimeter or picking at their own teeth than actually caring about their partner's potential demise.

"I'm old, but I ain't senile…" Jin pondered to himself. He could kill them all, that would be easy. But it wasn't… practical, in this situation. If all 5 of them died, so close to the entrance, which he still couldn't even really see due to how well hidden it was…

"Don't want the Courier to win that bet… So, a new plan."

Jin emerged from hiding.

And without a word, the guards were on him. They all got into position, pointing their weapons at Jin, who immediately raised his hands into the air.

"Woah, woah, woah! What the hell?" Jin said, almost as if he was offended.

"Who the fuck are you!?" One of the guards said. This one's voice was kind of like Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony.

"What the hell do you mean, who am I?" Jin questioned, "We just saw each other, like, 20 minutes ago."

"What…?" Another one of Jin's adversaries spoke up- This one sounded like the Flying Dutchman from Spongebob.

"Hold up, I think that's just Jacob." One of them on the far right spoke up, their voice sounding like Sonic the Hedgehog.

"Uh, yeah! Mind dropping the weapon's now, please? Or are you gonna blow my head off for trying to do my Job?" Jin said, gently lowering his arms. This was… a stupid, stupid plan.

"Where's Gregory…?" The Twilight Sparkle voice-alike questioned.

Jin remained silent for a few moments, perfectly feigning being pained by speaking for a moment. "He… He uh…"

"Is he dead?" The Flying Dutchman voice-alike questioned, gently lowering his gun.

Jin slowly nodded, "I barely got out of there. Gregory stayed behind. Whoever was there went down with Gregory, I think…"

"Wait, really?" The Twilight Sparkle voice-alike questioned, "Like, dead dead? As in, you saw him die? And who the hell killed him!?"

"What do you think!?" Jin exclaimed. They all were confused for a moment- And Jin internally cursed.

"Fuck… Lower… Gotta make my voice lower…" Jin thought to himself, recognizing their clear confusion on why "Jacob's" voice modulator was on such a… high setting.

"Look… I did see Greg's body. We shouldn't have gone off as far as we did. But, he did bring down whatever intruder we had with him." Jin explained, "Is that enough of an explanation?"

"What the fuck were you thinking!? Do you wanna get paid, or not!?" One of them spoke up, being a Lightning McQueen voice-alike. "Fucking idiots! Why are you always so hung up on your damn hunches!?"

Jin took a step back, but the Twilight Sparkle voice-alike took a step between them. "There's nothing we can do about it, now. We just need to stay clustered around here… Jacob, you go inside, and freshen up, alright?"

Jin wanted to squeal like a little girl. "Let's fucking go… Thank the Lord for espionage."

This plan was… a gamble, a big one. There were a few factors that led Jin to choose impersonating Jacob- First off, their gear wasn't that different. Mercenaries or hired muscle didn't wear particularly distinct clothing, it was usually all some form of camouflage color. Second off, Jin, like them, also had a voice modulator with a particularly deep voice setting. All he had to do was lower his voice down a bit manually, and the rest was left up to how well he'd memorized Jacob's habits and gestures in their short skirmish.

"Thanks. Mind opening the door for me?" Jin asked.

"Why do you need me to do it?" The Twilight voice-alike questioned.

"Come on, just open it for him." The Sonic voice-alike said.

"Alright, alright…" The Twilight voice-alike said, "Sorry."

"Yeeessss…" Jin internally cheered. Everything was going perfectly.

The Twilight voice-alike turned around, looking down at seemingly a mound of mud. He began swiping away the mud swiftly, revealing what seemed to be a keypad of sorts underneath. It was made of black steel, and the buttons shone a light blue. Jin paid close attention as he watched Twilight voice-alike input in the entrance code.

"3987456710937891209843456… Fucking hell." Jin said internally. It was an obscenely long entry code, but luckily for him he'd trained his memorization skills since childhood, so he didn't have much of a problem. It was still pretty damn annoying, though.

As the Twilight voice-alike imputed the code, the black panel flashed for a moment, and the ground began to open up beneath. Both of them took a step back as a whole that was about 5 meters wide had appeared in the ground.

\

"They make their employees jump down a hole to get in… Lovely." Jin thought, before shaking his head.

"Thanks." Jin said, stepping forward. He was adept at falling and not getting hurt, but really? He didn't understand why any company would make their employees have to jump into a pit of doom to enter one of their buildings.

"Well, I've seen worse." Jin shrugged, and hopped in.

"Did Jacob just-" The Lightning McQueen voice-alike stuttered.

"Well, he's always been a daredevil." The Twilight voice-alike said, "Plus, he's not emotionally right after Gregory got made… He must've forgotten to dig out the harness and rope before jumping in."

…

Jin had spent around a few seconds falling deep into the Earth, not reaching an end. He had stopped believing that he could just survive this fall with no intervention a long while ago.

Jin began tilting his weight to the very edge of the hole, noticing the metal grooves and bolts attached to the outer wall. He pressed his hand against the wall, and after a few moments, his index finger caught on the chrome-colored bolt in the wall, stopping his descent.

"Thank you, gloves…" Jin murmured.

Jin began to slowly climb down, letting himself move down the microscopic grooves and tiny bolts, as if he was climbing a mountain but in reverse. Which was admittedly much more difficult than just climbing upward, but it was what it was.

"I've gotta figure out how exactly I'm gonna take this place out…" Jin began pondering. He went back to his conversation with the Courier- He didn't exactly have a plan, because he lacked resources. Which he, as usual, would blame on the Courier.

"This place manufactures drugs, so if I can possibly set off one of the more… volatile chemicals, would the explosion be big enough to end the whole joint? No… No, there'd need to be some kind of chain reaction to do any real damage, or else I won't even blow up a quarter of the place…" Jin groaned, "And I still don't know if this place has any gas pipelines… getting too damn old for this."

Jin could feel large amounts of cold air begin to circulate upward as he began reaching the bottom of the pit. Well, at least it had good air conditioning.

Eventually, Jin reached the bottom of the pit.

"State your name."

Jin was immediately put on guard, nearly instinctively socking whoever had addressed him in the face with the back of his gun. He immediately straightened his posture when he realized this was simply another guard- One of his, or, one of "Jacob's" comrades. Jin focused on his surroundings in his peripheral vision, taking stock of whatever he could.

His surroundings were as he expected of Sector D. It was the deepest part of Byzantium's facility, so it obviously didn't have much in terms of security, but it was incredibly large. Mostly because it stored… generators, seemingly, or at least one enormous one. It was planted directly into the ground, and was shaped like a cube, made of the same black-steel the keypad was. In the center of the giant machine was some… weird, yellow energy? Jin had never seen such an energy source.

"What in the…" The giant machine had wires and pipes connecting to several points in the walls, floor, and ceiling around it, pumping power throughout the entirety of the facility. "That… energy source…"

It was almost hypnotizing to watch the glowing yellow energy spin within the center of the giant jet black machine, almost like a black hole of sorts. Jin continued to stare at it for a few moments.

"Oi, your name?"

Jin was immediately broken out of his thoughts, "Right, Sorry."

"You know what, just come on, Jacob. I don't have time to deal with you." The fellow guard said, not having a voice modulator. His voice was deep, gruff, and he was clearly somewhere around Jin's age based purely on his physique, which Jin could see through his clothing.

"Fine, fine." Jin said, moving past his "fellow" guard. He wondered why he didn't have a voice modulator while everyone else he'd seen so far did, but he'd figure that out later.

"Where to go, first…" Jin muttered. Surrounding the giant black generator were countless doors and pathways, each leading into a different part of the sector, seemingly. If this place was just for generating power for the rest of the facility, then he didn't understand why they'd need more than the giant building-sized pitch black generator he'd seen prior- There was most likely a purpose here that he was missing. Jin turned back to his "co-worker".

"Hey… Do you guys ever take your masks off?" Jin questioned the man.

"Wha- Excuse me?" The man's voice was filled with confusion and dejection. Not only because it was a weirdly obvious question, but because he wasn't in the mood to talk with Jacob, or at least someone he thought was Jacob, an absolute idiot who'd leave his post on minor hunches. "Are you serious? Are you really asking me something like that? After the shit you pulled up there? Hit the showers, and get the fuck out of my sight!"

"Alright, alright!" Jin said, turning back immediately. He wondered if he'd be fine revealing his face here- The workforce in Byzantium seemed friendly enough that they'd remove their masks regularly, and thus would've known what Jacob actually looked like behind his mask.

"Did he see me kill Jacob on the cameras or something…? Maybe it was too dark for him to see it was me… Either that, or I'm just a really damn good actor." Jin pondered internally. It was, in reality, more the latter that had allowed Jin to slip by without being pinned down as an intruder. The man turned back for a moment to look at Jin walk away, before grunting, turning back.

Jin shook his head, and turned his attention to the variety of pathways that had been built into the place. The structure, like the hole he'd jumped down to actually get here, was completely silver/chromium colored, making it somewhat hard to look at due to light reflecting into his eyes.

"At least they clean up well…" Jin said, beginning to walk forward into a random pathway. As he expected, they were armed to the teeth, with every door possessing a pair of security detail at its side. The rooms either had nothing going on, or were completely sound-proof. Jin speculated that the latter would be more likely for a place like this, with a facility this big it didn't seem likely that in the several hundreds of rooms contained within the passageways that not a single one of them would have anything going on. In fact, that'd be downright improbable.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing wandering around?" As Jin was walking, one of the guards addressed him at his side, causing him to freeze.

"I'm off Topside Duty…" Jin muttered, keeping his gaze straight.

"And you come to the meat-shack afterward? I don't know if you're just sadistic, or new here, but either way, you need to beat it." He said. Like the other man, he didn't seem to possess a voice modulator.

"I guess it's only for when you're topside…" Jin thought to himself, before speaking. "Ain't nothing saying I can't be here. I'm just trying to make a living, just like you."

"Well, if you're looking to make a bit more of a "living", take my shift from me. I've been standing here for 15 hours, and I need a break." He offered, "Take over for me."

"We can just… do that?" Jin questioned.

"This place is big, and sometimes people like you will wander around after being taken off duty with nothing to do 'cause every spot is already taken… Standing around doing nothing doesn't get you paid, and neither does me dying of exhaustion." The man said, "And ditch the voice modulator while you're at it, we only use those topside."

"Alright, alright… I'll take over for you." Jin said, shrugging. He was interested in this… meat-shack place, so it was perfect.

"Great! See ya, sucker!" He immediately moved from his post, and Jin immediately took his spot. He was clearly holding back the urge to collapse and cry from having to stand in the exact same spot for 15 hours straight without budging. Holding back his urges, he walked off, clearly content with his life.

"Lucky him…" Jin internally shrugged, and got into position, holding his gun to his chest and keeping his posture straight. He wasn't exactly unfamiliar with having to stay in one place for an extended period of time.

"You shouldn't have let him go like that. He needed the hours." Jin kept his gaze straight, but listened closely to the words of his new "partner", who also didn't even turn towards Jin while whispering to him. He seemed pretty young, definitely not too far above the age of 25.

"Clearly not, since he seemed pretty happy to be free from his post."

"You try standing in one spot for 15 hours straight… It takes a toll on your mind. I was barely keeping the guy sane just by talking to him. But he needs the money if he's gonna survive the month." He gruffly explained, clearly already annoyed with Jin.

"No salary, then?" Jin questioned.

"No, we get paid by the hour, and we get paid jack shit here too…" The tone of his voice lowered, clear dejection in it. "Most people don't stay long enough to last a day or get paid anything decent…

"Must have been different with me, then." Jin thought to himself. Whenever he'd worked with Byzantium, he'd always get hefty pay that actually made the job worth it. But unlike these no-names, Jin had real skill, and actual reputation within the underworld that made it easy to give him jobs that'd bring in a large payout.

"You all must be pretty damn desperate, then." Jin said nonchalantly.

"What an observation… Of course, anybody working here is desperate for something. Because it's not the money that draws people in to work here." The guard explained cryptically, his tone of voice lowering.

"Yeah, I know. If you climb high enough on the corporate ladder, Byzantium will give you a free favor, is that right? That's complete bullshit, and you know it." Jin grunted, his grip around his weapon tightening.

"It's the opposite of bullshit, cause I've seen it. A few years ago, one of my friends had this sick wife- Pancreatic Cancer, if I remember right. After a couple of years of working with Byzantium, apparently they'd given him enough money for treatment good enough to completely cure her." He said, almost as if it was some sort of urban legend.

"You think Byzantium has the cure for Cancer?" Jin raised an eyebrow beneath his mask, and held back back an amused chuckle, keeping his composure.

"I know they do. I saw it on his wife… He told me she was completely fine, afterwards."

"Haha… Hahaha… That's… amazing." Jin let out a chortle, now unable to contain his laughter.

"What the hell is so funny??"

"Nothing much, it's just… You actually think that a seedy ass organization like Byzantium would give the fucking cure for Cancer to some dude's wife, just because he worked for them a few years? I've heard delusions but that's a delusion that takes the fucking cake out of all of them…" Jin let out a slight cough to cease his own laughing, shaking his head.

The guard grunted, "Yeah, whatever, asshole. I don't have to listen to you."

Jin shrugged, "Whatever floats your boat, kid."

The man growled for a moment, before ceasing. He straightened his posture once more, and said nothing.

"All these guys are fucking amateurs…" Jin thought to himself, letting out a dejected sigh. Just like Gregory and Jacob, this guy thought he was really going to get somewhere doing grunt work for Byzantium, merely on the hopes that they'd give him a favor if he slaved away for them long enough. It obviously wasn't going to happen even if he worked for hundreds of thousands of years doing the same grunt work.

"What probably happened is that the guy's wife died from Cancer…" And they blackmailed him into making it seem like she was saved. Given his "partner" didn't sound like he'd seen this guy or his wife directly, they'd probably either been shipped off to another base in another country, or killed. Businesses as big as Byzantium didn't need to worry about tricking a couple thousand worker bees into doing slave work for the entire hive.

In a way, Jin felt bad for the guy next to him, and for everybody in this place. Most of them were probably working based on some kind of false-hope- Having been brainwashed into thinking that if they worked hard enough, they'd get money, or be able to save their family member, or start a business, etc. They wasted hours of their lives away on a joke.

"Meh, well… Not my problem." Jin internally shrugged. If they were stupid enough to get themselves caught in the scam Byzantium put out there to get idiots to work like coked up slaves, that was on them.

Jin and his "partner" stayed silent next to each other for what seemed like hours afterward, the air itself becoming still. Again, Jin wasn't unused to this. Most of his life had been spent staying in one spot without moving for hours on end, whether it was for breaking into a place, or waiting for the right moment to put a bullet into someone's head. If anything, he felt like he was right at home like this.

But it wasn't getting him any closer to completing his mission. He got into the place, which was step one. The next step would be to actually destroy the entire facility… Which Jin doubted he could do by simply standing next to a door out of thousands of doors for more than a dozen hours.

"I need a plan…" Jin pondered, holding back the urge to sigh.

As Jin was stuck within his own thoughts, suddenly, the lights that illuminated the facility began to flash a bright red, and an alarm was set off, alerting everyone in Sector D.

"Huh…?"