X29: In Enemy Lines

The place had enough facilities to maintain a large force for months. Hell, it made the old Clandestine HQ seem like a run-down safehouse.

Kyle looked out into the facility. "Hell of an upgrade, right?"

"I guess." said Archius, "I mean, didn't think this was in the budget."

"Me too, but HICOM was able to strike a deal with some benefactors, it seems." said Kyle. Archius' ears tingle at the sound of that. If Sato and him can loosen Kyle up, they might get another lead. "It'll make up for the losses we got."

"Really?" asked Archius. He placed himself against the wall beside Kyle. "Never knew. Communications are tight, getting missions done is much harder."

"I know right!" exclaimed Kyle, "And my sister keeps pestering me for stuff…"

Familial problems… Archius can somewhat remember that. But he didn't feel versed enough to use that, it's been too long for that avenue of approach. Instead he'll use Kazuki's complaints when he talks about his own sister. 

"Oh, tell me about it! I'm currently paying for my sister to go to school and she has the gall to complain about the fucking homework!" lied Archius, shouting to better sell his frustration.

"Hah, my sister wants a space-map, says she wants to explore the stars…" Kyle laughed for a moment. 

"Well, good luck to her." said Archius, feeling nothing as Kyle smiled. Every bond he made was for the mission. Kyle reminded him of himself, back before the bombs fell. His sister always pestered him… he hated it back then. The thoughts slowly wandered to hate, as he glanced towards Sato.

But those thoughts quickly faded as he gave his response to Kyle. "Woes unto the elder brother!"

"Woes indeed," said Kyle, "I've only been here for a month and it already feels like home…"

"Yeah, transferred from the surface," said Archius. The elevator's outside view gave way to a concrete wall surrounding it. They were getting closer…

"The surface?" asked Kyle, raising an eyebrow. "Didn't we abandon it? You saw what happened to Kelly's team; heard she got captured. Well, she did do a lot of damage though, a few dead civvies should stir some trouble."

It seems like Kyle was just as ruthless as all the others, Archius thought. But that was the least of his concerns, or worth of notetaking.

"We got stranded up there," lied Archius. Shit. He slipped up. He should have avoided such rosy topics… Kyle's face maintained suspicion.

Then, he turned to Archius. "Wait—"

It was enough. He sent a ping to Sato on his uplink as their earpieces blinked red. Her eye glanced to the camera in the elevator as she tapped her ICAPAD - scrambling it. With that dealt with, Archius dropped his face. With a soulless stare, he slit Kyle's throat in a single motion with his pen-knife

"What the fuck!?" Sato shouted, stepping back as blood gushed out of Kyle's neck. Archius stepped to the side, avoiding the blood as he fell onto the floor, one hand covering the wound. "I could have stunned him…"

"He knew, plus he is a terrorist," said Archius, grabbing onto Kyle's hand as he tried to get a clean kill. But Kyle kept writhing around, trying to throw Archius off him. He muttered, frustrated, "So annoying… Stay still. I'm trying to kill you."

Archius tried to get a clean kill, but Kyle continued to writhe. He rolled his eyes, before continually stabbing Kyle in the chest. For sure, he stopped moving after that. Sato wasn't all too phased as she knelt down, poking at him. Archius grumbled as he wasn't able to get a clean kill. 

"Fucking hell, what did you do that for?" 

"For the cause, at all costs. Things get messy sometimes, nothing we can do about that." said Archius, placing the body against the wall. Now that he thinks about it, Eliza probably knew something was up with him after he uncharacteristically gutted that Loyalist back in the factory… "And be thankful I didn't syringe him. How long will the loop stay on?"

"As long as I'm connected to it." said Sato. "And there is absolutely something we could do about it, what good are we if we stoop to the Loyalists'."

"Then we're just like the rest." said Archius, "What's so wrong about that?"

As their ideologies clashed, the walls became transparent as the server farm floor came into view. The elevator was like a pillar in the middle of a thousand servers. The elevator opened at the bottom floor. Exiting out, the duo were met with a massive server-farm. Databases and servers lined up in a labyrinth-like pattern up to the ceiling. Each was a pillar, cooled by liquid nitrogen tubes that made the whole room ice-cold. And luckily, there was not a single soul there.

"Alright, let's do this quickly," said Sato, walking off towards a raised platform on the opposite end of the room.

"Sure," said Archius. Looking around, he wasn't all too impressed by the setup, the CRIS had a far more robust system.

He followed her, walking up the stairs to the raised platform as she was working away, in her element as her uplink was connected to a computer. She attached a Cracking Stick into one of the system's ports.

"Alright… Krystalink 5.0 shouldn't raise any alarms…" Sato muttered to herself, before becoming consumed by a wave of information.

"How long will it take?"

Sato glanced back at him as she pointed to her uplink. It blinked colours along with her ICAPAD. He rolled his eyes as she went back to processing the information. After a few minutes, her voice called out. "I've done all I can with 5.0. I need a code to access the admin-menu, if I bypass it with one of Clandestine's old zero days it'll trip the alarms. Can your eyes do something about that?"

"Absolutely not…" said Archius, "They're more useful alive than dead. Just bypass it, alright?"

"Ah, great, so this is a suicide mission!" she complained.

"We'll take one of the emergency exits." said Archius, "If we create enough noise, it'll cover our escape."

"I hope you're right…"

As silence fell, she took a deep breath before pressing down on a touchscreen button, then clicking onto her uplink to bypass the firewalls. The lights of the server room turned blood red as alarms started to blare.

'UNAUTHORISED ACCESS OF MASTER COMPUTER. FACILITY BREACH PROTOCOLS ENGAGED.' 

As Archius glanced at the elevator, he noted that it started to move upwards. He stepped backwards, frantically tapping her on the back. "They'll be down here any minute!"

"I'm trying…" said Sato. He glanced over at the holographic monitor. She was simply clicking and searching through a massive admin-system. And then, she tried to activate the ping-module. A screen flared upwards at Sato as she shot Archius a look.

"SHIT. I NEED A FUCKING PASSWORD?!" 

"I don't know? Bypass it?" He glanced back at the elevator, noting down the descending, blinking number above the elevator doors. He ran down the steps and hid behind one of the pillars.

"Bypass it?! I'm not some fucking genie!" shouted Sato, clearly angry and panicking. Neither of them had combat-netics on, so fighting Loyalists isn't impossible, but not advisable. "Hacking isn't what it's like on the screens, didn't they teach that to you in actor school?!"

"Well… do something, because right now there's a dozen blood thirsty mercs that want to kill us!" said Archius, unholstering his revolver as his frustration reached even higher levels than before.

"Oh, I didn't know that! Thanks for telling me. I thought they were coming along as customer support," Sato snapped, frustrated and pissed at Archius' comments.

He could see the elevator now, sliding downwards to the bottom floor. And as they touched down, Sato typed in 1234. As she bypassed it, she sent out a ping to all Loyalist locations as the doors of the elevator slid open. 

"WHAT THE FUCK?" She shouted out loud.

Her ICAPAD flowed with information.

Loyalists poured out as Archius fired at them. They took cover amongst the servers to the side as one of them fell, head-popped from the revolver. 

Archius narrowly avoided a bolt to the head, ducking into cover as Sato jumped down to the pillar beside him. He placed a hand to his head, feeling a streak of blood fall down, explosive bolts! Fragmentation threw itself up from the impact of each bolt, forcing him down and further into cover.

"Done, let's get out of here!" 

"Alright, follow me." Archius said, firing blindly into the Loyalists' general direction as he made his way towards the side of the room, followed by Sato.

The two were chased down as the Loyalists quickly swarmed onto them. But each one that got close was blasted by the two, who threw incendiaries to slow the Loyalists down. 

As they fled towards the side of the room, Archius looked back, seeing the Loyalists slowly trek across the fires with their fire-retardant armour. Entire sections were lit up with gunfire as they ran. Sato took a bolt to the chest-plate, knocking her to the ground. A second bolt narrowly missed her, Archius fired back frantically as he stepped out of cover. He took a bolt personally, but withstood the shrapnel, kicking Sato into cover.

She recovered, coughing up. "FUCK ME! THAT HURTS!" she shouted, injecting herself with an injector as she stuck one into Archius, joining her in cover.

"They're bullets, they're supposed to hurt!" 

Archius noted that they were swarming onto them… Fuck, he has to buy them time. He looked back at Sato, who had her eyes attached to the console-pad attached to the server column they were hiding behind.

"The fuck?"

"I… I think I can do something from here!" said Sato, detaching the console from the server as she immediately started to crack into it. Archius grumbled to himself, making a strained face as he fired back at an approaching Loyalist - a lucky shot skimming them in the face.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN SOMETHING?" said Archius, his chest-plate taking another bolt. A Loyalist was rushing up to them. FUCK. He has to do something!

"And… tada!" Sato shouted, a loud screech of engines pouring into the room from up above. DRONES! A fuck load of them, all firing down. The Loyalist turned around the column, only to be spliced into two pieces by a drone bolt. 

The remaining Loyalists were sent into cover. With this moment of respite, Sato took the lead - grabbing onto Archius and rushing to the side. Archius took lead straight after, leading them across the room - over to a small exhaust grate. The words 'Maintenance Shaft' was written above it in red ink, Standard Galactic.

It was small, but usable, Archius lit up a smoke bomb.

"Really?" asked Sato.

"Got a better idea?" snapped Archius, his voice teeming with light anger. "I fucking thought so."

∗ ∗ ∗

The two crawled through the vent-like environment as they slowly ascended upwards with much difficulty. By now, gunfire was sporadic as they could hear the alarms through the shaft walls. Archius kept close behind Sato as they reached up towards the Sub-Level surface, kicking on the seal mechanisms in the shaft to prevent any pursuers.

Sato stopped as Archius jabbed at her leg from behind. "Something up?"

"Sewer grate, you think it's safe for us?" asked Sato, trying to twist her head back towards Archius, smacking into the low ceiling as she frowned, rubbing her forehead.

"Absolutely not, but what choice do we have?" Archius asked in return. Sato grumbled, lifting the sewer grate up, cold, dusty air filled their nostrils as they exited out.