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MAZE - Chapter 978 -Behind Door number 1
🕑 Added 2024-12-09 13:00:10 +0000 UTCBlade guided the bulk of the group deeper into the facility. The hallway they were taking was very long, much longer than any sensible person would create for a place like this. Maybe it had something to do with how the roots would spread around the room or something else they weren't aware of, but it was still strange.
After a couple hundred meters, they saw the first change from the black and gray walls in the corridor. It started with a shift in the colors, or more specifically, in how well the walls were painted. There were slashes and marks across the white areas, and the gray stone was clearly damaged.
It seemed like the production of Soldiers of Strength was not all sunshine and rainbows.
The deeper they went, the more marks of wear and tear appeared.
The group reached a massive door full of scratches and dents, as if something had been trying to break in. No one could really understand what was going on there. But why would the Soldiers of Strength try to get inside the facility instead of breaking out? That was something no one truly understood. Despite noticing the odd behavior, they only made a mental note of the oddity. Instead, they turned to their infiltration specialists.
"Is it my time, boss?" Grim said with a massive smile.
Blade shook her head. "Not yet. Let's see if Brok can handle this."
Grim stepped back but started to grumble some complaints. However, Blade tapped him on the shoulder. "Don't worry. Right now, we need to be stealthy. Your time will come."
With that, the dwarf smiled again, though he wasn’t as excited as before.
Blade called to Brok, and the engineer started to work his magic on the control panel by the side.
He gave a few taps on the panel with the device he carried. In just a few seconds, the massive door, emblazoned with the New Dawn symbol, a rising sun over some hills, started to open.
Everyone moved to the corners of the corridor, waiting to meet whatever was on the other side. But instead of a laboratory, a training area, or anything that could be described as dangerous, they found the reception.
A few couches with a center table sat atop a plain white rug on both sides. There was a coffee machine in the corner, with some teacups scattered around it. In the center was a large circular table with a hole in the middle. A woman was leaning over the table with a cup of coffee in hand. She had red hair tied in a tight bun and wore a black blazer with a pencil skirt and high heels. She also had headphones on, which prevented her from noticing the noise caused by the door.
Once she turned around, the woman quickly removed the headphones and set the cup aside before walking toward the door with a worried expression.
No one in the group said a thing. They were all still hidden by their cloaks. The last thing they needed was for some random person to figure out what was going on.
The woman got closer to the door and looked around, trying to see if anyone was approaching. With a frown, she stepped over the threshold and started walking toward the elevator, her heels echoing across the hallway.
"Hello?" she asked loudly. There was no response.
She waited for a few moments before turning toward the wall and shaking her head. "I keep telling them this door is weird, but maintenance does nothing about it. Just like they don’t give two shits about how bad this place looks." She let out a sigh and took a step forward. "And why would they? I’m the only one who gets the pleasure of talking to the boss about this."
From deeper in the facility, a scream could be heard. It was very far away and barely audible, but to those with keener senses, or those who had become used to that kind of thing, it was present.
The woman shivered. "And they’re starting again. Sometimes I just wish this place got shut down."
Iris, one of the twins, approached the woman and slammed the back of her head with the butt of her sword. She added a couple of spells to the attack that would render someone unconscious, an effect further enhanced by the sneak attack.
She caught the woman before she fell to the ground, and Ivy joined in with a couple of other spells and a skill to make sure the woman wouldn’t wake up anytime soon.
"Your wish is our command," the twins said in a whisper.
They also took a few seconds to remove all the equipment the woman had on her. They found a couple of pieces of jewelry with communication spells, and her shoes had a robust tracking system. From what they could tell, it was designed so she would always know where the shoes were, rather than someone else trying to track her.
The plan was not to carry the woman around, so they checked the small cabinets under the coffee machine and removed a couple of shelves, placing them on the bottom of the furniture. Then they shoved the woman inside and cast a few spells to lock her in place.
Echo, the triton scout, quickly headed to the computer at the central table and started working. He was, among other things, the best hacker of the group. It was one thing to open a mechanical door; it was another to understand the intricacies of bypassing passwords on a computer. Even if those two skills had some overlap, people generally worked better when they could specialize individually.
"So, I found a couple of very interesting emails. They say that the security personnel must avoid going to the cells and the lab, since they were disturbing the subjects. Because of that, they reorganized the passageways so that everyone who's a part of security needs to head left from the entrance, and everybody who's going to the labs should go right," Echo said after a couple of minutes.
"Doesn't that sound too good to be true?" Marina, the Triton healer, asked.
"A little bit. But this email chain goes weeks back. There were a bunch of meetings about it and a bunch of attempts to make this work. In the end, they chose this option since it was the easiest, at least until they come up with something better," Echo explained.
"Then, here we split again," Blade announced. "Stormcrest Company, take Brok with you and go to the security area. The rest of us are heading to the labs."
"Actually, I think some of us should go with them," Raxus, the leader of the Wandering Scale, spoke up. "Even if there are some Soldiers of Strength being produced in the labs, we know for a fact that there are a few as part of the security team. And the Stormcrest Company is already a couple members short of their full lineup. The lab team has more than double the number of of members they will have. We should balance this."
Blade nodded. "Good call. Who do you want to send?"
"I think me, Echo, and Zephyr. The twins and Grim can go with you."
Blade turned to the Harmony Guardians. "Are you okay with that?"
"Yeah. If we lose control of the security system, we’ll have more problems," Skyler replied.
"Okay then. Let’s move," Blade said as the two groups separated.
At the same time, in a different part of the facility, Hera had just left the investor room, taking one of the pamphlets with her. She had no idea if it would help her or not, but carrying it wasn’t too much trouble.
The Empress walked quickly but quietly through the next hallway. She passed by a glass wall with what could only be described as a training ground on the other side. There were several pieces of equipment one would find in a gym and a few open areas to showcase larger skills, but the place was completely empty and pristine. It looked like it had never been used before.
That made her a bit more comfortable with the situation. If this was something actively being utilized by the people in the facility, she could find trouble. But if it was something still in development, it was likely that she wouldn’t find anyone.
After turning a corner, she saw another room to the side, but this one was much smaller and didn’t have any sort of flair to it. If anyone was coming here to see a presentation, they would likely not check this particular entrance.
Which also meant this could be something related to the infrastructure of the place. Hera thought she heard something coming from the left and rushed inside the door. Luckily, it wasn’t locked, but as soon as she stepped inside, she came face to face with a human man. He had black hair and was wearing a button-down shirt with some jeans. It was very much an office look.
The man paused, surprised by the sudden entrance of this snake woman, and asked, still shell-shocked, "What’s going on? What the hell are you?"
"Would you believe me if I said it’s for the office costume party?" Hera smiled.
The man glanced at her, then at her coiled tail, before shifting to the side, clearly about to reach for something. Before that could happen, the Empress burst into motion.
She grabbed his leg with her tail and pulled it up, causing the man to fall back to the ground before punching him with all her strength. She knew this wasn’t the best idea. The right thing to do now was to just kill him and get it over with. But it was one thing to kill someone who was trying to kill her; it was another to invade someone’s office and kill them just for being there, even if the man was working with a bunch of monsters.
He wasn’t knocked out in a single punch, but a couple more hits and he was no longer conscious. To make sure this wouldn’t come back to bite her, the Empress also used a Poison Fang, with the intention of making him sleep for a day or so with a specific type of poison.
The last part of her attack was very similar to what the other team had done a few minutes prior. She used her crafting skill to create some rope, tied the man down, and shoved him inside a locker.
As she finished making sure the man was properly locked in, she paused and turned to her Court, "I’m not a bully, am I?"
"Right now? A little bit," Viper said as he returned to his coiled form.
Only after the man was neutralized did they stop to check the area properly. This looked very much like a server room. There were a few rows of servers and one computer in the corner, with a small manual to the side. Hera quickly went over and, as luck would have it, the computer was unlocked. It seemed the man had left his login active before he was about to leave.
She went through a few of the files and software, while Viper read through the manual, telling her what he was seeing. Not long after, they noticed a master control for the communications array of the lab. The Ophidianite wasn’t the most tech-savvy person out there, but from what she could understand, this room controlled all the messages sent by the people who worked in the lab. And that wasn’t just digital messages like emails or texts, but also their communicators.
There was a quick explanation in one of the programs that said the barriers were responsible for this setup.
Because the barriers blocked everything, they had to create one single exception and route every single form of communication through this server to allow people to talk with each other while in different layers of the barrier.
Even better, the manual had a full section about the Emergency Maintenance Mode. It was something only to be used if the entire network was collapsing. It would block all messages from the various people in the labs for a period until the problem was fixed.
Following the instructions in the manual, Hera triggered the Emergency Maintenance Mode and set it up so that it would last five hours. Emails and any form of internet connection would be delayed, and any voice communication through a communicator or walkie-talkie would receive a message letting them know that the Emergency Maintenance Mode was currently active.
If everything worked out well, she had just gained a lot of time for the operation.
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