goneawayworld | It's (Still) Honestly A Terrible Plan.

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It's (Still) Honestly A Terrible Plan.

Who: Saturday, Gambit, York, North, Shelly, Brainy
What: A daring infiltration of the executive deck
Where: Exec deck
When: Simultaneous with the riot
Warnings/Notes: None so far.

Saturday watches from the edges of the riot, making a great show of moving furniture and snatching bystanders away from the rolling ball of chaos, until South slips by and murmurs something in her ear.

Then she begins to move, touching a shoulder here, giving a significant look there. Time to go. One by one, everyone can slowly depart. Secrecy is essential; even Jorgmund can add up riot and murder and break-in and get “kill them before they kill you.”

They can all meet Saturday at the appointed place. It’s a less-used service entrance to the upper deck, which some may not have even known existed. She stands with her hands in her pockets, wound tight as a sprinter before the starting pistol.

“Okay,” she says quietly, once they’re all there. In an earpiece cobbled together by Alia, a New Hire now gone, she says, “Brainy, you ready? Good.” She looks at the others. “Right. So. You all know the plan, an’ the stakes. Go in, grab as much as you can, get out. No unnecessary risks, no heroics. Brainy’s our eye in the sky; once the door opens, we scatter. He’ll be the only one with the full picture.”

“We’ve got a private channel, but keep it quiet. No chatter. If you cut comms, it means you’re burned an’ the op is over. We will try to get you out. It might not be possible. If Jorg realizes what we did, we’re all fucked. If that’s too much heat, go back. I won’t judge anyone for it.”

And she means it, too. Risking their lives in battle is one thing; risking torture and god knows what else at the hands of an enemy like Jorgmund is quite another. They’ve all heard a variation on this speech from her before, of course, when she approached them with the final plan. But she seems to need to make sure she says it again, one last time.

“Okay. Right.” Saturday turns to the door. Her hands are too disciplined to shake as she draws out the keycard, but she can taste her heartbeat on the back of her tongue. It’s always like this before a run, or a fight, in the moment when the ground starts to shift and anything becomes possible - provided you don’t fall.

It makes her feel a little guilty, how much she loves it.

The alarm panel blinks a challenge, and South steps forward. Planker’s voice emerges from her mouth, speaking the code-phrase stolen from his mind by Stacia and Kerrigan. The lock processes, taking almost too long.

But the door opens, revealing a branching hallway lined with doors. Time for everyone to get into their groups, and set off…

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To one side, a rack of wire storage shelves. To the other, a desk looms over him. The tinny sounds of electronic violence waft from behind it, and he can see shoes underneath; the feet are facing away from him. Right ahead of him, a glass sliding door. Beyond it, all sorts of interesting blinky lights, and racks upon racks of servers.

Edited 2021-05-16 01:12 (UTC)

York pulls back out, releasing the breath he'd been holding while his face was inside the wall. Shelley is still keeping watch, and he stands back up and whispers.

"I think there's only one person in there, and they're facing away from how we'd enter. We might be able to slip in quiet and knock them out."

Shelley turns her head, an excited smile crossing her face. "Good, good. Can you do it with your bare hands or will we have to do the true and tried blunt object to the head route?"

She's quite partial to bludgeoning people, admittedly.

"Blunt object to the head, I think. Anything else I don't trust myself to get right without causing noise."

He holds out his hand to her -- ready to phase through a wall, new friend?

Certainly ready. Shelley grips the hand strongly -- a little concerned if he lets go while crossing she's going to get stuck on that wall -- and nods.

"Onwards"

It's been a while since she did anything like this. Although her success rate in infiltrations and general mischief is pretty much a coin toss, she's kind of looking forward to braving the depths of the IT department.

York holds on tight and focuses, one hand pressed against the wall... and then phases through and steps forward, making sure Shelley's coming with him. They emerge into the office in the space right beside the door all sneaky-like, and his footsteps at least are soft enough not to be heard above the electronic noises.

Immediately he's making sure Shelley is clear of the wall and any desks or chairs or what have you, then glancing around for something he could use as a bludgeon.

There's a half-dismantle keyboard, a few loops of wiring, and wrench on a nearby worktable. Better move fast; the IT guy - oh, girl, actually - is coming out of her coding stupor. She stretches, starting to glance around in the confused way you do when you've been deep in Code Farr.

Shelley sees the IT girl and grimaces a little. Uf, they haven't knocked her out yet and she's already feeling guilty, but...well, it's a bitter pill to swallow. Nothing personal.

Gesturing York she can handle it and taking a finger to her lips, she carefully takes the keyboard and the wiring, just in case, judging it all to be far less lethal than a wrench. She wants to make her unconscious, not cave her skull! Grabbing the keyboard tightly, she crosses the room and, at the same time, creates her little personal bubble, willing it to extend far enough to surround the poor worker who will suffer her apologetic wrath. This should make sure no noise happens, she figures. It shouldn't take more than a few seconds, she thinks, so the recharge time won't be too much of an issue.

To York it's like Shelley, the IT girl, and the chair she's sitting on all vanish. To Shelley, though everything is in a completely white space. As soon as the isolation bubble is on, she blurts out, talking really quickly:

"I'msorryandIhopeyoudon'tgetfiredforthis!"

And swings the keyboard to the back of the IT girl's head, right to the crown of the head. Don't pull your punches, Shelley, she thinks. If you don't make it count right on the first strike, it'll be worse for everyone!

Edited 2021-05-21 00:23 (UTC)

The woman yelps in pain, reaching for the back of her head and starting to turn. Shelly is already hitting her again, babbling an apology. The woman's head snaps back, hitting her monitor, and falls to the keyboard as she goes limp. There's a bit of blood in her hairline - it looks superficial, however.

Shelley sighs, feeling a strange exhaustion overcome her. She can't tell if it's the guilt or the usual tiredness that comes from using this power she now has. "I'm so not getting in Santa's good list this year" she mutters, undoing her personal bubble. That took more time than she planned, admittedly, but unless their undoing comes in the next half minute, it should all be fine.

Shelley touches the woman's head where she was hit, winces a little once she feels blood, and carefully moves her off the chair, slowly placing her on the floor. Who knows...maybe they'll need to take a look at what she was working on, and if not, then at least this woman won't fall from her chair.

"I'm just glad I didn't have to use the wire" she says to York softly. Strangling someone with it to try to knock somebody out is really dangerous.

May as well keep it, though...you never know when you will need wiring for one reason or another, even if it may be for less than peaceful reasons.

Edited 2021-05-21 00:40 (UTC)

The bubble comes down and York can see the woman slumped at her desk -- he watches Shelley lower her to the floor and nods.

"She's lucky, really. I would've gone for the wrench."

Not that he wants to kill anybody, it's just. That was his instinct. He's used to fighting people in armor. In fact, he glances to it now, picking it up off the desk. Just in case.

"Well... we're in."

"And with a reasonable amount of collateral damage! So far"

Having left said collateral damage on the floor, Shelley gets her arm through the loops of wire for ease of carrying, and glances at the computer.

"So, how good are you with the wonderful world of tech?"

Since they're in IT, there probably will be plenty of computers and servers to deal with, she supposes. If York turns out to be an expert hacker who will work magic on the keyboards, then who is she to get in the way? She certainly can work with the computers well enough, but she isn't taking dibs in case York is better.

Although of course, there's always a chance they'll both have to do computer work. It all depends on how easy or hard it is to find useful stuff to inform everyone else about.

Edited 2021-05-21 00:58 (UTC)

"Pretty good," York muses, "but my partner's better. Delta? Can you help me out?"

A green hologram appears at York's shoulder on his blind side, nodding its tiny helmeted head at Shelley.

"I can assist verbally, but cannot interface with rig technology."

"Let's flex our hacker skills, then."

"Don't flex too hard, York. You have a habit of breaking things."

"I can't tell if that's a compliment or not. Anyway..." He leans down to see what the programmer Shelley knocked out was working on, and if there's any way deeper into the system from an already logged-in computer.

The unconscious woman is a sub-administrator, with limited access - but what she does have gets him into the system, and enables him to view the architecture. From there he picks a few virtual locks and wiggles through a few cyber-vents, and then he finds himself in a most terribly interesting place, highly restricted, full of files with promising names like "FOXprodfiscalyr.xlsx" and "Findings, fifth quarter.ppt." This is an IT office - there's got to be a USB somewhere, or other portable media.

Edited 2021-05-21 02:45 (UTC)

"--find a drive."

York starts opening drawers and rummaging, trusting Shelley to do the same at the next desk. Between them they do manage to find a flash drive, and he plugs it in and starts copying things, not wanting to open them here in case someone remote can tell they're being accessed. Can't be too careful.

"So cool..." she had murmured that when Delta popped up. This definitely was one of the best things she had seen in quite a while! Once York and Delta started working on the computer, Shelley returned to the door, holding her ear against the surface and trying to listen through it to the outside, for any signs someone may be approaching at any moment. Better safe than sorry.

Of course, when York asked for help in finding a drive she stepped away from it and rooted through the desks, trying to find one. Indeed! Finding one wasn't an issue at all, so with that done, she returned to her spot at the door.

"Does anything in that computer scream 'jackpot!'?" she asked, murmuring.

York hums thoughtfully, watching the transfer tick down.

"There are some files labeled 'findings' and that sounds promising. I think a bunch of it is financials that won't mean shit to us, but I'm just taking it all. It's not in this computer, though, I'm in a restricted server. Odds are this worker wouldn't have had access to it."

"Then we have no choice. Let's find the right place for our cybernetic action"

Although admittedly she's not too happy about having to step away from the entrance door -- the deeper they go into the IT lands, the harder it'll be to get out if something goes awry. Still...clearly by staying somewhat safe they won't be getting the juicy stuff, if it turns out the findings files aren't enough.

Shelley glances at the servers beyond the glass door.

"Somewhere over there, perhaps. From here I can only see servers, but it could be worth seeing if there's a computer to use. If we go over there we should block this door, though"

At least that should buy them some time and warn them if someone tries to come in through the entrance door! Even if it's just a few seconds of warning, perhaps that could make the difference.

Edited 2021-05-21 15:24 (UTC)

"Yeah, let's block the door. If we hear someone coming that'll give us time to slip through into another room."

He's certainly not beyond abusing his power to escape.

The transfer completes and he slips the drive into his pocket, then moves to help Shelley push a desk in front of the door.

Shelley pushes the desk alongside York, hoping the noise isn't loud enough to attract attention from out there. Alright, so far, not so bad of a trip into the depths of the executive area. They just had to knock out a person, but that was to be expected! And they have a drive with information. That officially makes this a successful trip, she thinks to herself! Go team!

"The other team better be doing just as well as we have so far"

As if everything these two have done is the textbook example of how to perform a successful corporate infiltration. Don't praise yourself too much, Shelley, there's still plenty of sneaking around into the IT office to do.

York huffs in amusement, stepping back from the desk. "Hopefully. Okay, let's keep looking."

What else is there to dig into? The server room, sure, but in case there's no terminals in there, any other doors or cabinets?

Between the two of them, the desk moves easily enough, though they should try to remember to put it back. Saturday had emphasized leaving no trace, and an unconscious employee who may very well remember being bludgeoned by mysterious parties unknown is already a large one. There isn't much else in the first room, unless they feel a burning need to collect broken hardware.

The inside of the server room is dark; there's a lightswitch to one side of the door. It's not very big, certainly not big enough to support the whole rig - there must be other rooms, elsewhere. It's a pretty standard server room, not a lot of surprises here - except in the back. There, on a small workbench, in a clear container about the size of a human hand. A string of crystal nanotubes, shimmering with threat, edges blurring as they pulse between realities.

It's a shock collar. One of ones implanted in every New Hire - their deadly, invisible leashes. Fresh and ready for install.

Shelley enters the server room alongside York, answering the request for communication from the other team. She had just finished reporting when she saw the container.

That's...so that's what she has in her neck right now. Wow. Her hand unconsciously goes to her neck. "Looks like we now have a container to lug around" she says to York. No way they can just leave an empty container. At least if they take it all with them someone will think they just misplaced the collar.

Edited 2021-05-24 22:57 (UTC)

York nods -- this is big, even though Jorgmund will probably know someone was in here and took it.

"I'll carry it. I don't think there's anything else in here, though, there's no terminal and D can't access the servers on his own."

It's a shame his buddy is stuck in the puck, he could do some quality hunting around, but from how small this one bank is there must be others. They might hit pay dirt yet again if they keep moving.

"Let's go move the desk back and see what's behind this wall... if it's more offices or if we can get out that way. It'd be better not to be seen coming from the direction of IT with this."

"Aye aye, cap'n"

That sounds like a decent plan. Better hurry back to the door and start getting that desk out of the way as quickly and silently as possible. Now that they got something that may be truly great, they have to get out somehow and return to safer areas.

While she's going to the desk, though, she glances at the unconscious woman on the floor.

"What are we going to do with her? Should we...disguise what happened somehow? Can we even do that?"

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