Once done with the briefing, David walked towards a corner of the room and said to Altair, "Come with me. We'll get our gear for this mission."
Altair was a little puzzled. What kind of "gear" would they need for a mission of just taking pictures.
The wall slid open silently from the same side where James and Ronald had entered the other day and they both walked into a dimly lit corridor with brown walls and large red tiles.
David led him toward the left, and after a short walk, a door opened automatically for them.
Inside, the room was about the same size as Ronald's office, and had walls that were completely white with no fault. Unlike Ronald's office with almost nothing, the walls here had tall black lockers, and a black table with a glass-like surface at the center.
David walked straight to one of the lockers and pulled it open without any code or key. He took out three cameras that just had a rectangular body and extendable lens.
"We'll be using these cameras for this mission" David said as he handed one to Altair. "These simple-looking cameras, can take pictures at a resolution of 100 MP."
"To use it, you hang it over your neck with the screen resting flatly on your chest and press this button to take a picture. That's it, you don't need to take poses or look for a good position"
He demonstrated, slinging the camera across his neck, and pressing the button with a casual tap.
Altair copied him. As soon as he pressed the button, the glass surface of the black table lit up and the image he just captured appeared on it.
David pointed at the table.
"Every image you take is uploaded immediately to SAMANTHA's servers for storage and viewing, but this feature is range-limited and only works when you're inside the mission's vicinity. The range is about 30 million square kilometers spherically, which basically means a continent sized zone in the mission's proximity."
"So, it's faster than 5G?" Altair asked.
David squinted quizzically. "Compared to this, 5G with its range of 1000m without obstruction is not even in the race."
"So, as long as I take a picture on the Aethel continent, it uploads?"
David nodded. "Right. When you left yesterday, you went back there to look around the area. You're right, this mission is in Albion. The Celtic accent of the people was already a good giveaway of that."
Altair just remained silent and David shrugged. "You didn't have to sneak around. You could've just asked."
Altair gave a small shrug of his own. He was reluctant to take their words at face value for now.
David picked up the other two cameras. "Let's go back."
…
Back in Ronald's office.
Ronald was still at his desk, working steadily with no sign of distraction.
James, on the other hand, lay sprawled comfortably across one of the sofas. In one hand, he was fiddling with a fifty-piece Megaminx puzzle and in the other, he was tapping rapidly on his phone, the familiar soundtrack of a popular run-and-dodge game played softly from the phone's speakers.
Altair immediately recognized the game by the music. He resisted the urge to smile as he walked towards James.
He reached near James to hand him his camera, but James who had his hands busy said. "Just leave it on the table."
Altair placed it down without a word and went to sit on another sofa.
Pulling out his phone, he tried opening his browser but there was no network.
Frowning slightly, he opened his offline collection of saved web novels and began reading.
The minutes slid away quietly.
Ronald worked from his desk, James was busy gaming and puzzle solving and David had left the office to go elsewhere.
By the time Altair finished the last chapter saved on his phone, he realized the clock had already passed 10 a.m.
Right on time, SAMANTHA's synthetic voice filled the room.
!Target Denton Black exiting the lobby.!
With this, the reduced real-time footage on the upper corner of the screen enlarged and they could see Denton Black leaving the lobby and heading for the parking.
Moments later, he entered his car and drove off without hurry, merging into the city's traffic.
Right on time, David Slinged into the room, ready to go.
"Alright. Time to move."
He grabbed one of the cameras from the table and put it around his neck, James took the second and Altair picked up his own.
Without waiting for further instruction, the three of them Slinged and disappeared from the office, causing a breeze.
…
The three of them reappeared inside Denton Black's apartment at an agreed location.
For a place not cleaned for nearly a month, it was neat, not to mention, there was a clear lack of dust in the fresh air.
They split off immediately and each went in different directions, hoping to cover all rooms in the apartment.
Each of them just had to open the door to a room, look around for a good spot and Sling there to stand and take a picture.
No talking and no wasted movement since the intention was to leave no trace behind.
The cameras clicked softly with each shot, taking pictures in high-resolution that SAMANTHA would later analyze for clues.
The apartment wasn't big, and in about three minutes, they finished the task.
One by one, they Slinged back out.
…
Back in Ronald's office.
When everyone returned, SAMANTHA was already processing the pictures they had taken and analyzing them like she did the day before.
The place was a three-bedroom apartment with a total of seven rooms. The three bedrooms, one living room and one dining room, one kitchen and one bathroom.
The walls slightly dimmed, and three walls out of four showed pictures of the six rooms they captured today with transparent white blurs slowly forming into silhouettes.
'It seems a little slower than yesterday.' Altair thought inwardly.
!Processing images. Estimated time: 30 minutes.!
While they waited, James finally broke the silence.
Turning toward Altair, he said, "You did good today. Focused. Calm."
Altair didn't know if that was supposed to be praise or a baseline expectation. "There wasn't really any need to panic or be disturbed."
"Anyways our missions don't always go as smoothly. Not to mention that this is still the reconnaissance phase. The real mission is to approach Denton Black and convince him to stop showing his powers to the world."
Altair remained silent.
David chimed in. "While not a military unit and we don't go looking for fights, there are times when contact goes wrong."
'You mean like how you attacked me in my house.' Altair thought turning to look towards Ronald.
Seeing this, David continued. "That's right. Just like what happened during our contact with you. It's true that we were somewhat at fault at that time."
"Sometimes, the targets of the mission, who have suddenly obtained some fantastical, think themselves as unstoppable. In such cases, they need a reality check. That is why you need combat training." Ronald concluded.
Teleporting wouldn't always solve everything, especially if there were others he needed to protect or if escape was impossible.
"Are we going now?" he asked.
James shook his head. "I'll take you to somewhere after this mission and you'll start your combat training. For now, you need apercu, a glimpse of how missions go."
Altair thought briefly, then he agreed. "Alright."
There wasn't much else to think about anyway. He did not need convincing.
James suddenly said. "Let's see, we have nearly 30 minutes of nothing to do. I say you watch some mission footage. You know, the ones that didn't go so well."
"Of course you would keep records of those" Altair mumbled.
"Everything gets archived. Mostly for internal analysis, that way we don't move in blindly when the mission target has abilities we've come across before of that another group has encountered. We also archive these for training purposes as you'll see soon." James said.
"SAMANTHA's busy here so let's head somewhere else for this." Saying this, James stood up and started walking towards the rooms exit.
They moved out went to the room that was right on the other side of the corridor with its door facing Ronald's door.
'Do all the rooms here have the same design and layout?" Altair wondered as he looked around the white room.
James walked to the table in the center and when he placed his hand on it, a virtual keyboard along with a screen and touchpad appeared.
A few manipulations later, one wall lit up with thumbnails of different videos having different time durations and titles.
James scrolled for some time as if looking for something specific. Then he finally stopped and clicked on one video.
[Case 372 – Galatia: Unforeseen Resistance]
Judging from the low angle, the video seemed from a body camera and the occasional flashes of gloved hands indicated the person was running.