Chapter 4
Mission 4: Welcome Mirage
[Comm Channel: Active Encryption Layer: Ultra Violet]
Flair's voices comes through the comms clean, calm and with just enough clipped urgency to cut through background static.
"Alright, team. Here's the breakdown." The interface in front of her flickers, marking Sector 3 with a rotating glyph.
"Nyx—you're perched on the highest point in the district. Good. You're closest to Cache 9 on the list. It's buried inside an old corps-run weather node disguised as a broadcast antenna. You'll need to breach the shell manually. No grapple or nanite assistance until we get this security tower under our control, just glide down there as best as you can. Once inside, tag every active nanite sequence—you're looking for anything modular or flexible strain structure. I'll upload a retrieval protocol once you crack the panel." Said Flair, pausing to flick open another feed.
"GM, you're meeting up with Rock outside the Sector 3 security tower. Don't draw attention. The tower is a perimeter stabilizer—chancellor-approved network that runs through Conceal. We use it as noise cover while I prep the code base, both of you have the same job, disruption. Explosions', gun fire, fist fights, riot, signal decoys, anything that rattles the people and the grid both inside and out long enough to make their watchers blink. Keep it loud, but not lethal." Another pulse of light traces across her display—movement markers converging Nyx, Rock, and GM who comment of 'so much for not lethal went ignored.
"Rock already tripped an entry flare two blocks out. You'll find him eating synthetic ribs with a plasma rifle on his lap. Typical." Her voice softens slightly before continuing. "This mission was supposed to be about hiding our base, but not only did we find something bigger…Tito" her voice having a bit of distain when saying his name, still sore that it was the groups jerk of a clown, that pointed out something she had forgotten as the groups mind. "Reminded us that the information we originally stole from that office is supposed to already hide us, so this adds not only and extra layer but also gives us eyes to see what our enemies see, thus evening the playing filed. So, we'll mask the hideout using the both the intel and the security tower, and keep them from trailing us by owning half the security tower—which is where I come in by slipping through their pulse spine,"
"I thought you said you'd fry if you did that" asked Nyx.
"Fry?" questions Rock, concerned about his sister.
"So long as Nyx gets back with the nanites I won't fry" replies Flair, hoping to ease her brothers worry.
"And if he doesn't?" asked GM.
"Then I'll come up with a different strategy on the fly" Flair took a controlled breath. "Thirty-six minutes until Conceal sweeps rotate sector focus. After that, we vanish, or we burn."
Nyx looked out at the scene before him, the rooftop stretched like a slab of forgotten concrete, weather-scored and patterned with old warning paint half-eaten by time. Jagged antenna spires rose crookedly from the edges, disguised as signal towers but hollow at their cores.
Above him, the skyline fractured into tiers: floating ad banners, slow patrol drones, and the subtle pulse of a nearby security satellite. Sector 3 didn't sleep, but it blinked more than it watched. Which gave Nyx room to move.
Wind howled gently causing his cloak to dance, a slight shiver crawled along his spine like a snake, goosebumps springing up along his arms, his eyes having a deep desire for power behind them. Currently, at the height he was at now, it smelled less like street grease and more like ozone and static. Below, the city breathed just as unaware as the drones that patrolled the roof top that the antenna sat on, tall enough to keep the drones from not only seeing him but also enough to where he could glide to the target building just a few blocks away. Above, a signal spike chimed faintly from the security tower, his comm went lived as Flair's voice drifted in, threaded with calm urgency. "Node's quiet. If you're going to breach, now's your window."
Nyx moved like he was doing a leap of faith, the electricity within his gauntlet sparked, allowing the upgrade memory nite, also known as nanites, to act like memory cloth and allow his cloak to become rigid, acting like a glider without actually activating them.
Nyx crouched when he landed, his shoes grinding against chipped steel scanned the perimeter, no drones or any high-level tech, and not too many buildings close by. It truly gave the appearance of being abandoned. His HUD lit up faintly—not alerts, but signatures left behind by something small and smart, glowing with faint heat against the cold layers of the rooftop's shell, possibly the nanites they were hoping for.
Nyx moved silently toward the core module while sticking to the shadows, his instinct and training still a part of him; even when things seemed safe, fingers traced the edges of a maintenance panel disguised as power conduit. Cutting the lock with his hidden blade that had been upgraded before the infiltration, enabling him to slice through metal, he looked through the tangled mess of wires and cut the power with his hidden blade one again without the electricity coursing through the metal by way of a metal-insulator.
He paused, imagining how quickly this tower could become a weapon—how the nanites inside could form the lattice of something far more devastating. A metallic kaiju…the wind gusted, cutting his juvenile thoughts before moving towards the door.
Nyx's blade slice through the metal lock like he had done previously when using his hidden blade, slowly opening the door with his back to the wall to peer inside, alternating when he saw that the coast was clear from one side before moving towards another.
Inside was rather painful to the eyes, nothing but a singular color except for the tinted windows, realizing that they were one-way types of windows that kept others from the outside from seeing what was in. Currently he was on one of the railings on the right-hand side that overlooked the stage were the person would be facing a camera. It was impressively clean, as well, his tracks may very well show in this case. Nyx looks around and seeing he was alone here, there was not a soul he could see from any corner of the white room, even the desk, cameras and wires. "It's like a safe room for mad men" Nyx observed.
Flair's voice buzzed softly in his comms, riding static like silk wrapped around wire. "Visual density confirms it," she replied. "That room was used for behavior modeling. Those walls weren't painted—they're lined with light-absorbent panels to exaggerate subject isolation. Stage layout's consistent with deep-pattern testing. If the room is still that clean then the tech must be high-priority"
Nyx moved silently across the railing, though the dirt and dust from his shoes left little trails that he didn't like, yet using the nanites or the symbiote weren't options he could afford. He didn't want to leave a nanite trail after all. "Storage won't be on the surface," Flair continued. "Check around the platform. Research notes hinted that the drop off point should be around there, probably at sub-level magnetic compression units—used to keep nanites dormant until triggered."
A faint pulse lit up on his HUD, synced with Flair's scan overlay. "And hey, I'm right" Nyx could hear the smugness from his comms, thinking that Flair was probably wearing a smirk across her face. "Scan ping is registering a disruption below the stage. Could be thermal bleed from nanite containment. They embed them in polymer blocks, sealed in heat-resistant alloy. Should be about six modules total, each carrying between five to eight thousand nanites depending on strain efficiency."
Nyx easily moved the desk and chairs around to look for a hilt or button after looking around the outline of the platform. The 'props' were as light as an empty shoe box, hollow in the inside. After moving the desk off to the side he hand found the hilt again, fingers twitching.
"Extract quietly," Flair added. "No audio signature if you can help it. A facility that clean is either abandoned...or waiting to test you."
There were no alarms, not a breath of sound or life in sight, only that deep unnatural silence.
Nyx quietly turned the hilt, opening the hatch to see 6 containers of nanites. "Six different tiers" he speaks within his mind, reading the paper that was also within the hatch "Six different container modules with six different level tiers of nanites." A sudden feeling of dread washed over Nyx, as Flairs voice entered into his mind 'either the place was abandoned or there waiting to test him.
The symbiote inside him was the first to react, taking control of Nyx's body and moving him to the side just as a spear landed where he had squatted down. Looking up he saw the figure of an assassin that was in the shape of a woman, her body blurred, the cloaking device deactivating, and even then, it was still hard to see her.
Her suit is skin tight like the air was vacuumed out of it, while the suit itself looked like it was designed to blend into the environment even without the cloaking device active, a seamless integration of advanced cloaking technology. Different things like a scarf, shoes and other articles of clothing seemed to come out from the suit like distinctly designed air pockets, instead of bulging out from underneath. The tips of her hands were like claws, extending and retracting whenever she flexed her hand muscles.
The spear matched her outfit, and seemed just as technologically advanced as her suit, the only reason he could see it was because of the slight bluish color of the handle.
"Looks like we were able to draw out the shadow from the light" came a male voice over the intercom within the room. Causing Nyx to be on guard, one hand resting on the sheath of his sword. "Such fire, hahaha this will be quite the exciting show"
"So, this was a trap, why the note then? It doesn't make sense" growls Nyx.
"Simply to mock the ghost hovering around his grave." The voice answered before continuing "She'll be your opponent and test your ability using the nanites you took from us, I do hope you brought them with you, it'll be a quick fight if you didn't"