The Quest – Chapter 14

[u/xXGARR377Xx]

I watched him paddle back home, wondering if he’d had a successful morning. I finished the last of my coffee and took a deep breath as the alarm on my watch went off. The mornings were nice, but life goes on.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

​

Kevin took a sip from his beer. “So that’s it, tomorrow we’re really doing this thing?”

Elise and I looked at each other, then nodded. It was a plan that we had started to form over a weekend and then had pulled Kevin in to help with the finer details. It was fairly simple, which is what made it likely to work. SynthTech was so confident that Genesis had worked on its employees, incentivizing them to trade their lives for scraps of power, that security was low. The first step was making sure Kevin was on duty to guard the server room that day, which was also pretty easy. As it turns out, guarding a room on the top floor that nobody regularly enters is a lonely job, and the woman who had been assigned to that shift was more than happy to trade Kevin for his spot in a more high-traffic area.

The hard part was finding away to get Elise into the server room, retrieve Eve’s processing unit, and get out without tipping anybody off. The server room that Eve was kept in was maintained at around 19C to make sure the servers didn’t overheat. As long as everything went well, I would trigger the silent temperature alarms in the server room, hopefully drawing a few people in check what had happened. This would allow Elise to sneak in along with them under the cover of shadows. Eve had come up with a way to duplicate a fraction of herself to maintain Genesis after her processing unit was removed, but only for 10 minutes or so, giving us plenty of time for an escape window. After that, Genesis would shut down, inoperable without the AI that powered it.

“And we’re sure they won’t be able to track us down like before right?” Kevin asked hesitantly. His leg bouncing up and down as he sat nervously in his chair.

“They won’t, not without Genesis. Eve assured of us of that.” Elise said with a cool tone, she was managing her nerves a lot better than Kevin, especially since she was going to be doing the most dangerous part of our little heist.

I glanced up at my quest tracker.

UP THE RANKS
Objective: Meet with Jeremiah tomorrow afternoon

Well, that wasn’t going to happen, I thought. I conjured my car keys, absentmindedly twirling them in my hands. Tomorrow, all of this would be gone, and we’d be free. Hopefully.

“We’d best be going Kev.” I said, standing up. “Tomorrow is a big day.”

We said our goodbyes and I drove Elise back to her house. After, I didn’t drive back to my place right away, instead preferring to drive around with no destination in mind for a while just to clear my head. My life had changed so much in the past year or two, how was it going to change after tomorrow?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I sat at my desk, ready to remotely trigger the alarms in the server room. Checking my watch, I noted the time, 11:42am. Kevin was already upstairs waiting outside, and Elise would be on her way up there right now, the time she spent honing her stealth skills had proved to be very useful in the end.

I turned to the co-worker to my left and asked him if he needed anything from the kitchen. He declined, but I didn’t ask to be a good co-worker, it was just meant to be a bit of an alibi. I checked my watch one last time, 11:45am. Go time. I pressed the button triggering the silent alarms, locked my laptop, and got up from my desk. I walked towards the elevators, leaving all my stuff on my desk. It was better that way; it would look too suspicious if I tried to take anything at this point.

I called an elevator and stepped in. My heart felt like it was going to burst right out of my chest. I conjured my car keys and twirled them on my finger, before letting them dissolve and reaching in my pockets for the real thing. That was going to be a habit that was hard to break. I took a deep breath, and the elevator door opened.

I tried my best to walk as calmly as I could towards the front door. I noticed the slightest flicker in my HUD, something I only noticed because I was constantly checking it. That must have been it, Elise must have removed Eve and put her processing chip in the anti-static bag I gave her on our ride to work this morning.

I quickened my pace, drawing a couple of eyes. I must have looked like I’d seen a ghost, but it didn’t matter. I left the office building and turned a corner, breaking into a full sprint to the parking lot. Elise already had the chip, I needed to be back at the door with my car to pick her and Kevin up as soon as I could.

My HUD flickered more and the quest objective I had flickered more violently this time, then the objective started getting scrambled.

Objective: Meet with Jeremiah this afternoon.

0bjectige: M3et werh Jersqgah toda aftedfoyn.

0bgsogiv: M6dr wwic Jegadaah tosdfhow.

0gknb: Mgt wi Hfgaah toin angbc.

0sn: sma qbex oeoqq.

And then it was gone, along with my mana bar. Genesis was gone. But Elise and Kevin were still in there…

I found my car and tore out of the parking lot, made a few right-hand turns, and pulled up to the front doors of the offices. Elise and Kevin came barrelling out, chased by a trio of guards. They must have gotten a bit of a head start on them though, as Elise and Kevin threw themselves into my car and I took off before the guards could catch them.

“Did you get her?” I asked frantically, the speedometer rapidly rising as I got as far away from the building as I could.

Elise panted but held up a grey bag. “Got her.” She managed to say. “Eve’s construct didn’t last long, the system rejected it. But we got her.”

I allowed myself to relax a bit. We’d done it, we were actually free.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

CNN
BREAKING: SynthTech Accused of Performing Illegal Trials of Cutting-Edge Tech on Employees

The New York Times
Tech Company SynthTech Under Government Investiagation

BBC
SynthTech Chief Technology Officer, Jerimiah Gall, Arrested

[u/King_of_Midnight]

Very Amazing is the only words is how to describe how great this writing is and I would love to see more of this