“Excuse me, sir. Where’d you think you’re going?” grunted a guard.
“Um, I’m a last-minute replacement Calvar employee for clean-up crew tonight,” Caiden replied, disguising his voice. He then tapped on his watch which displayed a holographic ID for the fake persona he created.
“Lupin Trice, huh? Strange name.”
The Hover Surveillance Drone ran a biometric scan on Caiden and confirmed his ID.
“Okay, checks out. Pass through the door on the left, near the rear of the building,” the guard confirmed.
“Uh, thanks, sir,” Caiden replied meekly.
He followed the guard’s directions. The exterior of the building harbored a distinct design. One of the more prominent architects of the city was given free range to shape the building however he liked, just as long as he complied with the needs of the bank. It stood at fifteen stories tall. It was a rectangular shaped building, but with rounded edges. Its structure curved around corners as opposed to sharp angles like other traditional buildings. Most of the building was constructed using a unique deep sea greenish-blue glass. It was reinforced four times over, and could withstand the strength of a hurricane. The neighboring holographic ads and billboard signs lit up the glass breaking into magnificent fragments of refracted dancing light. The light and glass gave the unique building a remarkable reflective shine and beautiful shimmer, especially at night. Where there wasn’t glass on the building, was a pristine white concrete finish. The white concrete was interpolated with the glass, giving this building a reputation as being one of the most unique architectural designs in all of Neon District.
As he entered the building, Caiden realized he was the first person on staff to arrive. This turned out to be an ideal situation for him. Making haste, he searched for the locker with his fake name on it. While changing into the uniform, he scoffed at its apparent lack of aesthetic.
“Man, these clothes are pretty shitty, but whatever,” he chuckled.
Part of the uniform was a hat with the Calvar logo in front. Caiden placed it low over his eyes, making sure the brim would cover as much of the top half of his face as possible, as he stuffed his regular clothes in his backpack.
Slowly walking out of the locker room and into the service hallway, he noticed two HSDs. Their surveillance patterns were relatively simple to follow, and so he memorized their location and range of movement. He cautiously carried on down another hallway, making note every detail he could in case he needed to use it to find an alternate escape route.
From the hallways to the lobby, the building’s interior showed a great emphasis on meticulous detail and elegance. One could easily mistake the interior design of the bank for something more, like a modernized castle for a king and his royal family. Each hallway brought its own unique scent to Caiden’s olfactory senses. Some were fresh pine, others were like a new car scent. The entire building smelled ‘new’ to say the least.
Funny how this place isn’t very well secured. These guys are too lax with their security detail, he thought to himself. He arrived at the lobby of the bank. It was massive; the ceiling was as high as the building. The lobby was accented by pearl-white marble floors that reflected even the flickering lights. The main elevators were reinforced crystallized glass. They were located behind the front desk. Also, behind the front desk, was a thirty-foot-tall light grey marble wall that housed a glowing magenta sign that read ‘Prime-1 Banking Headquarters’, along with multiple holographic screens of stock and financial analysis that reported live data in real-time. Surprisingly, there were even a few employees walking around on the floors above, most likely pulling all nighters or working late shifts. Caiden put his head down and casually walked across the lobby, making his way toward the signs for the server terminal room.
As expected, the server room was located on the other side of the building, a few levels up from ground floor. Caiden walked through the door and took the service elevator. Exiting the elevator, he looked to his left and saw the pathway to the server terminals. As he got closer to the access point, he saw that there was a keycard required to get inside. He then activated his holographic watch display and began to scan the keycard access point for any holes in its security code. His initial assessment of the lax security did little to quell the growing paranoia that was beginning to slowly eat away at his nerves. It also didn’t help that he was only accompanied by the eerie of the quiet hallways. Several seconds passed and he overrode the keycard panel. The terminal door slid open and he softly stepped inside. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
Caiden took notice of the sheer size and setup of the room. It looked like a showroom for exotic cars, strangely enough. There were over a dozen server racks that could hold at least fifteen to thirty servers each. These server racks were accompanied by custom built supercomputers, with large holographic monitors that took up most of the additional space. It was perplexing to see so many powerful machines being housed in a bank. It would be more fitting to see these pieces of equipment at a fortified data center. Something felt off to him about the entire setup. But there was little time to mull over his observations.
There were more HSDs quietly humming along above him, scanning the area. Caiden cautiously took cover behind the wall next to him, intently studying their monitoring scope. When he felt confident enough, he
