“I can’t believe this shit,” Hitomi grumbled. “All we wanted was for him to be safe! We didn’t even say anything bad!”
Nami put her hand on her sister’s. “I know, Hito. He’s confused right now. You can feel it too. Caiden has a heart of gold, we know that. But he doesn’t know what to do right now.”
“The best thing we can do is to not burden him anymore,” Hitomi finished.
Nami looked down at the floor, then at the information on tablet she had in her hand. The tablet contained data on the Home-base security systems. They had a plan, and intended on seeing it through.
In the lab space, Caiden rolled up his right sleeve, closed his eyes, and concentrated. He blocked everything out. He envisioned the nanomolecular imprint in his right forearm; his gunblade. The gunblade materialized far quicker than it had before. Perfect, he thought to himself satisfactorily. He was getting used to his new abilities quicker than he imagined. He then dematerialized the gun. He shook his hand, rolled down his sleeve, and got ready to leave.
He re-emerged from the lab space with a small backpack and headed toward the door to leave. The twins still refused to speak to him. He typed in the code to open the door to the underground garage and walked through. He looked over his shoulder at the twins as the door closed behind him. He could see the sadness and discontentment on their faces. His heart twisted and turned then dropped to the pit of his stomach. He didn’t know what to do so he just left. He got a popup notification from the reverse image search query of the strangely familiar man from the Bazaar. Lieutenant Daav August, Psi-Corp Military special ops division?
He saved the search results in a folder in the NOVO OS storage location. He mounted his hypercycle and took off. When he reached the borough of Cosmica, he pulled into a local diner for something to eat. Finding a secluded booth in the restaurant, he immediately got to work.
“NOVO Lenses,” he commanded.
His eyes lit up. His visual feed brought him to the main menu. He tapped into a secure network and ran a search on the address that matched Prime Minister Shino Honda’s. As confirmed, Plush Grove, Cosmica. Hmm, really nice place. Quite the palace. Befitting of a cowardly king, he thought to himself as he watched Shino’s premises through the security cameras in the home as well as HSDs on the lampposts outside of his home. Caiden was looking for security software, feeds, and other technology so he could override them.
The response time of the NOVO OS was getting faster. Caiden’s special nanocells were beginning to adapt more efficiently to the OS. Hmm, what do we have here? Unilox Security software, so you pop up again huh? This should be a cakewalk. Caiden thought to himself as he analyzed the security software coding. He opened a terminal window in his visual feed and wrote a security override code like the one he used when he broke into the Clone Farm. But this time, to ensure complete cooperation from Shino, he only disabled the security functions around Shino’s study, where a large window was located.
Rendering cameras, security drones, and electricity useless. Connecting to my command module. Now I can slave that particular portion of the Unilox system with my terminal. Perfect. Hmm, what’s this? Electronic proxy locks, huh? Looks like this was skillfully woven into the OS of the security system for the house. I guess it would make sense for someone like him. This works in my favor, he thought. His eyes and mind were moving, beautifully in sync with the OS.
He then tapped into the security cameras surrounding Shino’s house, then further out, eventually increasing the surveillance radius to the entire gated community of Plush Grove. He was looking for signs of special government agent outposts. He switched his view from standard to thermal, searching for any agents wearing cloaking devices to remain out of sight.
“Two agents at the gate. Thirty others spread throughout the rest of the neighborhood, but there is a concentration of thermal readings around Prime Minister Shino’s mansion. Ten, to be exact. Hidden along the front of his mansion. All concealed by chameleo-ware. Only one chameleo-ware cloaked agent in the backyard. How arrogant. He must really believe that the majority of threats only come from directly in front of him,” Caiden said to himself as he surveyed and set markers of the neighborhood on his visual feed.
Just then, a popup on the main screen of the NOVO visual feed showed that Yvora was calling. I can’t answer this right now, Caiden thought to himself. He was determined to move forward. He finished his food around seven p.m. He paid the Auto-Cred collector on the table, zipped up his gear, left the diner and headed to Plush Grove.
Caiden turned down a side street that was far enough away from Plush Grove for him to not be noticed. Parking his bike in the woods, he placed his chameleo-cloak over the bike and it blended in with the shrubbery. Caiden cut through the suburban backyards, dead end streets, and hidden paths until he spotted the elaborate booth and gate leading into the exclusive neighborhood.
He activated the NOVO Lenses and scanned the area; no visible threats were around. According to the NOVO Lenses, the wall surrounding the community was fifteen point three feet high, and was made of simple limestone construct. Should be easy to clear that, Caiden thought to himself. Before he made his move, he noticed a series of HSDs atop the limestone gate, spread thirty feet apart. Using his newly developed terminal, he overrode the feed of the two cameras closest to him.
He made his way toward the wall. With a running start and one giant leap, he grabbed onto the ledge and easily pull himself to the top. There was twenty-five acres of
