Chapter Text
Archivists note to the reader: It seems you are viewing this item in the human language English. For this reason names have been transliterated, units have been converted, and the content has been ontologically translated. Apologies for any inconsistencies.
Sub Floor 3001, Deep Well, Memór
The halls of sub floor 3001 were empty. That was the professional opinion of the five guard team assigned to the level, one on cameras, one on sensors, and three on patrol.
The caeci huddled against one of the vault doors would probably have told you the same thing, if you had asked him. He certainly wouldn't have admitted to being there, and definitely wouldn't have admitted to attempting to pick the lock on the massive thaumium-reinforced door that protected the server room.
He froze as a guard walked past, briefly glancing at the door before continuing without paying any attention. This wasn't really the guard's fault, it's hard to really pay attention to an unwilling caeci. It's kind of like grabbing a fish. You reach for it, brush it's smooth body, but at the last moment it skips from your grasp and leaves you with the infuriating feeling that you forgot something important. The guard was trained to focus, however, and forgetting what you were day-dreaming about was not part if that job description. In fact, the guard felt a shred of embarrassment, he was supposed to be working.
The caeci reached into an extremely unimportant looking bag hanging from his body, and pulled out a small circular wafer, barely thicker than the id hanging from the guards neck. Carefully shielding the disk with his body he placed it against the vault door, and waited, listening to the little voice in his ear.
"Higher"
He moved it up an inch.
"Left a little"
"More"
"Perfect, wait a moment"
The guard rounded the corner of the hall, disappearing from sight.
"Now!"
The disk vibrated a little, and the vault door slid aside. Without a moment's hesitation the intruder slipped through the door. The cameras should have seen the door open, but they didn't. The sensors should have observed the door opening, but they didn't.
The caeci carefully slipped the disc back into his unimportant and really rather boring bag, and took a moment to take stock of the room.
The floor beneath his feet was a metal mesh, the ceiling too. Filling the center of the room was a massive column of computer. These high-security computer banks tended to be air-gapped and custom designed to prevent the exposure of vulnerable ports.
He reached into the inconspicuous bag, and pulled out a little cube. None of these counter measures would matter with the stuff etched into this little device. He carefully steped toward the sever column, before slotting the cube into a little crack, where it sat at an angle, harmlessly.
He loved these little boxes, they didn't even need to touch the surface they were made for. Just set them down and they instantly adhered to the information one wanted. The information is then retrieved at a distance. When they finish a tiny charge fires, and converts the entire cube into a combination of co2, and water vapor, with barely any more sound than a party popper.
Five seconds the voice in his ear confirmed that the little black box was working perfectly, and the caeci switch his attention to actually leaving the site.
Normally, it would be trivial to leave a location. The favorite trick currently was teleportation, but there were nearly thirty various methods to leave without doing the work of bypassing security for a second time.
Not here, however. Space time was firmly anchored with various exotic materials, quantum effects negated by intense sources of radiation, thaumaturgy blocked by various thuamium inriched metallic alloys, and the site even maintained its own separate noosphere. The only way in or out was the front door.
The vault door was easy to open from the inside, and he slid back into hall, waiting. If his timing was just right the next circut this corridor's guard made would be the last one on his shift. In fact, the guard should round the far corner in three... two... one...
Right on cue a guard came into sight, and the caeci slipped into step behind the guard, matching his gait almost perfeclty. He tailgated the guard into the duty elevator with the other four, watching with a slight grin as the next shift exited. He hadn't found a way to exploit the slight gap in guard timings, but he was confident that that weakness would be useful on return trips.
Guard one watched as the elevator counter slowly counted down the numbers until it reached the surface. Same old, same old.
There was a figure in the corner, looking at him. The figure probably wasn't that important, but it was worth communicating to his teammates. He turned to the others, and opened his mouth, before pausing. What to say. He closed his mouth, momentarily irritated, before looking back to the numbers.
There was a figure in the corner, looking at him. The figure probably wasn't that important, but it was worth communicating to his teammates. He turned, and was about to motion to guard two, when he thought for a second. He didn't have anything to say. Best not to distract them. Back to the numbers.
There was a figure in the corner, looking at him.....
The caeci would have been sweating if he had sweat glands. The guard directly next to him kept looking at him, and turning to speak to the other guards. The constant movement was sure to alert the other guards, if not to his presence, than at least to the fact that something wasn't right.
He slowly reached into a rather insignificant bag, and pulled out a tiny little vial of swirling red luminous fluid, carefully shielding it with his hand. He removed the lid and filled a dropper with a single drop. With one swift movement he dripped it down an overlap in the guards suit, being careful to hide the motion behind the guard's own body.
The effect was gradual. If you didn't know what to look for you probably wouldn't even see it. After it was over the guard turned back to the flickering floor number, and this time he remained.
The caeci slowly exhaled a shaky breath, and slipped the vial back into the inconsiderable bag. He glanced at the floor number. 2003. A little under half way there.
He adjusted his posture to make the most of the nearest guard's cover. He stole a peek at the other guards, and found to his relief that none of the four other individuals appeared to be watching him. He settled in to wait patiently, as patiently as one can when trespassing the Deep Well, watching the floors tick backwards toward zero.
When the elevator stopped the caeci deftly slipped into the group of guards as they exited the elevator. They each beeped through a scanner, and on his turn he pressed the disk to the inside of the scanner, and quickly slipped through.
The little group worked their way through each concentric ring of security, guard one, guard two, definitely not an intruder, guard three, etc.
The personnel scanner used at the Deep Well is very well designed. Each sensor is receeded deep in its socket, the electronics are encased in osmium, and the sheath of wires connecting them is shielded and recessed away from the surface, deep into the wall. Well, most of it is. There is a tiny gap, about the size of a single finger a foot above the floor, right where it connects to a themal sensor.
If one knew where the sensor sat, than theoretically one could abuse this flaw. In practice it is actually quite difficult to hit the right spot consistently, but the caeci didn't really have a choice.
Hallway after hallway, machine after machine, ring after ring, the caeci tapped his way through, each scanner quietly submitting to the little disk in his hand. In about ten minutes the main system would check the scanners, find them sleeping, restart them and throw an error. It was absolutely crucial he was gone by then. Ten minutes.
The five guards, and one caeci, reached the outer ring of security, and triggered the exiting procedure.
Nine minutes.
The Deep Well is an exclusionary site, and is so completely isolated from the outside world that causality, and in fact the very flow of time does not cross the barrier. When the first site was built, eons ago, and civilizations away, the engineers thought they broke time inside, with clocks ticking almost randomly, before coming to the shocking realization that it was their time that was broken, not the Well's. Because of this fluctuation, termed "Rowanian Fluctuation" for the red shift that tinted the space inside when first observed, great care must be taken when connecting the Well to the outside world.
The caeci checked the time. Seven minutes. It was going to be tight.
The entire site rumbled as the systems married the two flows of causality into one, and the computer beeped to inform any listener that the Well had connected to the outside world, although any listener with a mile could have guessed. The airlock slid open, revealing a one hundred square meter room, with a hairline crack running down the center. That crack, when the air was pumped out, was enough to completely separate the Deep Well from the outside world.
The guards walked into the airlock with the casual confidence of many, many logged hours on duty. The caeci slunk in after them with some level of, well, not confidence, calmness, maybe? He did have experience with this room...
After all, he came though it on the way in.
Perhaps he was a little too calm, for as the airlock doors slid closed one of the guards turned towards him, and this time they alerted their companions. The caeci watched in horror as five angry faces gathered around his corner. What to do? Think.
A guard pulled out his duty weapon, feeling brimming excitement inside. Finaly, some action.
Think!
The other guards also drew their weapons, and disabled their safeties.
THINK!
A guard spoke.
"Who are you? Identify yourself!"
THINK!!
The caeci slowly reached a hand to a bag that hardly mattered, speaking as he did so.
"Helle gentlemen [expression only a rough translation], beautiful weather today, isn't it?"
The guard was very suspicious.
"We were just thirty kilometers down, the weather is always nice."
The guards and their guns pressed in tighter.
"Who are you?"
The caeci glanced at the watch on the guard's arm.
Six minutes.
The airlock had been closed for twenty seconds, the full cycle took four times that.
"You want my identification?"
The guards didn't need to answer that question.
"Look"
He held aloft a small metallic sphere, and closed his eyes. The guards made one fatal mistake, only one. They looked.
The sphere emitted a bright strobing light, the exact frequency required to override the alpha waves in the brains of any unfortunate organisms that happened to look. The guards never had a chance. One moment they were holding guns in the caeci's face, the next moment they were crumpled on the floor.
The caeci had to move quickly, in sixty seconds the airlock would open, and he would be alone, surrounded by five unconscious guards. The [silver lining] was that they wouldn't remember the last ten minutes when they woke up.
One by one he propped the guards up against the walls, praying that they would wake up without falling over.
There was a symbiex sitting in a control booth outside the airlock. She had sat there for nearly ten years, not in a row, of course. When the massive doors began to rattle open she glanced up to see the five guards walk out. They looked as if they had just awoken from a coma. Wierd.
"What happened down their?"
One guard turned to her, bleary eyed.
"Can't tell you. Above your clearence."
"What happened to your grammar?"
"I'm tired, just leave me be"
Her finger hovered over a red button glowing softly among her controls. This situation had deviated somewhat from the norm. Perhaps she should send for help.
Another guard chose to speak up.
"It's been a long shift, can we please continue."
Her finger touched the button lightly, should she press it?
Then the first guard spoke.
"Sorry to be blunt, you know how it gets after a shift in the Well."
It broke the ice and symbiex relaxed. Everything was fine.
"You're free to continue."
The caeci was worried, to put it lightly. The entire situation was out of his control, and he knew it. He watched the guard clumsily respond to the symbiex, and he almost had a stroke. She responded very suspiciously, and the guard spoke again. He held his breath...
"You're free to continue."
Oh thank goodness.
He checked the time on a clock suspended on the opposite wall.
Four minutes.
He left the little group of guards, he didn't need them anymore. Down the hallways, past the rooms. He swung into a security nexus and snatched a little bundle of wires. These didn't need to be there any more.
Three minutes.
The entire exterior site is under constant surveillance by various sensors. If he left now his transportation would be noticed. However, the upper sites foundation has deep boreholes for its support columns, the bottom kilometer of which are not watched at all.
Down it was than. He briskly walked the corridors, clattered down the stairs, until he reached a utility room. Finally! Bare concrete.
Two minutes.
Out came the floor plan, and after moments of hesitation, he found the right spot. A circle of roughness in the smooth finished floor. An access cover. With that out of the way he looked down into the hole, and felt truly and properly sick. His plan was to drop into that, ugh.
One minute.
This was the best plan though. Every other plan left a mark in some way, and this had to have no trace. He packed his belongings back up and hauled the cover back to the hole, positioning it so that it would fall back into place when he dropped.
Than he did.
Terminal velocity for a average caeci is about 180 k/h. At that speed you cover a kilometre in less than twenty seconds. He watched his timer, the only indication of his altitude, the air whistling by his faces. Two seconds, three seconds, four seconds...
The timer passed the critical time, and he summoned the vast reserves of thaumaturgy at his disposal. With a flash he vanished into thin air.
The halls of sub floor 3001 were empty. That was the professional opinion of the five guard team assigned to the level, one on cameras, one on sensors, and three on patrol.