“Look straight ahead and tell me what you see,” Lance stated.
Adam took his turn looking ahead.
“It looks like a sentry, but it isn’t firing at us.”
Then the realization dawned on him.
“So the laser tripwire is the sentry’s line of sight! If we kept going we would have been shot down in an instant. Is there any way you can remotely shut it off?”
“I’m not sure. It appears that the main control switch for the laser is the same thing powering it up and without my tools we might have to find an alternative route.”
“Maybe not…” murmured Adam.
“What?”
“We are at a research lab with plenty of offices. Which means that they will have everything we need to create a makeshift battering ram! Wait right here!” exclaimed Adam excitedly as he ran toward a set of offices.
“If we can’t can’t get through, something else will just have to!”
“Make it quick!” warned Lance. “We’re running out of time!”
Adam reached the offices at the end of the hall and tried to open the door to no avail.
“Um, it seems in all of the excitement, I failed to realize that the door might be locked…”
“Not a problem. I have the key.”
Lance came up to the door with a fire extinguisher he had taken off the wall and smashed the keycard reader, exposing its wires.
“Now what did you have in mind for a battering ram?” he asked as he spliced different wires together, unlocking the door.
Adam entered the room, then flipped a light switch to get a better view of what was around that they could use. “We are going to need that desk chair, that safe, the garland, and that plush Santa.”
“Why the heck do you need Santa?”
“Trust me, Santa has a very important role. Now let’s get to work!”
Five minutes later, Adam and Lance were rolling out their contraption. A safe was nestled in the seat of the chair with a plush Santa strapped to it using the garland. They positioned the chair in the middle of the hallway of doom and Adam instructed Lance on their plan of attack.
“On my mark, we will charge down the hall with the chair ahead of us and ram into that sentry. Just keep your head low and sprint as fast as you can. One...two...Three!”
At three, they dashed forwards, their mobile cover speeding before them. As soon as they crossed the threshold where the sentry laser was sweeping, a light mechanical beep sounded and the gun fired at them. The pings of metal darts bouncing off the safe carried down the hall as they quickly came upon the machine and plowed the safe directly into it, wrecking the mechanism and eliminating the threat. Lance reached around the safe and wrenched the sentry’s weapon from the assembly while Adam examined their sacrificial Santa.
“It was firing some kind of darts,” noted Adam as he pulled a few from the holiday figure. The Santa plush was now riddled with holes, the stuffing spilling out of it.
“Keep a few for analysis,” said Lance as he broke the weapon over his knee.
“Let’s get moving.”
The duo sped down the halls and eventually snuck up to where three Ouroboros grunts stood guard. Adam held up a fist to Lance behind him, signaling for him to hold. Conveniently the men were carelessly facing away from the direction they were likely supposed to be guarding -- the same way Adam and Lance were now readying to strike from.
“So… what do you think about this Skeleton Key they're going on about?” one of the goons asked the others.
“A device that unlocks anything?” said the second. “I don't know. As advanced as our tech is, it still seems a bit of a stretch.”
“Nah, man, it's real!” said the third. “I saw them working on the code for it recently and it's some seriously legit stuff!”
“Should we even be talking about this out loud?” asked the second. “Those guys in the black suits could be hiding nearby and hear us…”
“There's no way they managed to get past the traps AND the sentry gun we left without us knowing,” said the first guy.
He went quiet and stiffened as he felt a tap on his shoulder from behind. He turned to see the sheen of Adam’s visor right before getting punched in the face, knocking him down. Startled by the suddenness of the incident, the other two turned their guns on Adam just to both be tackled at the same time by Lance in a double takedown.
“Are these guys trying to make things easy for us?” asked Adam.
“Let's not get too ahead of ourselves,” said Lance. “You heard what they said about this 'Skeleton Key’, right?”
“Yeah, that definitely didn't sound like something we would want to find its way into the bad guys’ arsenal,” said Adam. “How are we going to find out which way to get to it?”
Lance took a glance over to a nearby receptionist’s desk and marched over to it. A simple secretarial set up, but he found exactly what he was looking for -- a computer, and more importantly a port to connect to.
“Are we adding ‘high profile hackers’ to our job description tonight?” chuckled Adam.
“We are indeed,” said Lance as he booted up the computer. “Luckily for us, L.A.S.S.I. can do just what we need.”
Lance connected a cord from his left gauntlet to the computer and pushed a series of buttons on a small keypad built into the armor piece.
“L.A.S.S.I., break into the mainframe and search the network’s directory for a 'Skeleton Key’,” he ordered.
“Right away,” chimed L.A.S.S.I. over the comm.
“You already trained her to hack passwords and stuff?” asked Adam.
“Of course,” replied Lance. “I figured it might come in handy, so I added that to her programming.”
A series of files opened up on the computer screen to signal that the A.I. had located what they were after. Lance and Adam studied the data logs, searching for information as to where they needed to go.
“There,” Adam said as he pointed to a timestamp on the file. “The coding lab... on the… thirteenth floor. L.A.S.S.I., could you highlight this coding lab for us on the map?”
A green navigation point appeared simultaneously both on their map and as an arrow on their HUD like they used before. Adam looked up towards the arrow as if trying to look through the floors above them.
“Well, let's go secure a Skeleton Key,” said Lance.
They followed their maps to the nearest stairwell, this time scanning ahead with their visors to be sure there weren't any more traps. They climbed to what would have been the thirteenth floor just to find there wasn't an entry from the stairs to where they needed to go.
“There must be a secret entrance on a lower level,” said Lance. “Like an elevator or something that needs special clearance.”
“Now what?” asked Adam. “Are we going to break through the wall somehow?”
“As fun as that would be, I don't have anything heavy enough to break through or to blast it,” said Lance. “So our only option….”
“... Is to find that elevator,” finished Adam.
“L.A.S.S.I., where would the most probable location be for a hidden elevator shaft?” Lance asked the A.I.
After a few moments, a set of blinking dots appeared through the middle of the lower floors.
“There are multiple locations, but after analysis of the building's structure, these are most likely to be entry points,” replied L.A.S.S.I.
“We don't have time to check them all…” said Lance. “The Ouroboros could be in and out before we even find a way in.”
“Then let’s split up,” suggested Adam. “You take the first one down and I'll go to the next, then we can alternate going down until we find it.”
“Good thinking,” said Lance. “Let's get busy then.”
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