Waterstrider

2nd District, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Thirdmonth, 1634 PTS

There is something to be said in favor of giving up on social constructs such as honor and face, to disguise yourself such that you can put them aside and act without semblance of moralism.

I have heard it said that one shows their true self only when masked, when their actions cannot be traced back to themselves or their families. There may be truth in this, but personally I had always thought that they hid away the fundamentals of goodness when their identity was concealed. In my opinion, one’s identity is the basis of one’s own morality.

At the moment, my identity was that of a demon.

I peered out through my mask, the shiny black panes of glass before my eyes gleaming in the darkness. I stared at the building down the street, lying in wait.

Suddenly, explosions screamed into the night air, releasing bursts of orange light that rattled vents for multiple stacks over as a thick plume of smoke wafted upwards. Groans of metal resounded as the stack shifted, but they quickly ceased. While we wanted to destroy a good portion of the building’s exterior, Rachel and I had gone to great effort to ensure we wouldn’t topple the stack.

Before the dust settled I charged through the smoke, my path taking me right through the hole left in the building’s thick metal walls. My dark robes billowed in the shockwave, slightly coating it in a layer of ash and dust.

I was disguised in several layers of clothing that covered my entire body from head to toe, leaving nothing exposed. With my body covered in shades of gray, red, and black, and my face covered in a smooth, featureless gray mask, I looked just like the villain from a film for children. Rachel had ordered the outfit, and I was sure she had chosen the look on purpose. I couldn’t say whether she had legitimately thought up a tactical benefit to it, or simply thought it would be funny. Knowing her, it could easily be either of the two.

My explosives had torn a sizable breach in one of the interior walls, allowing me to sidestep entirely the security chokepoint that Rachel had pointed out the day before. I stepped into the dimly lit interior, putting to the test the intelligence Yun had given us.

I stepped into what seemed to be an office. It was empty, filled with cubicles and workstations mounted on desks. Or so I assumed. The oversized lumps of a grayish material were likely computer terminals in the Staiven design, but I could not be sure, as I had only seen the handheld equivalent. To me, it almost looked as if the room was a pottery studio.

“Hm?” muttered Rachel, her voice blaring in my ear. “This was supposed to be a storage room. Be careful, some of the intel might be outdated or false.”

“Was the information a trap?” I asked, whispering in case there was some sort of recording device in the room. It was best to be careful, and my voice could be used to identify me.

“Hmm, it’s hard to say. I checked her background, and she was clean, as far as the underworld forces here are concerned. I doubt she would have had the connections to falsify all of this info to such an extent- though I suppose I don’t know how she acquired such detailed information anyway. Do you plan on backing out?”

“No, I’ll go further in. There’s a chance they just reorganized themselves after she received the information. There’s no point quitting so early on.”

“Fair enough. Oh, wait! Before you leave the room, see if you can grab an ISM.”

“ISM?” I was unfamiliar with the term.

“It’s… it stands for information storage medium, there should be one inside of each of the terminals. It’ll be a spherical object roughly at the center.”

Without saying a word, I slid a blade from one of my twin sheaths and sliced the top of one of the mounds off. As she had said, there was a small, golden orb resting inside the monochrome mass.

“This it?”

“Yes!” replied Rachel, her voice clearly delighted. “I’ll start looking through it to see if there’s anything useful. Place it next to the conduit.”

I had stashed her conduit inside of my robes for safekeeping, along with a bag filled with what Rachel had described as ‘anti-personnel explosives.’ Today, they would serve instead of my more powerful and identifiable techniques. My sword was also within, strapped tightly to my back.

I did not intend to use it today, but was unwilling to let it leave my person. The sword was all I had left from home, and was also something even the most advanced races on Tseludia Station were unable to manufacture. I couldn’t be sure how I would react if I were to lose it.

Instead of the heirloom blade, I would be using a pair of shortswords that we had purchased from a weapon shop in Canvas Town. They were of decent make, and should I find myself in a situation capable of damaging them beyond use, the issue of my identity being revealed would be the least of my worries.

I held the shortsword out as I moved to the hatch leading deeper into the facility, ready for if I ran into any defenses.

It slid open easily upon my touch, and I entered a long hallway. Dust swirled in the darkness, and now I could hear shouting at either end, no longer alone.

I took a left, following the route we had planned in advance from the floor plans Yun had given us. A few yelling Staiven wearing blue labwear ran past me, not even noticing the out of place nature of my attire due to the fog and their rush to escape what was happening. From behind, I could hear the thumping footsteps of boots running in the other direction, towards me, but I calmly continued making my way further down the hall.

The hall ended with a large hatch that was nearly a full handspan thick. It lay open, and several researchers ran out in shock and confusion. I slipped past them, but one noticed my odd attire, shouting as she did so.

“Intruder!”

I responded to her helpful comment by kicking her in the stomach, dropping her to the floor in a groaning heap. Without a second look at the wounded civilian I marched past her and into the lab, tapping the oversized hatch to shut it behind me.

I turned to stab my sword into the wall at the hatch’s edge, destroying the hydraulic assembly that allowed it to slide in and out. The guards would obviously know I was here, but hopefully that would delay their entry for a time.

This room was, as the intel had claimed, a large lab filled with a significant amount of equipment that I found myself unable to recognize. Most surfaces in the room were white, with the exception of the many machines and appliances that littered the workspaces. There were only two researchers left in the room, and both looked up at me in horror as they saw me damage the door with only hand and blade. No mortal would have been able to achieve such a feat.

One of the two, a middle aged green-eyed Staiven woman, blubbered before me, while the other, a man, stood in a poorly conceived defensive stance. He clearly had no experience in fighting, even at the mortal level. He had orange eyes, and if he were Seiyal I would have said he looked to be in his thirties. I had never bothered to find out the relative rate at which Seiyal and Staiven physically age, however.

“Who are you?” he asked, trembling from adrenaline and nervousness.

The words were in Staiven, but were simple enough that I understood.

“You have no need to worry about such a thing. Now, sir. Where do you keep the drug samples and your research results?”

The words were spoken by Rachel using a synthesized voice, spoken in a fluent Staiven. He responded, speaking for quite awhile, but this time I had trouble parsing it. After a whispered request, Rachel translated it after only a sigh.

“He claims there are research samples in the fridge in the corner, and warns you that reprisal will be far more harsh if you take them, and so on. It’s a black fridge, that far corner over there. No, that one.”

The refrigerator was full of small vials labeled in Staiven script and numbers. I pulled out my sack and swept most of them in, unable and unwilling to figure out what their labels meant. Yun would just have to figure out what was useful and what wasn’t on her own.

The conversation between Rachel and the two scared researchers lasted while I was grabbing the vials, but I caught barely a word or two. I could hear loud thumping on the thick hatch, and I knew time was running short. After filling the sack with vials of poison, I returned to face the pair.

Rachel whispered into my ear before I could ask the question.

“The data isn’t stored here, you’ll either have to back out now or go back through that hallway to the security room. They have to personally approve file transfers, and I imagine no one is fulfilling that role at the moment.”

I considered it for a second, then decided it was worth a try.

“Let’s see how this goes. Which direction is it?”

“Down the other end of the hallway. Are you sure about this?” Rachel asked.

“Certainly not,” I replied. “But I wish to hold true to my end of any deal.”

“How do you intend to make it back there?”

I hefted one of the grenades we had acquired at some effort, smirking under my mask.

“I’ll fight my way through, of course. Like a martial artist should.”

Staiven Terminals: [While most races have their own unique variant of computer terminal designed according to their needs, the Staiven design is particularly odd, especially for a humanoid race. Bulbous masses of microfilament mesh surround the integrated Information Storage Medium at its core. They are designed this way in part due to the fact that the Staiven are blind by nature, and also due to the additional electrostatic sense that they bear, able to sense the shifting currents of energy inside the mesh as it is deformed. The terminals are operated by kneading them, and it has often been described as looking like they are fiddling with a ball of clay, rather than interfacing with the internet. No other race tends to find the machines intuitive, and most cannot even learn how to use them effectively, due to their lacking senses. The patent is owned by the Church of Fulstovis, who control all manufacturing and sales of the products throughout the Pantheonic territory.]