’Four cameras, one positioned in each corner, this will be quite the task, what to do…what to do…’ watching carefully as the security cameras panned from left to right so that every inch of the room was covered under surveillance, I popped my head back into the vent and sat cross-legged.
’My throwing abilities are a little lacking, but I should be able to hit them…the question is how much time I will have between dropping the four cameras and one of the guards coming to check in on what is going on with them.’ Tapping my chin twice, I scrolled through the Arkadia Store in search of some cheap throwing knives, which I soon found and, as a result, became 200 Low Ark coins less wealthy.
’So…I have to hit my mark; no big deal…right? We’ve done this hundreds of times before...so what if I had my Talent skills to work as a buffer? Now I have high stats.’ Taking a deep breath, I turned around, facing my back to the vent opening, and counted down.
As I had taken note of the traversal time for each camera, I knew in exactly 13 seconds, I would be in the middle of the camera’s blind spot, so I waited, slowly counting down in my head until the 12-second mark when I made my move.
’Thirteen,’ I thought while leaning back like a scuba diver through the vent opening. As I fell backward, I held two throwing knives in each hand, one between my first and second fingers, while the other was between my third and fourth.
Arcing back, I hooked my knees to the lip of the vent, swinging slightly as I lashed out with my right hand first, flinging the two knives.
With a sound akin to an arrow cutting through the air, the knives followed their pre-determined path, the camera in the northeast and southeast corners.
Without waiting to hear the soft thunk of my knives cutting through the electronics, I fired off the ones in my left hand, targeting the northwest and southwest cameras.
Using my perception, I watched with bated breath as all four throwing knives found their mark and, with a shattering sound, caused all four of the cameras to explode into bits of plastic and wiring.
Meanwhile, as I watched the results, I released my knee’s grip on the vent lip and, like an agile acrobat, executed a smooth backflip, allowing my body to fall 12 feet from the ceiling to the ground.
’Time is of the essence, gotta be in and out in less than 15 seconds,’ not bothering to be too flashy like, say, trying to pull off a superhero landing; the instant my feet touched down, I raced toward the mainframes and with a wave of my hand, began storing the bulky machines in my inventory.
I had considered the situation carefully, and frankly, apart from making a scene and destroying the mainframes with brute force, there was no other way to take these things down, especially since there was no access point available to hack into.
If there were, then I could have handled things similar to what I did over at Harlow’s clinic, either that or just deleting the patient files for the people he had poached.
In the end, they were old files anyway, as anything important had been moved to his place, but still, I was dotting my I’s and crossing my T’s.
It took me less than 10 seconds to gather all four of the bulky and cumbersome machines before I moved on to collecting the knives and camera pieces.
Once I had cleaned the scene of evidence, I ran back under the vent, activated my Augmentation, and pushed off the ground back up to the safety of the air vents.
In all, I spent less than 20 seconds from start to finish, and no sooner did I replace the vent than three security guards carrying flashlights came bursting into the room below.
"Oi, what in the fook is going on? WHERE ARE THE MAINFRAMES?" I heard one guard yell, causing me to choke down my snickers.
"How in the bloody hell is this possible?" the second guard muttered in confusion while the third and final walked over to one of the corners of the room before speaking out his findings.
"Look at this, even the cameras are missing, but there are scorch marks on the wall almost as if they exploded…."
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"Quick, call the police; we have a big problem on our hands…" The first guard commanded, causing the second guard to race out of the room, presumably toward a phone.
While all this was going on, I stayed above, silently laughing my ass off at their shenanigans as they stumbled over each other, trying to figure out what was going on.
’Ok, haha, gotta go, let’s head to the pharmacy next to raid their stock; this whole fiasco should serve as a decent distraction to buy me enough time to go on another raid before heading out.
And a distraction it was; as I traveled through the vents, I could hear footsteps racing up and down the hallways in a panic, shouting about calling the director of the medical center and so on. Still, I paid it no mind as I was soon hanging from the air vent a second time and taking out the cameras in the pharmacy.
Then, as I had with the mainframes and Harlow’s pharmacy before it, I picked clean the entire place of any medicine or controlled substances.
With the final pill stored safely away, I made my way back into the air vents and eventually crawled back to the roof, where I exited the vents and dusted the cobwebs off my body.
Yet right as I stepped up onto the lip of the small wall ringing the top of the building to make my escape, a sudden depressing thought ran through my mind.
’Damn, that would have been so much cooler with background music.’ Shaking my head and feeling slightly miffed about the lost opportunity, I leaped off the roof, soaring through the air toward a nearby building.