The Neo-Metropol Heist

34: Artem

Artem ran down the sterile white corridor and tried to remember which way to go - was it left or right? He flicked up his HUD and tried not to slow as he checked the pre-loaded floor-plans. Left.
He pounded up the corridor and found the door he was supposed to go through, it was sealed and needed a shunt to pass through. Removing his terminal and running the crack program, he heard shouts behind him and started to fumble.
"Shit," he said under his breath as from around the corner, huge men in bulky combat armour raised their rifles and shot him in the head, neck and chest.
Artem gasped for air, simultaneously falling to his knees and sitting up, ripping off the VR headset and coughing from the simulated impact of the bullets.
"And you're dead," Aphelion said chirpily, "for that, you get an A. For awful."
Artem scowled at her as he perched on the edge of the that Aphelion had rigged up in the middle of Harry's garage, pulling off the top half of his jumpsuit and leaving it hanging from his waist.
"That was way too hard," he said, "there's no guarantee the security will even notice us."
"But they could," Harry said, "then you need to be able to get yourself out, that's why we run simulations."
Artem said and brushed sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes, taking a bottle of water from Cad.
"Just turn the difficulty down, let me have a go at cracking that door again. It'll be easier when I'm not being shot at."
Aphelion shrugged and gestured at the holographic interface around her.
The door to the garage opened and Edward and Zakarias entered. They looked tired and Zakarias's hair had become loose and untidy, as though it hadn't been touched.
"Where the hell have you two been?" Artem asked.
"Absolutely nowhere of note," Zakarias replied, removing his coat and hanging it up on a coat hook next to the door.
"What he said," Edward concurred, limping over to the armchair in the corner and taking a seat, "what is this thing?"
Aphelion stood up proudly and smiled in that way that she did when she was proud of herself.
"This is a virtual reality scenario simulator," she said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, "I call it Versus."
Edward nodded, obviously bewildered but too distracted to care.
"It lets us run virtual simulations of all the possible outcomes and scenarios we might encounter during the job," she finished explaining, then smiled to herself again, "it's pretty awesome."
Artem crossed his arms.
"Oh yeah, it's great, as long as somebody doesn't jack up the physical impact simulation force by ten," he said.
Aphelion scowled.
"That's an outrageous accusation and I resent it," she said, returning to her interface.
"I uploaded the floor plans I'm being fed from the shunt you placed inside the Neo-Metropol, as well as any other data I can dig up about the building and the security forces without triggering the security," Aphelion said, before realising anybody listening wasn't particularly interested in the trials she faced, "next contestant."
"Wait, so you just put the helmet on and you get free reign of the entire building?" Edward asked, picking up the VR headset and turning it over.
"Sort of," Aphelion replied, "the computer visualises the floor plans, including important coded doors. Arbitrary objects are randomly generated from other sources, so it's not identical but close enough for rough practice."
Edward nodded.
"So it's like a video game?" He asked, putting the headset down and crossing his arms.
Aphelion quite clearly wanted to say no, but Artem gave her a glance that told her that that was the closest example that the old man was likely to understand, so she said, "yeah, sort of."
From the doorway, Theo entered the room, cracking her knuckles. She was doused in oil again, having spent more time in Harry's workshop. She'd settled into stride much quicker here than she had done at Sharpe Towers - Harry seemed pleased to have company that he could guide and mentor without constant sarcastic retorts.
Artem wasn't jealous, at all. It all sounded entirely boring.
"Plug me in," she said, swinging her logs onto the VR bed and pulling the headset on.
Artem shrugged and climbed into the next bed, slipping his hands and bare feet into the comfortable hollows provided at each end of the shallow tubes. The machine would take readouts and stimulate his muscles, providing the immersion.
"All right," Aphelion said, settling back into her screens, "we'll take it from the top."
Artem pulled on the headset, masking his eyes and his ears and plunging him into complete darkness. The darkness lingered for a moment until there was a white flickering around him and he took his first steps into a corridor lit with a different light to the one he knew his body was truly experiencing.
The room around him was impressively rendered, down to stickers on doorways and markings on the floor.
It was almost flawless, as though his body had been completely transported from one place to another, like the sealed tube he was nestled in was a machine capable of transporting him through space and time and not just a clever computer program.
It wasn't perfect, though. The room had no smell, just the calm, plasticy odour of the tube. The colours around him were bright and colourful, but too closely projected onto his retinas to be believable.
His steps felt real, but there was a disconnect between the moment he made the step and the second his sole touched the floor.
"This shit is trippy," came a voice.
Artem turned to his left and saw Theo standing next to him, flexing her palms and checking her body with gentle pats.
"Your first objective is to interrupt the building's exterior scanners locally to allow Cad to drop in, the security console should be down the corridor and to your left," Aphelion said.
Artem mock saluted, "on it," he said, gesturing towards the end of the corridor.
The two ran down the silent hallways past sealed offices with different names on doors. The simulation was impressive, but every so often it would shudder, or the physical impact simulators would overreact to a step and thud against the soles of Artem's bare feet.
They came to the corner and immediately screeched to a halt, seeing a tall, dark figure stood in front of the doors the simulated heads up display told them they needed to get into. They dropped into cover next to the wall and pressed themselves up against the cold, clinical surface.
"I thought this station wasn't supposed to be manned?" Artem asked.
"It's not," came Aphelion's reply into his ear.
"There wasn't security here last time," he retorted.
"There might not be next time, this isn't an exact science."
"Just once, just a little bit of consistency would be nice," Artem whispered, and then looked at Theo, "any ideas?"
Theo bit her lip, then leaned over him and peered out into the corridor, quickly switching sides and removing a small black sphere from her pocket. She apparently armed it by twisting the top half, and casually rolled it down the corridor towards the waiting guard.
The little black sphere rolled to a stop in front of the guard, who glanced down at it for a second before it pinged quietly and exploded outward in a violent spray of charged metal particles. They buzzed like small bees, flying into the guard's uniform and making him go rigid.
He fell forward like a board, his faceplate smashing off the floor with a loud crack.
Artem glanced at Theo, before the door behind the guard hissed open and two men stepped, guns raised. They immediately spotted Theo and Artem and gave chase.
Theo moved to run, but Artem stepped into their path and raised his arms.
"Respawn," he said calmly, as they fired their guns and he died.
Artem sighed as the simulation reset, throwing him through a black screen of code he didn't bother to read, before spitting him back out into the same hallway, Theo once again by his side.
"Maybe lay off the grenades until later on," he said to her.
"I guess the station is manned," Aphelion said, "weird."
"Yeah, really weird," Artem said, "let's try that again."
Once again, they stalked down the corridor, and once again they encountered the same faceless guard at the security station.
Artem gestured to Theo, then tapped a few lines of code into his virtual terminal, his link to the simulator's computer. The machine complied immediately, and he found that he no longer held the terminal in his hands, and instead held a single laser pointer.
Artem flicked the pointer on and aimed it at the far wall between them, in the eyeline of the guard.
The man glanced at it momentarily, the simulation juddering as it decided how it thought a mid-level footsoldier trained at the usual level of generic CastellsTech security would react.
The man stepped forward, gun raised, exposing the door and heading towards the flickering red light.
As he stepped between them, Theo stepped forward silently and struck the man in the man in the stomach before dropping a firm hand into the back of his neck. He went limp and fell to the floor, Theo catching him and lowering him slowly to prevent the faceplate from striking the ground again.
"Much smoother," Artem said.
They pulled the unconscious body to one side, then slipped into the next corridor. Before they could get close to it, however, they noticed a slowly roving camera above the door.
Its angle wasn't wide enough to witness how they had unceremoniously relieved the guard of his duty, but it would track them if they tried to saunter into the security room. They once again pressed themselves against the wall and slowly shimmied towards the door, underneath its line of vision.
When they were close enough, Artem removed a small electro-shock pistol from his satchel and aimed it at the body of the camera, firing and jolting the system and resetting the camera.
This, unsurprisingly, alerted the guards inside the security office, who immediately stepped out of the room, spotted them and pumped three rounds worth of ionised slugs into their virtual bodies.
"Had enough?" Aphelion chuckled into Artem's ear as he fell through the strings of code.
"Respawn," Artem replied, stubbornly.
They fell back into the corridor and once again found the security office, once again lured and incapacitated the security officer and were once again foiled by the camera leading to their immediate demise.
"This game is broken," Artem said angrily.
"It's impossible, we can't do this without the robot," Theo replied.
Artem scratched his head, even though he didn't, and couldn't, have an itch there. His fingers tingled as the simulation tried to visualise the action.
"Can't you just shut the camera down through the security uplink?" He asked Aphelion, frustrated.
"Nope, the camera above the door is on a separate security system local to the room, you can only shut that one down from inside," Aphelion told him, "we could try and find a different entry point for Cad so you don't have to interfere with the external security at all..." Aphelion started.
"Impossible," Cad replied, "the current strategy of entry is currently the only feasible one, others would require a restructure of the infiltration plan in its entirety."
Artem rubbed his eyes, remembering that he was in a simulation from the empty numbness he felt as he did so.
"One more try," he said.
They found the guard at his station once again, luring him away like a cat with the laser pointer.
As Theo once again lowered him to the ground, Artem rubbed his chin, "I have an idea," he said.
Stripping off the outer layer off the guard's security uniform and removing his helmet, Artem slipped them on and took his rifle, switching it to non-lethal mode.
"I cannot believe we're pulling this shit twice in the same week," he said, "it was a cliche the first time."
The guard lay on the cold floor and Artem realised that his features were poorly designed and almost lazy, a simple generic face to act as a placeholder for flesh.
Artem told Theo to wait, then casually sauntered up to the security office, knocking on the door.
A few seconds later, it slid open to reveal one of the two remaining guards and a small, sterile room made of metal and white plastic, built around a single security console which was manned by the other guard, his back turned.
"What?" The guard asked in a monotonous, computerised voice.
Artem responded with a heavy swing of the rifle, striking the man in the solar plexus and dropping him to the ground. As the other guard turned to face him, Artem responded with two electro-shock rounds to the man's visible flesh.
As he dropped to the floor, Artem ensured that his first target was completely down with a swift kick to the head.
"Do not try and bend the spoon," Artem said, dropping the rifle, "there is no spoon."
He immediately turned off the security camera and completed the objective as Theo entered the security room.
Artem grinned at her as the simulation faded away into a silver gradient and then released them back into the real world. The pod opened with a hiss and Artem sat up, removing the headset and rubbing his tired eyes, realising he'd spent too much time inside it.
"I think that's enough getting shot for today," he said.
Aphelion shrugged.
"You cracked the security panel though, that's a win," she said, reassuring in an odd sort of way.
"Nice one, kid," Harry said from the corner of the room, slinging an oil slicked rag over his shoulder and returning to a car which lay with one thruster remove and its service hatch open.
Theo stood up and stretched her limbs, giving Artem a courteous nod before leaving the garage.
Artem sighed and stood up, refusing a bottle of water from Cad and collapsing onto the nearby sofa next to Edward. Zakarias had gone, to where Artem couldn't say.
"You look disappointed," Edward observed.
Artem nodded, refusing the urge to be sarcastic. The tiredness allowed him to win.
"Yeah," Artem said, "I am."
"I might have been watching the wrong thing, didn't you just win?" Edward asked.
Artem wanted to laugh but didn't want to seem disrespectful. The man was a renowned thief but he didn't understand the predicament Artem was in.
"We did it, yeah, but after four attempts," Artem said, his voice taut, "we only get one go at the real thing, four tries isn't good enough."
Edward smiled warmly and leaned forward.
"I get it," he said, "we didn't have all of this back when I was your age, we had to make do with 2D floor plans on paper," Edward explained, his eyes partially glazing over from the memory, "so I guess I had the benefit of blissful ignorance."
Aphelion was only sat a few metres away, but she gave no indication that she was listening to their conversation.
"You're a damn good thief, Artem," Edward explained, "and you've got a damn good team, and we have time," he stood up and straightened his hat.
"Twelve days," Artem said.
Edward nodded, "better than nothing. Like I said, I might not know much about virtual scenario simulations, but I know about frustration at not being perfect at something my first time out. You know the old saying, right? If at first you don't succeed..."
"Get shot in the head again and again until you do?" Artem replied.
Edward grinned and nodded.
"Something like that," he smiled, "don't beat yourself up. I wouldn't have come straight to you if I didn't think you were the only person that could do it."
Edward bowed gently and wandered off, enveloping himself in his thoughts as he seemed to do often. Artem sat there for a while and considered what he had said.