Lonely Thieves

Act V, Part V

Kolya's Side (April 14, 10:30 pm)

Kolya had occasionally seen the Florencia building several times before, when his work took him to the Morning Star district. However, he was never interested in the rumors about the building, feeling that it was idle gossip that didn't concern the task at hand. However, now that he was staring at the thing itself, he wished that he had at least listened to some of that idle gossip so that he wouldn't have been at such a loss as to how to approach it.

Thankfully, the sweepers were with him, and they proved to be a decent font of street knowledge that he was able to rely on. However, even they had little knowledge of the building itself, so getting in was still a rather complex task. Making it worse was the ever-growing crowd of pedestrians and police officers crowding the ground floor, making it likely that any attempt made by him to get into the building would be seen by someone.

For now, Kolya busied himself with inspecting the area while hiding on the rooftop of a nearby building. Using a 3D modeler on his tablet, he was able to recreate the area around the Florenica building easily and used it to construct a plan without having to risk drawing attention by peeking his head out over the building.

Despite all this, he was still unable to find a way into the building. It seemed like stealth was not going to be a option this time around. Still, there wasn't any rush yet. Kolya hadn't seen any proof that anything was going on inside the building, so he was content to wait for his window to act.

As if waiting for him to think exactly that, a call came in from Rob on his communicator. "We've got bad news, Kolya. I've caught someone heading into the building."

"What?" Kolya hadn't seen anyone enter from his viewpoint. "When did you see this?"

"Just now. They must have been wearing optical camouflage. I only caught them because I was wearing infrared goggles, but the people didn't seem to react to them at all."

"Hrm." It did make sense considering the police's reaction. It didn't look like they had sent in any special forces to check out the situation.

"It must be the Innocenti Special Soldiers!" a shrill voice suddenly cut in.

"Maize!" Rob called out in a scolding tone. "Didn't I tell you not to shout when you're using the communicator?"

"It's gotta be the Innocenti Special Soldiers!" Maize repeated, ignoring Rob's admonishment. "They've got that optically-camouflaged armor, right? We saw them coming in from earlier, too!"

Kolya had also had an encounter with the Special Soldiers, so he had also known they were here. The building seemed to have something to do with the necklaces, so that also provided a motive for the Innocenti to want to send Special Soldiers. Slowly, the pieces were starting to fall together, but he wouldn't be able to get the full picture out here like this.

"Alright, it's settled. I'm breaking in, regardless of if I get seen."

"Are you sure?" Rob asked worriedly. "Wouldn't that alert the police?"

"If the Innocenti Special Soldiers are really in there, we don't have time to wait around for a good opening. Stay out here and keep watch."

Kolya put away his things and leaped over to a building that was closer to the Florencia building. Once he was right next to the building, he took out his grapple gun and aimed it at one of the opaque windows adorning the building. The grapple hooked strongly onto the window, and surprisingly did not come loose even when Kolya pulled on it. Sure in its security, Kolya swung across to the building's wall, shooting open the window with a gun.