[i]Omega[/i]

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“So, you uhhh, you work for the Asari then?” Came the voice of Lauren from in front as she weaved her way through crates and blockades - leading the way for the human engineer. “Always been curious about ‘em myself,” she added. Trying to fill their journey with idle chatter.

It wasn’t exactly a long trip there, just dangerous. Dangerous in that there were obstacles in their path. It wasn’t meant to be traversed by foot. It was just a long dumping round for trash, but it would take them to the back of the warehouse. Eventually.

“Yeah. Supposedly, at least.” Shy answered. “Grand total of five minutes.”

The latter wasn’t wearing their suit, opting to remain in their casual clothes. Being dressed in a black body suit like some kind of cyborg ninja wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, and it would probably be easier to explain their presence looking like regular people working around a warehouse. While they were to be skirting around Blue Sun territory, it’d probably be easier to get closer without raising any flags, as well as easier to get out without looking like a retreating enemy combatant.

She wasn’t expecting her words to instill much confidence in their new client, in fact, that was hardly a consideration at all. It was idle chatter mostly to entertain herself if nothing else, and now barely an hour into her new job, she was wading through trash and junk. Part of her wondered how these clients of theirs got roped into such sticky business as drugs and Blue Sun entanglements, and perhaps a more socially attuned person would know better than to ask, though Shy’s hesitation to ask was more because she thought they might have already mentioned it and she probably wasn’t paying attention at the time. She wasn’t nearly as concerned about the character of the people she was working for or the awkward air a sob story might invite.

If her overall silence was anything to go by, she didn’t much abide smalltalk, even if she did so with banter.

She summoned the fluorescent orange hologram interface of her omni-tool, showing a simple map of the surrounding area and their current location within. The tunnel went a bit further on, but the map didn’t account for all of the debris cluttering the way.

“How much further?” Shy asked, sounding bored and annoyed as her foot caught the edge of some piece of junk that nearly tripped her. “If there is at any point the opportunity to utilize a console or remote access point, we should use it. No reason for us to be in the center of hell if someone raises an alarm.”

“It’s the next one over now,” Lauren answered, tampering now with a window. “If you’re after cover, if we can get inside, there might be an easier way across and you can help your team… With consoles,” she blinked over at Shy slowly. Her green eyes sparkled and a smile waivered. For all of the courage she showed earlier, she was showing less of it now.

“I’m sorry you got dragged into this, by the way,” she said with an apologetic shrug before finding the pop in the window to draw it open. Every structure had its weakness. There was nothing but pitch black inside until she turned on a light from her jacket. It was just an office, long since abandoned.

“Don’t worry about it,” Shy answered flatly, “I volunteered, remember?”

“Come on,” Lauren gestured as she climbed inside.

This didn’t look so bad, Shy thought as her boots landed on the floor inside. An abandoned office, huh? A little bit of a mess, but there were plenty of computers with administrative privileges to utilize and furniture to hide behind if someone caught wind of them? Not so bad. She wondered about the probability of any of those gangster mercenaries crawling through the windows like they did, but Lauren and Shy were both small enough to do so, so it probably wouldn’t be their first plan. They’d probably rather take the front door, especially in their own territory.

“First things first, help me push one of these desks against the door. We should barricade the main point of entry in accompaniment of a multi-stage lock-out.”

With Lauren’s help, they were able to push the office furniture into place in front of the door, taking care to not drag it against the floor that might incur unwanted attention through the noise. As they were getting it into place, Shy was able to use her omni-tool to interface with the electronic functions of the door to keep it locked through a lockdown protocol as well as fashion a length of cable to physically secure the handle to the piece of furniture blocking the entrance. Tapping the orange interface on her omni-tool once more, two drones suddenly materialized before them, positioning themselves a few feet away from either side of the doorway.

“If worst comes to worst, we’ll leave the same way we came in. I’m keeping the main lights off so people don’t know we’re here.” Shy said shrugging, perhaps alarmingly nonchalant about the mess they were getting into. Sighing, she stretched her arms in the air as well as her neck and said, before seating herself before one of the administration console, “Welp, time to get to work I guess.”

Her fingers peppering the keys and interface of the console, mingled in with the mutterings of how archaic the hardware here was, she was also peppering Lauren with an assault of questions that she probably wouldn’t have had the answer to, even if she gave her the time to answer them. Shy seemed to uncover those answers as quickly as she was asking them. “Might you know where we are, what we have access to? Oh, there’s a map. Gozu district, we’re right there -- think the others should be travelling up this route, the captain and doctor up that way -- and the target should be… there. I have a feeling I won’t be able to reroute a defensive system from here if they have one, not very quickly, anyway. Cameras? Mm, probably, if we’re connected on the same network. Oh, yep, found them. Let me just rewrite my permissions… piece of cake. Hey, is that your brother?”

Pointing at the screen on her monitor, there was an image of a handful of Blue Suns mercenaries loitering around a room with a young man of skin and bones bound up in a chair. Scratching her head, she muttered to herself, “Well, they obviously aren’t feeding him any burgers…”

Lauren looked down at the screen and saw that it was true, her friend was bound in the chair. She couldn’t quite make out all of the details there, only that one of her captors was holding some kind of heavy machinery. A saw, perhaps. She cringed and stepped back from the screen. “You have to do something!, stop them! Please!” she said desperately. 

Meanwhile, one of the secondary screens was showing something equally as exciting -- Both Naryxa and Satka appeared on the monitor, the Asari firing off a biotic charge at more guards, only a few doors away from the sick little torture chamber.

Shy’s face remained stoic even in the midst of Lauren’s outburst as she try to figure out a plan. There wasn’t exactly a weapons system in this place, not one that was on the same network as these offices at least. Think, think, think! What systems would they share? Emergency? C4I? Power? Maybe she could remotely turn off the power from here. She wasn’t exactly going through the proper channels though, and if they had a backup generator. Ugh, risks upon risks. This manual stuff was limiting her stuff.

“Uh, you might wanna sit somewhere safe, I’m probably about to set off some alarms.” Shy said, sounding annoyed. She aimed her omni-tool toward the main console, and for a few brief and alarming seconds, multiple windows branched out from her tool and the monitors in the room started flashing wildly as the omni-tool enacted a CNA protocol and began purging the information on the network and proxy server. Just as Shy expected, red lights and alarms were suddenly triggered, probably alerting nearly half of the district with a sound not quite unlike a krogan bashing your head in.

The young woman immediately turned back to the computer she was working on, watching as many lines of codes vanished before her eyes. Many of these were firewalls and restrictions that would’ve kept her from accessing certain elements and functions on the network, and without them or the proxy server, essentially allowed her unfettered access to anything that was on it. The Blue Suns in the chamber with the guy they were trying to save were clearly made aware that there was an unwelcome guest somewhere across the district and took their attention off of Lauren’s friend. As restrictions and firewalls dropped, she got access to more cameras -- one of them was focused on a warehouse also full of Blue Suns, and inside looked like a cache of weapons or something. Interesting.

“Looks like I got their attention.” Shy said. “I’m unlocking the door for the captain’s team, sending coordinates and footage.”

Shy drew her omni-tool once more and opened comms with the team with the turian and vorcha, which sounded like the setup to a bad joke. She said, “Hey, uh, forward team? Captain’s team making contact with the target shortly. I also discovered a Suns’ weapons cache near your location. If you’d like to, I don’t know, loot it, blow it up, or eat the guys inside or something… go ham. Take pictures? Unless it’s the third. Anyways, sending coordinates.”

Turning back to face Lauren, she said, “We should get going soon before they start searching these buildings. Unless there’s something else you’d like me to do first, like spying on an ex or something, don’t let the threat of mortal peril stop you or anything.”

“Let’s just get moving,” Lauren said. “By the time we get to them, things are either going to be over, or [i]over[/i]” she sighed, clearly itching to move out if her shaking hand was anything to go by. “Come on, rendezvous will be this way…”