“A fine plan. Let's see what we can do.” 595 purred, then clicked with her tongue as though sicking an attack dog.

The Agent’s companion virus had gained control of the office where the ambush took place in a matter of seconds. But the nature of that building meant there wasn’t much it could do to help. GCHQ by contrast, presented concentric closed-off layers of security, guarded by machine-learning antivirus and Human controllers. If their ragtag band had tried this maneuver yesterday, they’d have been mobbed by soldiers two minutes into the hack attempt, nevermind shut out of the system.

Yet no soldiers appeared as the virus latched onto the door control system. 595 made sure both Vreta and herself had a ‘hand up its ass’, as she liked to call it. From there, they could give the virus instructions and gain real-time information about the environment they would soon be entering.

The virus sniffed the exterior of the system from its toehold in the door control panel, and excitedly identified a slender gap in GCHQ’s defences surrounding the entrance. “That shouldn’t be there...Doesn’t look like we’re the first to try this.” 595 murmured, studying the graphs her virus was painting for them. “Looks like we’ll be able to control the turrets for a short period. Do you want to do the honours?”

“GCHQ, can you respond please? We need to get inside.” Freyr asked over comms. Just static again.