[b]Black:[/b]

[But nobody came].

This is not the answer to the question you asked, but it is an [i]important[/i] answer. Consider your reasoning: A security system accommodates over time to deal with its volume of low-level offenders. 

This one’s been running for a very, very long time. How much of the utility corridor would have to be locked off, to be secure? But secrecy is the most important first layer of protection, clearly. Over enough time, there’d start being rumours about that weird corridor, that has its own maintenance team. Either that, or one that had long fallen into disrepair without one. 

Neither rumour exists, at least, not [i]here[/i]. The photo is untouched, unremarked on for days. Hell, it’s not even soft-hidden from the major search engines. If anyone noticed it at all, they were more worried about the Streisand effect than your picture. 

You threw a brick through the window and nobody showed up, and nobody’s going to show up. Don’t take that as a failure to learn who you’re up against. Take it as a blank cheque that throwing bricks has to be below their noise floor. 

There’s one way to cross reference that. If your picture didn’t get taken down, if the meta-data is still pingable from a major search engine, well… You could maybe search it directly? See if there aren’t [i]real[/i] pictures still up online with the metadata you’re looking for that also didn’t get taken down, see if someone else has done some scouting for you. 

And yeah. The results come up with a dead split of urban explorers and maintenance workers. The former always passing through to more interesting places in the Prime, taking side channels to avoid getting nabbed along the main access tunnels. The latter posting for help on message boards, or taking selfies on their lunch break. 

Real maintenance workers are going right by the door you’re really looking for. Dusting, cleaning, replacing frayed wires, painting the whole shaft once-a-decade or so. Real maintenance workers in an easily accessible uniform, I should add. All below the noise floor. 

Tell me how you pulled that off safely. How you made dead certain that nobody could pin you for doing those searches and learning that. Then what’s your next move?

[b]Persephone:[/b]

Don’t rush this too much. The air’s too rarified here for any but the highest of social climbers. Everyone in this room wears a watch worth more than your entire camera rig. If there’s enough to be called a crowd, it’s only because the 1% of the 1% is still 1/10,000th of a very, very large population. 

Think, this is the investor class. Think that everyone in here could be your real suspect or your target, at the end of things. Think that this is probably where they’re going to be least guarded, least tied to a potential crime scene. Nobody’s been whacked for the concept work. 

Over there, under the oroborous organic fountain by BioTan. A three meter high loop of flesh bound to a padded arch like ivy to a wedding-arch, a chain of translucent organs pumping products into by-products and back again. At each juncture is a plaque saying what the biochemistry just synthesized, what it can be used for, and the difficulties in manufacturing it through inorganic processes. The whole thing’s a loop. A sugar-water IV drip makes up the difference in ATP to run it, but the whole thing chains so that every organ uses the output of the previous organ and sends it through to the next. 

Standing under it? Amazon CEO Greg Von Mises, proud of that Austrian heritage. He’s talking to the BioTan representative, a woman of Southeast Asian descent in a costume labcoat but with real protective goggles. Sounds like he’s trying to explain her own sculpture back to her. She’s putting up with him. Von Mises isn’t half the name Bezos meant fifty years earlier, but half a Bezos is more than nothing. 

Over there’s the C-suite for Yggdrasil. They stand out, the former Mumbai-and-Bangladeshians in their ‘starmetal’ full plate, a tradition carried on since finding meteroic iron was a rare and magical thing. The craftmanship there is stunning, gorgeous. Filigree and scrollwork and muscle-plate, worthy of a warrior-king in a big-budget Bollywood take on the Holy Roman Empire. Their weapons, by comparison, are crude and eccentric - it’s considered good form for the c-suite to [i]make their own[/i], from the heart, express themselves. By hand, by forge. They’re all armed, if you consider a zweihander or a flanged mace ‘armed’ in 2080, which you should. 

Their display is simple by comparison. Elegant, even. Phar Lap’s heart, preserved in alcohol for over a century, a mutation that made it grow more than four times larger than average. Behind it a black plinth, with the genetic sequence for the isolated mutation in white light. It’s a statement. For what? You’d have to ask them. 

And then scattered around there’s the security details for these people, scowling at the Yggdrasil C-suite at every opportunity. First among them, a statuesque Madagascarian woman whose flanking escort looks like they’re there to protect everyone else from her, not the other way around. It’s hard to tell if she’s one of the power players, or just someone’s head of security. It looks like she’s not sure herself. You don’t recognize her. The people who do seem to be moving clear.

Don’t cut this place short. Think of who might be here and use your press-privilege as carte blanche to talk to them. There are some people here who’d [i]pay you[/i] to put the camera on them, and they’ll say anything on the record.