Chapter 160
Night Worker Blues
Black Friday (Night Time)
The whole operation thus far had been simple, almost too simple. Granted she had scouted the place well in advance, even going so far as to bring Gina along with her to avoid any questions. From there they spoke to an overly helpful waiter who seemed to know everything about everyone who came to the little coffee shop. Not so hard to imagine as Alexa had chosen that shop due to its direct proximity to the location she wanted.
Fortunately, the Integration hadn’t fully happened yet, meaning that while there were a few elven and orc ambassadors who had made their way to the highest levels of world governments, they still needed humans to run effective operations, for now. Meaning that a coffee shop was a good place to get information on the human portion of the operation, for as far as anyone was concerned humans needed caffeine to function properly. Alexa made her way to southern Chicago, to the section of the city that had been under rampant reconstruction for the past few decades, building up the section to be highly influenced by elven architecture and aesthetics. It was clear that this section would be one of the areas that the elves would fully try to control and settle in once the Integration happened. Then the moment she saw the compound, her mind switched gears, no more idle thoughts about other things to worry about. No more thinking about alternate pressure points that are endemic to humans, for now she was focused.
She first headed to the coffee shop, though this time, unlike last time when she came really early in the morning, now the day had come and gone, and it was once again nighttime. This time she walked past the coffee shop and made her way across the street with little fanfare. Her Illusion magic made it so she could easily pass by people without being noticed. It also made it, so she had to be extra careful when crossing the street, for city drivers were already bad, add that to the fact that she was not visible to anyone, and it added an extra element to the mix. Still, it was nighttime in the city, and the streets had mostly cleared out of most traffic, making her approach to the Browning Corporation Headquarters, the very one that still held the box that Alexa had marked with tracking runes and used to carry the magical nullification sphere that she retrieved from the random elven military compound in the woods.
Alexa had two main goals with this mission, her first and primary objective was to retrieve the lost orb. Her second objective was to try to gain more information on what these giant orbs were. Yes, they could clearly disrupt all magic cast within a radius of the sphere, they also seemed to violently attack any Void Essence with their blindingly bright beams of light. Still there was something deeper to these spheres, something that seemed to resonate with Alexa in a way that was hard to describe. That reason more so than any others was why she now found herself on the southside of Chicago about to trespass on what was clearly marked as Elven territory.
Even if Alexa had been willing to dismiss the architecture, and the signs. The fact that the warding schema seemed to target everyone, but particularly target elves and orcs specifically spoke to the level of paranoia that the leaders of this compound had. To have such a deeply entrenched protection rune network spoke to there being a master worker who was on sight. Or what was more likely, they had a mid-journeyman runesmith out here working, then provided the details and overlays of their original design back to some higher master rune smith that then gave ways to improve their original design. Alexa got all this by just staring at the runic patterns that lined the outside of the corporate headquarters.
The runes were rudimentary ones, or at least ones that seemed to lack any real individuality. They had no true deviation in the shape nor size of territory that they covered. Also, the linking of the runes was sort of wasteful, particularly on the first layer of runes that were at the core of everything. This is what led Alexa to believe that these runes were created by a mid-journeyman expert of runes. The runes that were produced were functionally perfect, but they were just thrown down without any true understanding of how they could be built upon. Then the same runesmith came back and clearly added more runes to strengthen the original design, but did so in a haphazard manner, making the work take on a disjointed but more functional pattern. This would be the runic equivalent of building a perfect modular house, but then realizing you needed to add an additional room. Rather than adding the room on the ground floor, the designer decided to extend the second story of the house with an extra room, that was then braced by wooden support beams and the like.
In all, the entire runic network was more advanced than Mr. Mackie’s setup that he had for Dawning Light Academy, meaning that there was no simple way to take over the runic network. Either the network was up and operating, or the runes were down, there was no simple way for Alexa to bypass the entire warding schema, but there was a way to temporarily block the alerting runes from finding any human that passed through the barrier, so that is what she did. Focusing her will, she focused on the network of runes before her and cut off the flow of energy to the relay runes that tried to identify humans. Then with the relay taken down, Alexa moved through the weave of runes quickly.
As she moved, she felt the runes bypass her Illusionary field, contact her skin and then dismiss her once the other runes realized she was not an orc or an elf.
Then like that she was inside the compound. Now that she was past the warding schema, she took a moment to relax, while she prepared for the next step of her plan. Now is when the thoughts of Mr. Mackie and his son came back to the forefront of her mind.
For a moment, she wondered what had happened to Mr. Mackie. Last time she and her brother checked, Mr. Mackie was still alive, somehow but he had been sent to his Dragon Trials. Unlike Alexa who had managed to break up the way she interacted with the dragons, even being able to completely leave the trials after singular stages, it appeared that Mr. Mackie was not in the same boat. Mr. Mackie appeared in the process of taking on all ten dragon challenges back-to-back to back. Worse, Mr. Mackie didn’t use his Stays to grind out experience and titles from the easier dragons, this was an event that was now costing him as he had apparently spent more and more time trying to complete each stage. While it had only been less than a week, his rate of progression through the Dragon Trials was clearly slowing down. Going from two to three a day to one a day, and now one every other day. Even before she left, she made sure to check with Bottomless Gorge about his current status. She still remembered seeing the readout from the dungeon that was somehow linked to every other dungeon.
Marcus Mackie (Human): Currently on Dragon Trial stage 8 of 10.
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With that cautionary tale in mind, Alexa decided to make sure she had a training regimen set up so that the members of her pack would be able to take down dragons, or at the very least stay in a Dragon Trial long enough to receive help from her or her brother. No, just her, her brother could be an orchestrator, making sure destinations went by without a hitch, but also make it so she could jump in to help others of her pack, when they were in a marathon run like this. And that is the moment when she had her moment of clarity, stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought to herself, as she realized she could right now be trying to save Mr. Mackie. If she joined him, she had no doubt that the two of them combined could work their way through the remaining gauntlet of dragons. While Alexa had finished her trials, she knew that her Precursor Sage class let her do things that were not normal, like going to specific dungeons for training or using the interconnected nature of dungeons to quickly travel from Dawning Light Academy to southside Chicago. With that, she should be able to go to a Dragon Trial, or at the very least she should be able to join Mr. Mackie during his trial. There she could do one of two things, the first was she could finally recruit Mr. Mackie to her side, or the second option, she could finish what the dragons had clearly started.
Shaking her head, she realized she was once again letting her thoughts drift. This was why she hadn’t taken Gina with her on this mission, nor had she warned her about what she was doing. If she had taken her, then she felt she would be doing more to protect her, as Gina was increasingly more and more important to her. Not just as a general, but as someone who was seemingly always there for her, even when Alexa did things that were anti-social or would normally seem to be off putting to most, she accepted her. Granted Alexa knew that Gina also had her own issues to work through, but that was okay.
Deep breath.
Alexa took a deep breath and then as soon as she released it, she was once again in mission mode. She didn’t know when her mind had decided to suddenly be less rational all the time, but it was starting to get a bit crazy for her. But this was fine, if she was going to fully heal one day, she would need to be able to do missions, even with distractions.
Moving silently, she made her way across the well-maintained grassy fields that separated the Browning Headquarters building from the street. Off to the side was a gated parking garage area, that required a badge of some type to enter. Alexa knew that a similar badge would likely be needed to enter from the garage to the building that was attached to the parking garage.
No, for this one, Alexa had decided long ago to do this operation the old-fashioned way. She would not go in through the garage and break her way in. Nor would she climb up to the roof and try to cut or break her way in. Instead, she would do this the simple way, she would go to the lobby and wait.
With her Illusion up, she decided this would be a good test of sorts. Was her magic good enough to beat humans and elven surveillance equipment.
As it turns out, her magic could protect her. Or at the very least no one seemed to mind the masked individual that was in their lobby seemingly staring and waiting for people to come through and leave. Alexa knew from the waiter across the street that multiple people were regulars from here, meaning that at different times they would leave this facility, go across the street, get coffee, and come back. Her job was simple, just wait until one person left to get coffee, then reenter.
This task took three hours, but Alexa used this as a time to focus her senses and to keep her mind focused on the task at hand.
Finally, after a long time, Alexa got the response she had been waiting for.
Ding.
An elevator dinged, causing the two guards who were on the floor to turn and face the elevator. Alexa knew that these two were likely just for show, and that there were probably more hidden away in some monitoring room nearby. If Alexa had to guess it would be the non-descript room that had a white door that almost blended in perfectly to the wall on the far side of the lobby.
Alexa’s salvation from waiting came in the form of a bleary-eyed office worker who half walked, half staggered through the security detection, past the two guards who greeted him.
“Good evening.”
“Good evening.” The office worker tiredly responded, before heading out the main entrance.
This was her chance, focusing she waited the long time between the worker’s exit from the building and the inevitable return where they had a whole tray filled with different coffee cups.
As he came in, one of the security guards, being extra helpful, opened a side door so the worker didn’t have to put down their drink carrier or get screened through security again. The guard was even nice enough to hold open the door while he went through.
“Oh thanks Mark.” The worker said, bracing the door with his foot. Little did Mark the guard, or the still tired office worker know, but Alexa was right behind him, purposefully slowing down her well-coordinated movements to fluidly glide behind him as he made his way forward. So precise were Alexa’s movements that if anyone saw the two, they would swear this was something they had rehearsed over and over to make it look so smooth.
Then quicker than she had expected, Alexa was through the first of many obstacles.
The office worker made his way to the elevator and tried to fumble with his badge to scan for the elevator door to open. Seeing his problem, the security guard charged forward and was more than happy to assist.
“Oh, let me help you with that. We don’t want a repeat performance of what happened last week now do we.” The guard said, pulling out his own badge and scanning it against the reader.
With that comment, the office worker visibly grimaced, and offered an apology. “Yeah, I am so sorry about that.”
“No worries,” he said, though his face was smiling, the system said he was clearly lying.
Mark Gaines: Class: Fledgling Vampire. Level: 43. Condition: Healthy. Status: Lying.
Seeing the guard, Alexa was certain that she could take on the vampire guard, despite being of a much lower level than the creature. Just seeing the way the vampire moved showed a lack of fluidity to its movements.
Within seconds Alexa and the bleary-eyed office worker were on the elevator. There was a brief moment of pause, when Alexa passed the vampire guard, when the guard smelled the air deeply.
Sniff.
Immediately after the smell the guard paused for a second, causing the office worker to ask. “Everything alright?”
Alexa for her part watched the guard, whose eyes were seeming to stare at the office worker, and then scan the entire elevator.
Then the guard asked, “have you been eating onions again?”
There was a slight pause, as the office worker seemed at a loss, then dawning recognition filled his face as he just shook his head in defeat. “Oh, that one is bad.”
“Yeah, I know.” The guard stated excitedly.
With that the office worker hit the button with a numeral five next to it. After which the doors closed and almost immediately afterwards the elevator began to rise.
“Now, all that is left is for you…” The office worker began speaking, looking straight forward at the shiny reflective surface of the elevator. For a moment Alexa panicked and looked forward, wondering if the shiny surface somehow broke the look of her Illusion, she had cast around herself. Fortunately, there was nothing, then what the office worker said next to himself made Alexa’s ears tingle.
“For you to decouple the communications stone from its last network, then link it to the new network. Then you can take a well needed nap.” The office worker said, clearly looking at their own reflection, making sure to make eye contact while speaking.
This was so odd for Alexa, and she wondered if this was a form of psychosis, or if this was something people on night shifts tended to do. To randomly talk to themselves and work out their plans of action. While she did much the same, she often found that she did so while being quiet about it, not telling everyone in an elevator about his plans. But then looking around, it seemed that the worker was just giving themselves a much-needed pep talk on a game plan for the night. Fortunately for Alexa, this person seemed to be talking about the very item she was looking for, an orb.
It can’t be this easy, though, can it? Alexa thought to herself.
Ding.
The elevator door dinged, letting her and the worker know that she had made it to the floor needed. Then once the door opened, Alexa realized that no, it would not be that easy at all.