Walking through the repetitive foreground of gray walls and endless corridors, John and Ben patrol around as Ben checks his cyberdeck using it like a navigation system.

Sighing, John looks over at Ben.

“So, any idea how much further along it is?” He asks.

Ben stares at his cyberdeck without looking back as John avoids eye contact.

“Yeah, the research lab isn’t too far from here, just a few more blocks down and we’ll take a left.”

They walk in silence for a bit as John looks over at him.

“You know, I had my doubts about you. But, you aren’t half bad.”

“Thanks?”

“Yeah, it’s a compliment.” John says while stretching.

From a corner, a few men in suits walk by, they aren’t your typically executive type or even corporate. Consisting entirely of asian males, they’re much bulkier, some of them have cybernetic enhancements that are visible, eyes, arms, and legs.

As they walk by, one of them stops and looks at them. His eyes seemingly zooming in and out as they seem to scan them, the man signals for the others to stop. As they look over.

John stops as well as he holds Ben back who looks up.

He gives Ben a look as he seems confused.

John immediately bows to them.

“Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu.” John says with a very strong accent and incorrectly.

Some of the men in suits begin to laugh as the leader just stares.

“Your Japanese is awful.” The Leader says with a look of disdain towards him.

“Apologies, they didn’t offer it at my school.” John replies in Japanese without looking up as Ben looks down at John in confusion but immediately bows with him.

The Leader turns to Ben.

“What’s with your friend?” He asks bluntly.

“You’ll have to forgive him, he’s still new, he does not know the ways. Please allow me to educate him myself later.” John responds.

“Hmm…” The Leader says as he thinks to himself.

“What are you two doing here?” The Leader asks.

“I’m taking my Minarai out to show him the ropes.” John replies.

A few of the others begin to break out into laughter.

“Did this idiot just say?”

“I apologize if anything I have said has offended you.” John quickly says bowing deeper.

Suddenly, a communication comes from his earpiece as it changes color.

“We’ve received reports of another attack on a different facility. This is very likely to just be a false alarm, for now just stay on standby but-”

The Leader seems to close his eyes in disappointment.

“Alright, you can go.” He says.

“Thank you.” John says as the Leader begins to walk away as Ben looks over at John who still hasn’t moved yet, walking a good distance away, John looks up.

“Let’s continue with the patrol like we discussed.” John says out loud.

John seems busy thinking to himself as he walks along with Ben who seems a bit more attentive than he originally was, no longer focusing on his cyberdeck as they walk along.

Thinking to himself for a bit, he contemplates to himself as he pulls out his radio.

“Hey.”

“What’s up?” Jamar responds.

“So, I just came across a company patrol but I’m not sure if it was seeing things or not, can you check to make sure we’re scheduled to have one in our area? They looked like guys in suits but with ‘special’ attachments.”

“That’s something. Let me check real quick if one’s scheduled.”

Coming to an intersection, John looks over at Ben who’s already on his cyberdeck again. He points in towards the right as John continues along.

“No, nothing about any extra security.”

“Huh, guess they’re just being extra cautious then.” John replies.

“Yeah.”

The radio goes dark as John looks over at Ben who seems a bit tired as he stares at his small screen. Without even looking over he speaks again.

“We’re almost at the lab.”

Looking forward, John picks up the pace. Around them several see-through laboratories can be seen, inside varying things from electronics to drones and varying computers. Showcasing various prototypes.

“Which one is it?” John asks.

“It should be the last one on the left.” Ben replies.

Walking up towards the laboratory, John looks around, his eyes stop at a controlled access door to head inside. He looks over at Ben who looks down.

“Think you can get it open?”

“Yeah, there should be a manual override somewhere.” Ben says getting on his knees as he jacks a cord into the back of the controlled access doorway’s reader. It begins to turn in a strange mechanical way as the door clicks.

John opens up the door as he looks around inside.

It’s dark inside as are the other labs around them, looking on the wall, John flicks a switch as he walks inside of the lab, inside it’s relatively clean and organized. In the area, walls upon walls of server racks are stacked up next to each other like a miniature server room.

As they walk into the room the sound of fans whirring becomes apparent. As a series of electronic chimes beep as they turn to see a terminal unfold itself in front of them. John looks around as he points to it.

“Ben go check that out. Look for anything related to Project SHARD. I’m going to look around, got it?” John says.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Yeah.“ He responds quickly walking over.

Walking around the servers, John looks around. Turning a corner, he finds a small section of desks and tables with workstations on them, as he makes his way towards them. Stopping in front of one of them, he looks down at a piece of paper. It’s written in the way of a scientific paper with the title at the top reading. Project SHARD: System for Human Activity Recognition Device. A distributed system for the collection of Human Interaction.

Reading the title, he puts it down.

“What the hell?” John says to himself. Continuing to look around, he starts to skim through more things, opening up journals and notebooks as he quickly rummages through things making sure to put them back carefully.

“Hey, I think I got something over here.” Ben says.

Looking up from a notebook, John begins to walk over toward the terminal. Standing in front of it, we see Ben on his cyberdeck which is connected to it.

“What is it?”

“When I woke up the terminal it was already running a job. I found a few log files that lead me towards the main repository where the program is being run.”

“And?”

“All the files are encrypted and I’m currently trying to figure a way to get past it, right now I’m trying to brute force my way in by trying to guess the password. Once that’s done we should be able to get what we came here for.”

“How’s that going?”

“Not good. They’re using a Keccak based hashing function. But also depending on how long the key is, we might not be able to get inside.”

John nods as he opens back up the notebook looking through it.

“Well, that’s something. It looks like it’s a small group working on it together, I’m going to see if any of them left the password lying around somewhere.”

“That sounds like a good idea.” Ben says

Looking through the notebook, John walks back to the series of desks. Scanning through each page he looks around for anything noteworthy. His eyes stop at a note on one of the pages.

‘Looks like Emiko forgot the password again. Not that I blame her, corporate policy requiring us to change it every two weeks is ridiculous, I’m going to keep track of it in a journal so we don’t have to remember what it is.’ Reading this, John’s eyes light up.

Quickly, John begins to search through the journals, reading the titles he quickly filters through them as he finds a journal named quite literally, “Password Book”. He opens it up as he looks through it, page after page, different passwords with names behind them. They’re dated from oldest to more recent.

There’s much more than a password for a single account here, as he stops where the text seemingly comes to an abrupt end. He turns the page to see an empty page. Looking up, John begins to walk back towards Ben.

“Hey, think I got something.”

“Great, because we’re not getting in without it, just tried up to all 8-digit codes, no luck.”

“Is that a good thing or bad thing?”

“Can take from a month to a year to crack a 9-digit one.”

John walks up to Ben as he hands him the password book.

“This should help.” John says.

Reading inside for a bit, Ben looks over at John.

“Is this?”

“Yeah. Most places have a password policy, it’s not that surprising to see.” John replies.

Ben begins to quickly type away as he reads through the book.

John looks around at the servers.

“Any clue what they meant when they were asking for pictures of the prototype?”

“I don’t know, servers don’t make sense. Is there anything about the project itself like a paper or something?”

“Huh. Yeah.” John walks back as he takes out his phone.

Finding a few of the academic papers, John begins to snap photos of them. As from the windows, a scientist slowly walks by. He turns around as he sees the flashes. Spotting John as he takes photos of the papers. Seeing this, the scientist runs off.

Finishing up with the picture, John heads back to Ben who’s preoccupied at the terminal.

“Almost done with the file transfer.” He says.

“Great, well that’s everything.”

Ben takes out his cord as he starts to pack everything up. John moves things back to how they were originally as they head out of the lab, he turns off the lights.

Heading outside of the lab, walking down the long corridor we see the scientist accompanied by the Yasuda Security Group behind him, John looks over as he sees the scientist point towards them.

“That’s them.” He mouths.

John begins to walk slowly in the opposite direction as Ben follows him.

“Ben, after we turn the corner, run.”

“What?”

John slowly and calmly turns the corner as the security group begins to pick up their paces as they make their way towards them.

“Stop right there!” One of the guards says.

Briefly out of sight, John grabs Ben by the arm as he begins to run. Ben pushes John off as he runs along with him. Looking back, he sees a man sprint off at them running way past them in the distance.

“Turn left.” John says.

Looking back front, Ben follows John as they make another sharp turn.

“They went this way!” The Leader can be heard shouting.

“Shit. He’s got cochlear implants.” John mutters

John looks back as he sees a much larger man running towards them quickly gaining on them as one takes out their rifle as they begin to unload in their general direction.

“Turn! Turn!” John shouts.

Just narrowly dodging a barrage of bullets they continue to sprint along. Ben looks up as he sees a trail of bullets fly through the air behind them as he screams. John takes his radio out as he presses on it.

“We got the goods and are on our way. Picked up a little heat on the way.”

The sound of the large man shouting as his footsteps can be loudly heard coming down the hall comes through the radio.

“A little, huh?”

“Just tell Ray to get the car ready.”

“Alright, alright.”

Ben can be visibly panting as he looks over at John.

“I- I don’t know how much longer I can do this for.” Ben gasps.

“Just hold one, we’re almost there.” John tries to reassure Ben.

----------------------------------------

At the checkpoint, Jamar gets out of his seat. He stretches as he yawns. Grabbing a large bag, he opens it up as he begins to take things out of it.

“I was starting to get bored. Heh, and he said we wouldn’t need this.”

Taking out a MG240, Jamar begins to set up the bipod on top of a conveyor line.

----------------------------------------

Back at John and Ben, just in the distance is the exitway towards the security checkpoint, Ben is struggling to keep up as he’s now completely drenched in sweat as John pushes forward like it’s just another day.

From the radio a beep comes out.

“Hey, John, are you almost at the checkpoint?”

“Yeah, good. I can hear you. Duck.”

“What?” Ben asks.

“Duck.”

John enters a sliding motion as Ben fumbles to the ground. Behind them, a man with mantis-like legs is rushing towards them at a rapid pace while others run along accordingly. Almost an arm's length away from Ben, machine gun fire sprays out from the doorway.

Just about to grab him, the man with the mantis legs is shredded apart. Then the loud sound of gunfire erupts as a few members of the group run for cover, the large man with cybernetic arms rushes forward.

He shouts on the top of his lungs as he breaks through the entryway straight past Ben and John while trying to cover his face from it all, seeing the man come through, Jamar focuses fire as he aims for his legs as a bullet hits his achilles heel as he falls to the ground. Unable to defend himself, Jamar finishes him off as Ben and John run through the checkpoint.

Jamar continues to lay suppressive fire as they make their way over.

Bullets fly over from the opposite end as one hits him, he groans as he powers through.

Almost out of ammo, Jamar looks over at them.

“Hurry!”

Seeing them head up the stairs, Jamar follows them as his clip finally runs out, dropping the gun, Jamar sprints upstairs, following after them still carrying his large bag.

John looks back at Jamar as he catches up.

“Did you seriously bring that with you?”

“What? You said anything could happen.” Jamar responds.

“Are you insane? Now every single Yasuda goon in the area is going to be coming after us.”

Jamar shakes his head, taking out a pistol he hands it to John as he takes out an assault rifle for himself.

“Just be grateful I saved your ass.”

Exiting out of the stairway onto the main floor, they look around toward the exit as they scan around the empty lounge, at the security entrance the woman is hiding under a table seemingly terrified as Jamar points his gun at her, she screams while John and Ben head for the exit.

“Open it up!” Jamar shouts at the woman.

She trembles as she seems to press an emergency override as the doors all open.

Heading outside, the getaway car begins to drive up.

Unrolling the windows, Peter and Rachel look over at them.

“Get in.” Rachel says.

Making their way over, John opens the door as Ben runs inside. John looks back at Jamar who’s running up to them as a muzzle flash can be seen from the rooftop. A bullet connects with Jamar’s shoulder as he begins to fall.

Seeing this, John grabs onto him and throws him inside.

Shooting at the flash, a semi-transparent individual begins to move away.