The heavy slab of concrete began to move after a loud hiss signaled that the mechanisms inside had awakened. Lloyd Cromwell took a step back from the keypad and stared at the moving door with a surprised look on his face, unwilling to accept the fact even as it happened.
“Unreal.” He grumbled. “They didn’t even change the secret passwords.”
“I mean…” Albert chimed in. “Perhaps they don’t even know there are secret passwords.”
“Well, they’ll know after today. Let’s see if my access still works.”
The two had arrived by car, making good time. The access was located at the bottom of a small chasm in the countryside around Temalas City, reachable after crossing some fields on a car that wasn’t made for doing what it was being asked of it.
But they reached it, and after knocking out the guards the two set off to work on gaining entry to one of the most secure places on planet Earth. Or what should have been one of the most secure places on planet Earth.
The old man cracked his knuckles, complained that the gesture didn’t look cool at all and only made him feel pain, and moved on. The duo quickly traversed the corridor leading to the Quadrangle while avoiding as much security as possible, with the help of Albert’s teleportation. Having already mapped the whole place, not only did he possess an almost perfect recollection of its structure, but he could also teleport behind the guards to make a noise and distract them long enough for his grandfather to slip in unnoticed.
Then, it was all a matter of pulling a certain lever and initiating a total lockdown of the Quadrangle. This is where Albert’s previous decision not to focus on reverse engineering the teleportation device meant that their plan had to get creative. Lloyd had a way in – all the way to the control room – but he lacked a way out.
It was a problem for later. For now, the two infiltrators parted ways. The previous head of the BSA beelined for the control room unimpeded, while Albert teleported to the biolab where the brain of the man who caused him an unfathomable amount of suffering and pain was still stored in some sort of stasis or suspended animation.
Lloyd Cromwell was already feeling off about the operation, and he had barely even reached the control room. It had been, simply put, too easy to get in. Something wasn’t quite right, and this feeling only got worse the deeper he ventured into the Quadrangle.
He saw the man with the cigarette strolling along one of the corridors, alone, fiddling with his phone quite intently. He also saw how the man quickly turned to run away as soon as the alarm was sounded, and the lockdown initiated. Unacceptable behavior. Back in his day, but even in Sam’s day, if the highest-ranking officer in the Quadrangle ever did something like this…
Something was off indeed.
Whatever made it easier for him to infiltrate the place also happened to leave the planet defenseless against the Events. Not good. The more Events happened, the closer the world got to the brink of annihilation.
Something the general population still wasn’t aware of. But, it seemed, not even the HDF was taking it seriously.
It was time to dig around and find out why.
Lloyd mumbled to himself as he worked on the many computers of the control room, looking several times at the screens before returning to hunch his back on the countless keyboards and touchscreen.
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“A lesser old man would complain about technology becoming overcomplicated with time. But these systems are pretty fucking great compared to my times.”
After a couple of minutes, tense even for him despite his extensive field experience, he was finally able to access the data he wanted. And even if the HDF was looking quite lethargic, he had a hunch that accessing their data – especially if it was compromising data – was going to make him unable to literally ever step foot on Earth again.
They were not going to let it slide, not when it could expose their whole operation. But who the hell even wanted to live on a polluted shithole of a city when he could have Elvenhome and a whole valley of pristine nature for himself?
This didn’t mean that he wanted to see the world destroyed, however.
All that mattered was that Albert remained hidden. Which was ensured by the special cloak he wore, as well as by the collaboration of the Quadrangle’s AI linked directly to the Lair. As long as they didn’t meet any considerable resistance, they would be fine.
The ‘hacking’ went off without a hitch. Lloyd burned his access code, and in turn the Quadrangle let him see the files he wanted to access. After making sure that his daughter was receiving them through the Lair connection, he finally took a moment to inspect them. He had to wait until Albert, his ride home, was done with his thing after all.
Well, he could also hide so that once the lockdown was lifted – which was a matter of minutes at most – he wouldn’t be found. But he knew the place better than his own pants, and he was quite confident he could stay there another 6 minutes and 34 seconds before he needed to leave. Unless his watch was running late.
He remembered to rewind the spring last night, right?
He was getting sidetracked.
He opened the files. That’s when his jaw dropped as low as the fucking floor, and no doubt his daughter was making a very funny face in the Lair control room.
“Mother-fucking-hell. This is worse than I could ever predict. This is a fucking nightmare situation. They are all fake?! There’s literally no-fucking-body left here from the original HDF!”
Not one of the files could survive even cursory scrutiny by the former head of the BSA. Lloyd immediately saw that most of the information on them was fake, which meant that the Sekkers – the faction aiding the Lithoid Pilgrims with their not so good yet still very much unknown plans – had completely taken over the Earth side of the HDF operations.
With the HDF none the wiser, chief of all problems.
What the fuck was the HDF doing these days? He remembered the whole fiasco at Erebus, an event that confirmed that one of the most terrifying proposed solutions to the Fermi Paradox also happened to be the correct one. But it wasn’t like Erebus had been the end of them, right? Elvenhome was still there, Alignment Cutter notwithstanding.
And it’s not like their spacefaring capabilities were completely wiped out either! Granted, their strength and technology were sent back something like 50 years, but they were not gone. The HDF was not gone.
Well, they also lost all colonies outside the solar system, but most of their old-class military ships and equipment had never even left the solar system in the first place! There were some good battleships there to use. Some good old generals. Some competent analysts.
Shit. The more he thought about it the more information bubbled up in his old head, all of which pointed to a potential catastrophic situation.
He refused to believe that he was among the last of the old guard. Those fuckers met elves, they must have learned how to extend their lives. They dabbled with magic so advanced that not even he could begin to fathom what it did.
He refused to believe that the HDF was gone.
Besides. The HDF had to be still active in the solar system, otherwise there would be no humanity to defend anymore!
The organization was either utterly gone to high-grade cretinism and was no longer able to spot even the sloppy work the Sekkers did on Earth, or they were… well. Either they were gone for good, and all was left were the automated systems bound to one day utterly fail without anyone who could repair them, or the HDF was in such bad shape that they might as well be considered gone.
The last shield around Earth was failing before his eyes, although he could only barely see one of the blander symptoms. It wouldn’t be long until other, much worse symptoms would begin to show.
He made sure to warn Sam with an all-caps text message explaining the situation in brief, before he heard some noise outside. It was the telltale sign that his time was up, and he went to hide in wait for Albert to come and pick him up.