Precisely as planned, the maintenance employee came right ahead to fix the camera Drima shut down. However, with one exception arriving shortly after, a car with two heavily armed security officers and a scientist arrived shortly thereafter, all looking around in the area, as Luna sat back down, waiting for another opening.
"This is unacceptable. I don't know what you'll do this time, but you better do it well. Mind you, there's more than what all of our lives are valued inside the institute.", the scientist said.
"Yes, director.", the mechanic replied, "I'll make sure to fix it right up."
"Goodness...whatever could've caused this? Scout the area and find whatever you can.", she commanded the two officers.
"Yes ma'am.", they both replied as they turned away to start looking.
Wasting no time, as soon as the two officers merely turned their backs to start searching, Luna jumped the fence and headed right for the director. Extending just the pole of her scythe, she jumped right above her head as she firmly placed the pole on her neck, pressing violently against it as she landed behind her to cut her breath, preventing a scream. She then quickly lowered her body, pulling back the pole and forcing the entirety of the director's body to flip backward on the ground, before smacking her across the face with her powerful fist and knocking her out in an instant.
The thud of the drop made the two officers turn around, where Luna's impeccable reflexes were quick to trigger, precisely thrusting the pole right into the back of the throat of the right side officer and then thrusting it rapidly forward again to the back of the throat of the other. Failing to yell any of their commands for her to do so, both of them started to back up with stuttered footing, before Luna smashed the pole on the right officer head first, turning around and smashing it on the left one with a swift move after, knocking them both unconscious.
The maintenance employee then turned around, but as soon as Luna saw that he was about to start yelling for help, she hurdled the pole with precise enough force to his stomach, hitting him extremely hard, enough to cause him to go out of breath too before she moved in to quickly subdue him.
Within the span of a few seconds, all four of the people gathered in one place, without a hic, without any chances of escaping or calling for help, were unconscious, in what was but a perfect demonstration of sheer, perfected, insurmountable skill of quick and efficient action. No one was left standing and no one was killed, no help was called for and no further compromises emerged to need dealing with.
"I have eliminated all targets. Security officers, employee, and what additionally appears to be the director of the institute. Minor injuries sustained, primarily in the form of physical injuries in the inner throat walls and maybe esophagus.", Luna informed.
Drima was surprised, "Good god, what did you do?"
"Primarily assault the weak points upon exposure to avoid a vocal cry of help, leading to alert of reinforcements. The maintenance employee must have only suffered external injuries to the abdomen. Concussions also apply to all targets."
"What the hell was the institute's director doing there?", Drima was confused.
"She was escorting the maintenance employee in a distressed state, probably due to previous bad handling of maintenance routines from them. As for the rest of the personnel-", she was interrupted.
"Look, I'm not a general or an official, I don't need a body count and report every time you knock someone out. Just don't kill anyone, is all I'm asking."
"Understood.", Luna followed orders, "With the unexpected plethora of individuals appearing, three possible routes are opened based on their wears and assigned posts."
"That's easy to answer. If you want my advice, take the director's access card and the employee's clothes."
"Alright.", Luna followed as told.
Putting on the jumpsuit of the employee, Luna was smart enough to go ahead and also take two clips and a gun from the guards, before finally grabbing the access key from the director's neck chain and preparing to leave. However, a slight pause came before she went, looking back at the bodies. Looking around, she came up with a quick plan to further protect Drima from any sort of questioning about his legitimacy and his position. Dragging the two bodyguards to the side of a small bathroom area, she went to the nearby dumpster and jumped in. Digging through the trash, she found precisely what she hoped for, taking out 20 cans of what appeared to be one beer brand crushed 15 of them, spreading them all around the two officers, before approaching them and taking off their gloves, helmets, and putting them to the side of their knocked out bodies. Taking out the rest of their heavy guns, she placed one rifle to the side, and another to the hands of one of the officers before turning off the safety of it, while also grabbing all of their remaining magazines and methodically spreading the ammunition close to them.
She then perfectly set up 3 more cans right in front of the officers as she rounded up, going up to them to place the last 2 beer cans in their hands and then sit right next to them before laying down at their level while grabbing the second pistol of the other officer. To her luck, having been a distant area, she was almost certain that the corner wouldn't be raided upon her discharging the gun, leading to more confidence as she shot all 3 cans at random and erratic positions, finishing up by firing the remaining shots at random areas up front.
Dropping the gun next to the other guard, she then proceeded to dig the trash again, finding some office cleaning supplies in the process, including basic cleaning supplies and pens. Firstly grabbing whatever clothes and wool-like materials she found, she dropped them in front of the dumpster and poured a mixture of disinfectants and drain cleaner on them, using one of the bullets across the pavement to create a spark that quickly lit the clothes on fire.
Letting the small fire turn the clothes to ash, she then grabbed three pens in her hand and took the handcuffs from one of the officers as she moved towards the employee's fainted body, handcuffing him before going up to the front. Breaking all three pens in her hands, she then carefully moved her hand and avoided dropping any ink on the ground, as she grabbed the employee's head and moved it around in a shaky manner to perfect crudely writing 'Vigrin' and 'Nerd' on the employee's head, before going into the bathroom and cleaning herself up. Tossing the remaining pens in the toilet, she went up to the employee and carried him right into the dumpster, where she tossed him in. To round up, she took the other handcuffs and locked the dumpster shut, looking back on the entire scene and being sure of leaving nothing behind.
As the clothes finished burning into total ashes, she took with her the body of the director, moving silently through the garden area of the institute until she reached the main building, where she finally contacted Drima again.
"God, Luna!", he worryingly said, "Everything alright?"
"No reason for concern needs to be raised. All is moving according to plan.", she fixed the body on her back, moving the legs on her left side while she moved the head on the right side as if she was holding game from a hunt.
"It's almost been forty minutes! What the hell were you doing?"
The director grunted, "What the-bhuh!", she got hit by Luna's elbow and knocked out immediately again.
Luna briefly paused, "I was...busy. I need more info. What is the schedule of the institute's director?"
"Uh...from what I see here, she's in her office sorting through paperwork. Her schedule from what the servers tell me isn't much different today either. Wait, you knocked her out, right?"
"Affirmative. However, I will need to return her to a suitable place before leaving to avoid further suspicions. In addition, her being the primary administrative figure allows for much data commonly redacted for other employees and researchers to be accessed in places like her office devices."
"We've got a lot of information on the place already. Getting to the literal bottom of it from the elevator in the middle is all that matters now."
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"Agreed, but in order to avoid further suspicions or alerts, it is imperative that we secure the body of the director in her office, where the possible loss of memory due to head injuries might lead to both her and the finder in question to assume plausible passing out due to overwork and fatigue.", Luna persuaded Drima with sheer, adamant logic.
"You are... frighteningly good at evading alerts and such. Should I ask what you did with the other people surrounding the director at the corner?", Drima quirkly asked.
"No.", Luna firmly denied, "But if there is a possible fire exit, back door or otherwise, I would like to know its location to access it."
Drima slightly sighed in disappointment, "Yes, there is. On the side on which you are on right now. I'll disable the cameras and alarm system when you get there. Or rather, I'll do something else. I'll freeze the camera's image and stop its recording while keeping the clock running. That should stop alerting more people for you to take out.", he started to get worried, "Will also disable the fire alarm from going off in the door. The floor you will go to is obviously at the top, and luckily, it's bound to only the director, so no secretaries or anything. The place is supposed to be a safe haven in total solitude for her studies, so there'll not even be any cameras involved."
"Thank you. I shall proceed."
Doing exactly as told, it wasn't long at all before Luna was able to uneventfully climb all the way up to the director's office floor, all the while having her right on her back. Before entering the office, however, she was met with a rather tiny obstacle in her way. An access terminal required a plethora of things to allow her to enter, from fingerprints and face scans, to the access card she was holding onto. Not paying too much attention to it, she spread her fingers and scanned them while also swiping the card before realizing that the face scan required the director with her eyes open.
A simple solution was to come, with Luna grabbing the director the same way you'd do a battle ram, from her lower body to her head, dragging the skin across her forehead with her other hand as she lifted her head up with the rest of her body and forced her eye's to open.
Within seconds, Luna was inside the director's office, closing the door behind her and relaxing as she presumably entered the safe area. Looking around, shelves with books, a small lab, and the main office were but completely expected to be found, along with a small fridge that contained several well-organized foods, presumably for longer-lasting sessions within the room itself.
"I have successfully obtained access to the office of the director."
"Perfect. Look around for anything at all that might be useful, before dropping her and moving to the elevator. Start with the computer."
Luna swiftly went up to the computer, it being wide open and unlocked for her to look into everything she wanted to.
"No hacking required. The commotion must have caused the director to leave on a whim, leaving her device unlocked."
"Perfect. The computers at the institute have a function that can cross-reference files and look up keywords on all of them. It allows for major efficiency when looking at reports and studies we previously did and want to look back into, including other documents such as, of course, building data. Should be on the bottom right, so open it and search for 'building', 'lab', 'architecture', and all that. Just spam keywords until something of note comes up."
Luna opened the search engine of the computer's files, beginning to search through everything in the database as told, with minor success in finding and confirming what information Drima had already gathered, without much luck on anything else. A quarter of an hour later, it was becoming more and more apparent that there was little of value to be found, besides tidbits here and there, which would directly compromise them as they had no time to process the details.
"All the data found is linked directly to what you have informed me about."
"Really? Whatever, that was a secondary task anyway. Do what you have to do, and get out from the fire exit."
Luna looked around in the drawers of the desk, "Hold on. There appears to be a set of USBs here. Some of them are labeled."
"Anything useful?"
"Not from the looks of it. The USBs are tidily organized and labeled from 'Obsulyte DOC' to 'Student IDs', without any of them looking different. They are the same colors too."
"Those are backups. This... could mean that among the many of them, one could contain separate and secured files. We don't have time to view all of them without ditching the mission of the old lab."
"There is a row of empty USBs at the bottom. Should I use them to back up the director's PC?"
"No way. Considering who that PC belongs to, backing it up will also take ages, and so will making copies of the already existing data within the other USBs. Without copying them too, considering how they're kept, taking one of the original backups will definitely be noticed."
"What data exists in said USBs must be existing within this device, sorted by passing through a human filter."
"Luna, I know, but listen to me. Finding anything here is a possibility, but it's all too dangerous. If we pass to the old institute below, there's a much better chance of doing the exact same thing, but with unlimited time for it. Here, the more you stay, the more dangerous it can get. We're both on the clock."
Luna briefly paused to think for a moment, before she decided to drop the entirety of it and instead place the director, collapsed on her chair. Trying her best, she found some of the latest and lengthy files to bring up on the screen, making sure to make a convincing case of the director overworking herself on her studies. All was set and done, with Luna preparing to leave. All before...that hunch came over her. Was it the old director appointed to the new building? Was it truly a new slate built on history's sands? And why did the confirmed existence of them storing that past still there? There was surely something beneath the rough...diamonds hidden beneath it all. This was but the first, but ensured, of the two chances she would have of seeing what she already knew but kept from others. Seeing what from her point of view was simple at the time with new eyes, through that of another.
Unable to shake that thought off her head, she approached the PC again and pushing the chair aside, she opened the search engine again, and off she let that thought go. 'Luna Falana'. 'Lina Falana'. And to what she never thought would be so easy to find, sitting in front of her face came right up.
"These are...identities. These are Lina's and mine.", Luna hit the mark.
Drima got interested, "Wait, what did you find?"
"Files containing identities from Lina and me. Laboratory identities, marked under subject. E-007, my serial subject number.", she scrolled down below to find that the images had been corrupted, "Later info appears either redacted or corrupted by obstruction of the download process."
"Luna, can you get more of those to pop up?", Drima eagerly asked.
"Negative. The area around the computer might be organized, but the computer itself is a scrambled mess of files that require the search engine to be traversed, possibly for delaying or stopping possible intruders without access to specific keywords."
"So she separated the identity files by name?"
"It would appear so.", Luna grabbed an empty USB from the drawer, "I am making a copy and downloading these two files. I will not take a chance in losing them later.", she quickly plugged the USB in and copied the files.
"Alright. That much we can take.", Drima understandably said.
"The quick copy session is complete.", Luna hastily saved the USB in her pocket, "Drima, it is imperative to the mission that we act swiftly from here on out."
"What do you have in mind?"
"Is there a possibility that the elevator is not completely engulfing the hoistway?"
"You mean on its sides?", Drima opened his own files.
"I need at least a thin gap enough to fit my silhouette."
"There are two external gaps on the left and right of it. What are you planning to do, exactly?"
"I will be using the excuse of the maintenance employee to access the hoistway and manually drop to the bottom level, where the elevator was supposed to take me.", she put the access key back on the director's neck chain, "You will use the same technique on the camera's as with the fire exit to assist me into getting there, and manually force the elevator up when I enter the hoistway to give me access to the bottom."
"Luna, there's a trap door, opening in half, at the bottom of the hoistway. It's right next to the lobby area, from what I see here."
"That cannot be opened?", Luna asked.
"It's a separate device that needs a signal from the elevator to open itself, so since it's not immediately connected to the director's access key like with her office door, we might be able to overload, then override it and open it. But that's not the main problem here. You're looking at almost a quarter of a kilometer drop from thereon out."
"I will use my scythe at the wall as I'm heading down and slow my descent, although I can endure a fifty-meter drop, way below the time limit with which I'd reach terminal velocity and have possible injuries occurring. Since the damage on the walls will not be visible, it is damages that we can probably ignore, so long as I don't damage actual mechanical structures. I've taken great care to establish mission stability, and have successfully covered many tracks, so we can do an aggressive move and erase all recent access data from room to room to further cover anything that is left. The gap in the timeframe can be blamed on system failure and lack of maintenance thereafter. Without much else to go off of, leading suspicion onto a possible intrusion is highly unlikely."
Drima pondered briefly at Luna's full-proof plan, "That is...that is actually brilliant. And you can consider it already done, since you're in proximity of the director's PC. But Luna, will you be alright down there?"
"I will return as promised. However, is there a possible sewer I can access to get back from such a deep excursion, or will I have to return from where I entered?", Luna tried to pin the last fine details of the plan.
"There's an...emergency exit? It links to a sewer, but the only way I can describe it, would be an emergency exit the way it is layered at. Which is extremely weird considering where it is placed. Luna, I'll say this again. Be careful. Please."
"I will."
Luna let Drima confirm on erasing the access data and swiftly went outside the office, entering the elevator and pressing the 0 button to go to the lobby. All the while the elevator was moving, from the hatch on the top, she exited and stepped on the moving elevator, calmly waiting for her chance. Once the elevator reached the lobby and the dinging sound, accompanied by the doors opening was heard, Drima once again accessed the nearby mechanical parts and forced it to go to the top floor again, leaving few that saw an empty elevator puzzled, but completely unaware nonetheless. And so, with some more pressed of a few buttons, the simple, metallic trap door opened as well, now dropping Luna into the depths of that forgotten abyss.