It didn’t take too long before the teddy bear moved, only about six hours. I wasted time away in a tiny coffee shop on the seventy-ninth floor. It was a bit out of place considering it was entirely surrounded by flyer bays. The owner sure was smart though, at least based on the huge number of rich people that came through the shop and ordered coffee to go.

I hid away in a back corner of the room, reading various articles and doing research on some other things of interest. In between that and drinking unhealthy amounts of coffee so I wouldn’t get kicked out, I also drew up some designs. Most of them were rather simple things, at least by my new standards, aimed at the various things I wanted to put in the Underground to protect my stash.

A couple of them weren’t so simple. In particular, I started work on a drone design. I now had a far greater grasp on a ton of different kinds of theories to apply to my newest toy. I wanted something quite simple- a quadcopter-style design with noise muffling and an optical camo… simple… getting it designed to fly wasn’t all that hard, nor were the cameras, controls, and all that basic stuff. The rest though? That was the part that slowed me down.

Other than that, I looked around the net at various cloaks for my armor. None of them were quite what I was looking for since most cloaks seemed targeted as costumes. Or for cosplayers. Actually, there were quite a few of them that were marketed for cosplay, far more than I would expect. Was cosplaying all that common in Aythryn City?

Now that I thought about it, there were all sorts of parties and events going on all the time that I usually avoided. There probably was a thriving community of cosplayers out and about I had yet to interact with.

Anyway, eventually I shifted tracks to ponchos. They were a much tighter fit, looked more comfortable to walk around in, and were quite cheap. At least, until I started to get into the fancier ones. Ponchos were also a very common piece of clothing in the city, so I’d be able to blend in better, which was the point of getting one.

I had one in mind that I really liked, a thrice adjustable chroma poncho, but I was hesitant to buy it. The fabric's base price was already quite expensive at five hundred Rayn. With the additional thrice adjustable chroma and climate control, I was looking at about fifteen hundred Rayn. Not cheap in the slightest.

But it would be so useful. Unlike the adjustable chroma paint for my armor which lit up, the company's was basically just cloth that changed its color. Far better for blending in. It could even act as low-quality adaptive camo if I set it all up right. I’d be able to change the poncho manually to fit my environment, at least as long as the environment was one of the three presets.

I was just debating whether to buy the thing or not when I saw the camera finally shift out of the corner of my eye. I quickly brought up the camera’s feed onto my cheap deck.

A woman stared down at the camera- the teddy bear with a rather stoic expression on her face. She said something over her shoulder, pausing a moment to pick up the card before nodding her head to someone out of view.

That someone approached as the woman moved away, showing themself to be a guard. Not one of the mall cops though, no this one had some serious heat. Chrome arms, a model I couldn’t quite recognize through his sleeves, and half his face had been replaced with metal. Instead of eyes and a nose, the man had deep circuitry and one large oval panel for an eye.

This time, I recognized the chrome, at least partially. It was from Sentinel’s Cyclops line, and while the cybernetic itself wasn’t too expensive, the procedure to implant it definitely was.

At a glance through the screen, I spotted at least seven hidden weapons. Everything from knives to pistols to even a hatchet hid on the man’s body, though it did little to get past me. As someone who had a rather high level of concealment, how could I not recognize them?

Hmm… didn’t seem like hotel staff. Potentially a bodyguard for the woman- ah, and the woman looked familiar too. I shifted the camera to a small tab and the man picked up the teddy bear and began walking back out into the lobby as I pulled up the Blue Crusade database. It was easy to get in with my Squire credentials, and from there I looked up my target.

Under the relations tab, I accessed a linked profile to Christine Valia Franz, my target’s wife. At least the package had been successfully picked up… and it was already bearing fruit. This guard wasn’t mentioned by Christoph at the gala.

I watched from a side angle as Christine and the guard chatted while walking. They entered the elevator, giving me plenty of reflective surfaces to watch as they interacted.

Christine seemed slightly uncomfortable with the guard, though she was hiding it fairly well. Maybe the guard was new? I watched their interactions as more and more Cues slowly became apparent. Definitely a new guard… or at least, newish. They still interacted with each other as strangers, though there was a general acceptance within the woman’s eyes.

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It was hard to tell for sure though from purely visual Cues. Not to self: next time you make a bug, put in a microphone too. It completely slipped my mind, but now I was mentally beating myself up over it. Such a wasted opportunity to get some good intel…

The duo walked to their apartment’s door, at least based on the distance and how many turns they took to arrive there. A second later, I was in and got my first look at the place.

The apartment had a massive window wall looking down onto the city. Cristoph was right, the view was indeed beautiful. Whitechapel Center was fairly close to the Corporate Quarter, sitting between it and Portside. From here, the penthouse faced west out onto Portside. Although there were plenty of towering structures in Portside, the ocean in all its glory peeked through them.

The apartment took two floors with a balconied walkway looking down onto the living room. The living room was connected to the entryway, dining room, and kitchen, all of which were viewable by the balcony. Said balcony led past several rooms, including the master bedroom. It wasn’t a full balcony though. It was one of those dummy ones that were just for looks. A staircase sat off to the side of the walkway, sandwiched in between the kitchen and the room below the second floor.

The guard carried my teddy bear off to the side of the apartment and put it down on a coffee table. Then he disappeared a moment later and headed up the stairs to one of the rooms.

From the coffee table, I got my first look at the vault. The room below the second-floor area had a massive door on it, similar to the one down by my stash. This time around, there were two dial locks and a keycard scanner.

Unfortunately, the keycard scanner wasn’t the only security feature Cristoph failed to mention. Of course, there were the cameras. One of them looked down from the balcony, and the other sat on the far side of the living room, in the corner of the apartment. They wouldn’t be too hard to deal with.

The turrets though they were different. Two mounts for turrets hid on the roof, probably capable of activating at a moment’s warning from the vault. I’d have one chance to get in, otherwise, I’d eat a belly full of lead.

The hardest part of the vault would be the cards and getting in without waking anyone up. I had a plan for the latter half of that issue, but the former was still up in the air unless I figured out where they kept the keycards. After getting the cards, I’d have to deal with putting them in, which would also be difficult.

If I had to guess, the vault’s card system was some kind of dual-sync lock. I’d have to swipe both cards simultaneously to get in. Hmm… I could maybe modify one of my old Tappers to swipe the card. It wouldn’t be too hard of a change.

But that left me back where I started with finding the two keycards… I guess it was back to the waiting game, at least until they opened the vault.

— — —

Three days… It took three freakin’ days before they opened up the vault. In that time, I saw things I wish I could burn from my memory. Mrs. Franz had been very appreciative of the romantic gift. Guess helping out their relationship was a small price to pay for breaking into their vault.

I spent most of the time in various coffee shops throughout the building, wasting away my Rayn on far too much caffeine. I worked on various projects I had in mind, or at least the schematics for various projects. Most of the time, I arrived late in the day, when Mr. and Mrs. Franz got off from work, so I wouldn’t have to just stare at an empty apartment.

With my time off from surveillance, I finished up my modifications for the Tapper. It was a fairly simple tweak, just a battery and receiver upgrade, a couple of gears, and an arm that could grasp items. I even bought some adhesive, which I put some into my canteen, so I wouldn’t have to drill a hole in their wall.

I also went out and bought a glass cutter for three hundred Rayn. It promised to get through any kind of glass silently. It was supposed to be an industrial tool, but I tweaked some things on it and made it quite a bit more portable.

During this time, I watched the trio’s pattern and movements like a hawk. The guard never left the apartment, seemingly living with the duo. He was definitely Mrs. Franz’s guard though. He never left her side, coming and going with her all the time. He was also on guard constantly, not even relaxing much at the penthouse suite.

As for the other two, they were the typical corpo drones. They ate sponsored products, watched TV in the living room, and then went to sleep most nights. It even seemed as though they were paying for all the subscriptions since they only had three ads per show. It’s funny, I watched more TV while surveilling their apartment than I probably ever had in my life. Well... except when I was way younger. I used to love watching old reruns of ancient cartoons.

Anyway, after three days, Cristoph finally opened up the vault. It was fairly late at night and I was on my eighth espresso when it happened. Both he and the guard appeared in the bear’s view and headed for the rather large vault door. They talked for a few moments before both pulled out cards. The guard pulled out his card from his wallet and Cristoph pulled it out from his pocket.

They swiped it at the same time, then Cristoph casually walked over to the dials and put in the code. Good, it probably wasn't timed to put the combination in after swiping, otherwise he'd be rushing more. Or at least, there was a decent-sized buffer time.

Unfortunately, the rest of his body blocked my view so I couldn’t see the code in its entirety. After a few moments, he backed up and the guard pulled on the vault’s door.

The vault slowly opened, revealing-

It didn’t open all the way, and Cristoph slid into it through the gap. It was a bit irritating, but I got what I needed. The guard had one card in his wallet, which would be easy enough to steal. The other card was probably hidden somewhere in the master bedroom based on where Cristoph came from.

I was just about to pack up and get going for the heist when my phone started to ring. In the corner of my eye’s HUD, the caller ID popped up: Athena Alexandria, the fixer who sent me out to the Leper-khans and the beast in the box.

After a moment’s hesitation, I leaned back in my chair and answered. “Hello?”