The elevator rumbled underfoot as it brought us deeper into the facility. I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief as we passed hidden turrets in the walls, glad to finally be done with the defenses of the structure. Out of all of the things the facility had been designed for, it could never have been expected to hold up against the cyber onslaught that I’d brought against it. Now I could easily recite the location of every major defensive point, the automated defenses in each area, and more importantly, I could use them at my leisure.

“The path should be clear,” I turned to the team, “Keep an eye out just in case, but there isn’t really much left down here.”

Fran frowned, “Is it really just the uplink down here?”

I shrugged, “There’s some paperwork and such as well, stuff for the government such as plans for if a global cataclysm was survived. This place is as much a bunker as anything else, but it appears it didn’t get used.”

“I have to wonder why.” Domino pondered aloud, “You’d think a reinforced position like this would attract at least a skeleton crew.”

“Seems that the uplink put it on just a high enough security rating that the only people who would be allowed to know about this place had bunkers closer to home,” I replied as the elevator platform settled at the base of the shaft, thirty meters beneath the first floor.

Bulkhead doors opened with a drawn out groan before us, revealing a wide and tall hallway that split off into several directions. I knew that they led to a handful of larger rooms, warehouses full of dry goods that would last for years, general equipment to help a small surviving colony, and some medical supplies. There was also a much larger living quarters in this underground sprawl, designed to sustain more than two-hundred people for years if needed.

Yet it was abundantly clear that it was empty. No sound echoed in the complex, and at our arrival the facility sent a gentle jolt of electricity coursing through its unused halls. Lights sprang awake, illuminating metal and dull-grey concrete with a pale, clinical shade from overhead mounted lamps.

“Cozy,” Jessica commented dryly, “Can’t believe it’s not inhabited.”

Daniel rumbled forward into the hallway, “I dunno, I’d have preferred this over getting my ass chewed by Wolves.”

Jessica hummed thoughtfully at that, agreeing as we followed up after him. There were no major defenses here, save for a pair of turrets that could unfurl from the ceiling overlooking the elevator. They stayed silent, though, no longer active and searching for trespassers. I continued to direct us through the complex. Through it all we were answered only by our own footfalls echoing through empty walkways and a handful of doors, dust-free from the advanced ventilation of the lower levels, that opened at our passing to reveal untouched rooms.

It was equal parts unnerving and sad, I found, considering that even a small enclave of people could have made use of this to survive the early parts of the apocalypse.

Still, I pushed such thoughts aside as we approached a much more solidly secured bulkhead, a pair of steel bolts pneumatically held in place ensuring that forcing the room open would be a considerable ordeal. With a pulse from my mind, I sent the order to the mainframe to open the door, feeling the data register through my connection. The next second, the door thudded loudly with long settled mechanisms coming to life. Steadily the bolts pulled back, the sound of pneumatic whining notifying me that more was moving even behind the scenes. The doors slid upwards, a second interior pair opening horizontally.

“If that’s not what we’re looking for,” Domino stated as he saw what lay beyond the doors, “then I don’t know what it would be.”

I followed his gaze, peering into a spacious room with what looked like a squat array of disks and antenna, pointing upwards to a central mechanism. It almost resembled the skeleton of a pyramid, the zenith of which hung a double-sided, fractal designed dish. The whole apparatus was affixed directly to the concrete and steel overhead, and I idly noted that it would certainly be capable of transmitting even through thirty meters of solid earth, though I still wondered at the necessity of it all. Then again, officials had expected a major asteroid impact, not an alien infestation - the biggest thing they’d needed to contend with would have been surface damage.

“Lets get it done,” I said, not willing to feel relief until we had well and truly completed everything that we’d come here to do. I moved into the room, cautiously, using my advanced sensor suite to examine for any unpleasant surprises.

When nothing seemed out of place, I signaled for the others, but we no less warily advanced into the cavernous room. It had definitely been designed to be used without human interaction, given that there was, from what it appeared, only a single console that could be worked with. Along with that, dozens of crates lay stacked against the walls - a quick search told me that they were filled with component pieces for the array that dominated the central architecture of the room - but nothing else. No adjoining room lay beyond, all power supply to the uplink ran through a flush, nearly airtight series of ports that ran through the wall adjacent to the hallways. The ventilation in the room was minimal, enough only to keep a small supply of fresh air within, evidence enough that perhaps only a very small team would be allowed in here at once.

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“I haven’t found anything, what about you guys?” I called out, still searching for any explosives that might ruin our plans, or any other jaded machinations a protective government entity might put into place over such a site.

“Nope,” Daniel called out, “Looks like the relay itself is clean. I don’t detect any explosives residue in the room at all, so nothing that sweats at least.”

“Like dynamite?” Domino asked curiously, “But yeah, nothing over here either.”

“We haven’t found anything either,” Fran spoke up with Jessica, “I guess that’s it, then?”

We exchanged looks, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing did.

I shrugged, “Well, I guess we’ll find out in a moment now.” I walked towards the console, pressing my hand to the electronics and feeling the jolt through me. Immediately I felt the wash of data against my mind, the totality of the device before me.

In seconds I sent my mental arms through every corner of the software, interacting with everything, getting a whole image before I worked with it in any facet. I wanted to take no risks, just in case there was any nasty surprise waiting for me as I worked with it.

Instead, I found an empty landscape without any traps, sensors for invasion, or even the mildest form of firewall. Instantly I paused and doubted myself, expecting that perhaps this was an advanced defensive firewall that could camouflage itself.

Yet, after some innocuous prodding and even changing code, nothing happened. It frustrated me greatly that I could likely have been able to completely control this array from the console itself with very little knowledge in the first place. For all of the defenses around this device, it was designed to be used with the least amount of knowledge and information possible.

And after a few more minutes, I realized why. No single uplink was designed to usurp the entire network, they simply weren’t that powerful, and considering the resources used to create them, they weren’t easy to make either. In fact, the only part of the coding that I had any difficulty with was an incredibly dense piece of data - complete with a cypher - whose only purpose was as an identification code for the satellites it communicated with.

In other words, if it were the old world, it wouldn’t matter to have only a single one. You’d need several, and thanks to the authorization-code it would be incredibly difficult to simply duplicate them. At least, for anyone else. I was fairly certain that myself and the Determinators could decode and clone it with some time.

Would that allow us to control the whole network? Likely not, geographically that simply wasn’t feasible. But it would allow us to access those in nearby areas, and now that we knew what to look for, we might even be able to intercept them. All that meant that we could open a hole in the grid large enough for my plan to come to fruition.

It took moments to completely shackle the uplink to my will, and in the meantime the Determinator’s pilfered several components to create a wireless uplink and install it, cobbling together a fairly simple program as they did so to interact with the array. It took almost half an hour to clone the key while I was offloading additional processing to the other Determinators that weren’t busy, unraveling what would have taken hours for the strongest supercomputers in the old-earth era.

And, with that complete, I packaged all of the information that we would need and sent it through the Obelisk uplink, routing back to the ship and farther afield to headquarters. I detached my senses from the data at that point, knowing that it would route through to our mountain-observatory station and be put into use almost immediately. We’d created several of our own arrays for listening in on broadcasts and attempting to access disparate satellites already, and now that I had the code, they’d be able to utilize them to help expand our net of influence and search for additional keys.

Handily, the uplink was programmed to run on very precise timings, something that very likely was common to others as well. We wouldn’t have instant access, but in just a matter of hours, we might very well be capable of expanding our reach outside of the borders of Basilisk and New Damond.

When I’d finished all the work, I sat back and stretched, noting that the others had busied themselves with helping out the Determinators where they could.

Fran noticed that I was done first, “Good news?”

I grinned, letting my helmet fall away with a thought, “Very. We have full access, and we have information on how the uplink and satellites are supposed to operate. If all goes well, this time tomorrow we’ll have complete control of our zone, and our immediate neighbors.”

Immediate relief surged in the room, “God damn, we’re actually done with this crap.” Daniel laughed, “I’ll be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to trying to find another one of these things.”

“So, back to the boat?” Jessica asked hopefully, “I’d love to get a shower and sleep for a day or two.”

I chuckled, “Not quite yet. We’ll set up some of our own defenses here to beef things up, but soon.”

She groaned, but I could already tell that there was an energy in the group that had been absent before. I shared the sentiment - we were finally done.

Almost done, anyways. One more day, and I’d be able to put the final piece of the puzzle in place...