No Love Lost (DD)

Felix was the most relaxed person in the building as he walked through the lobby. His steps were heavy, lazy, the exact opposite of the hustling people around him. He flopped himself into the chairs in the waiting room, opening a magazine. "Hello, little Ifrit." The tiny girl who had cost him the use of his legs buzzed in on the other side of his comms. "Shut up, Felix." He smiled into the magazine. "Now now, codenames. We're professionals. What have we got?"

He waited patiently as she went through the systems. His little assistant took her time, careful not to trip any alarms if she could help it, and that meant Felix had the time to look around the room over his magazine. Mostly business men talking on their bluetooth. Every now and again someone would stop for a second, but not for much longer. It was bizarre to Felix. What the hell kind of job was this? No one smiled, no one spoke to one another, they just wandered to their next destination, and it was disgusting.

He grunted and sat back, twitching his leg. "You should be able to take the elevator to the 12th floor. From there you should be able to take the stairs to the 14th, and then your targets are all in a board room meeting." He smiled. Imagine that, all in one place. Isolated. With no cameras, out of fear of losing their trade secrets. May as well wrap them all up like a package.

"Thanks hon, I'll radio you when I'm done." He stepped into the elevator and tapped the correct button, bearing the extravagant 'Venture Co.' logo on it. Boldly exploring the world of science that no one else would dare wander. In other words, they were experimenting with the alien technology. How...reckless. The last time someone had done something this stupid, Sentinel had to step in and shut them down. Yet now it was totally okay? Just because Venture Co. was at the helm? No, that's not okay. And that was the second reason Felix had taken the job. To set an example.

'Car Preference' accessed...

Select command...

'Hold' selected - processing...

The velocity transducer on elevator 2 gradually rolled to a stop. The elevator had been given an inspection command and all its standard operation inputs were currently idle. Not even the door sensors were going to activate. A clawed hand patted the control system, as if rewarding a pet, and then continued typing on a projected screen.

'Car Preference' accessed...

'Sub-Basement 2' selected...

Car Mobile...

The elevator began moving once again, only this time lurching in the opposite direction to where its occupant had been original aiming. Vex double checked the script run-throughs and was satisfied that the system had accepted his overrides. He had wanted to disable the lift sensors to prevent folk from knowing where the cart would be - but that was a far more difficult task. With any luck they would just think it was undergoing normal operations.

Changing his screen to one of wave-graphs and transmission registers, the gremlin then highlighted a frequency he had already identified as not belonging to this high-rise, and matched his own headset to its waveform. He increased his output to try and push the signal through. The communicator on Felix's person would suddenly come alive.

"Mercury. What are you doing? Not that I am not aware. I simply require personal verification." The mechanical monotone was no-doubt familiar. The two had been a part of the same super-hero team. No matter what causes they fought for now. The mercenary and the gremlin had been Sentinels. And it was because of that, Kerzap would hear this associative instance out.

Felix looked around as he slowed to a stop. That was a quick elevator ride! It was almost like it...like...

Oh.

He looked up and glared at the number. 10? How dare it say 10! That's just plain wrong. Felix had hit the button! He was the elevator's master! It must obey him! He started mashing the '12' button again, only to feel it roar to life...and sink downward. Well this is interesting.

"Ifrit, where am I going?" He asked, pressing the device in his ear. That's when he heard the gremlin on the other end. "Oh. Hey Vex. Sup? He sighed. He was probably doing this one without Ifrit. Oh well, he could handle it. He spat on his hands and rubbed them together, placing them on the elevator door as silver bolts of lightning began to course into him. Despite the elevator working overtime, the car slowly began to screech to a halt as he absorbed its kinetic energy into his own body. Once he was halted, he climbed through the hatch on the top.

"What am I doing? Dude, it's nice of you to ask. I was actually just about to make my way to work." He magnetized his legs to the elevator shaft and began to walk at a 90 degree angle, whistling camptown races. "You're welcome to join me if you'd like. I hear they pay really well here..."

Error: Unknown function...

Running Diagnostic...

Primary Velocity Transducer failure...

Replace part... Replace part...

Kerzap's eyes widened. The machinery in question was fine. He checked the lift sensors and revised his disappointment that they could not be disabled. It seemed the cart had stalled somewhere around floor six. He surmised the problem was not mechanical. Mercury had somehow caused an obstruction then or... He had that superpower. The power to drain kinetic energy. Recalculating.

"Your mirth is not becoming. This is a serious matter. I have on record that you profess to be part of a mercenary ensemble. Termination is not outside the realm of your purview. I fear you mean harm to the board members. I mean to convince you the price of your actions." Vex enabled normal operation of the lift again and disconnected his wire attachments. There was nothing more he could do in this room.

He hadn't wanted it to go this far. But he needed to take control of security. Which meant he needed to override whatever Mercury and his team had done. He theorised that whatever measured had been taken - they had been implemented from outside, possibly tapping into the intranet Wi-Fi. If he had direct terminal access he would have a better chance using administrator overrides on whatever he found. Kerzap began accessing his GPD to reposition himself.

"If you fail to stand down, I will involve myself further. I am more than familiar with circumnavigating this corporate filth."

Felix made a sound of disapproval as he walked up the elevator shaft. "Let the record show that I definitely tried to be nice and catch up." He stopped and hit his ear piece. "Ifrit, you heard it, right?!" Absolute silence...why was she-?

Oh. Right. Vex can do that. He sighed. "Dude, it's like you want me to go all Mercury mode on you. Let's just take a second and accept that I wanna get paid!" He stopped at the 12th floor, just barely slipping his toe inbetween the elevator doors to the 12th floor, using his enhancements to force the door open rather easily, stepping out in front of a crowd of about 6 people. He blinked, gave an awkward wave, "Shalone friends." and he walked away, letting them stare at him as he went. Once he rounded the corner he popped the stairway door open to start walking up to the 14th floor.

"Listen. Vex. Buddy. Friend. Compadre. Amigo." He stopped and thought about it. What other languages did he know? "OK, so like, I'm just gonna go upstairs and do my job." He nodded to himself, passing the 13th floor. "...So whatcha dooooiiiinnn?"

His first relocation took him onto the roof of the adjacent building. Without an inner plan of the building Vex needed to figure out where the security room was situated. And he only had minutes to do it. He had to take educated guesses based on passed work. Activating his helmet, he enhanced his sight to track the flow of electricity through the building. At a distance this gave him too much blur to follow any individual wire, but he saw several locations where the power seemed to cluster. He returned to normal sight and then quickly surveyed the locations. One was situated next to the ventilation output.

Computers needed good ventilation.

He then set his GPD to troubleshoot a teleport. It would keep attempting to put him on the floor in question until no physical obstruction stopped him. Good thing he was small. Vex found himself in a carpeted hallway. Several doors were open and the brief murmur of chatter filtered through the building. No one had noticed him. Vex looked up and saw a sign next to the only locked door. It was concerning several security notices. He knocked on the door.

When the occupant answered he could see no one in the hallway. Vex swung from the ceiling and planted a metal boot into the face of the administrator. A second man in the room turned at the sound and froze in uncertainty. Vex teleported across the room and put both his hands over the worker's head. He shocked the man unconscious.

There were seats for many more people but they were currently empty. Vex shut the door and turned to the man with the bleeding nose. He looked about as combat capable as a damp rag.

"Give me your password. Or die like your co-worker." He had no time to hack it himself.

By the time Mercury was passing the 13th floor Vex was floating next to a console. He had access to aspects of the system but not all of it. He felt his moping hostage was holding out on him, but had no time for such things. He had a stairwell to think of something to stop the mercenary. Were he more trusting, he would have tried explaining the situation. But he believed Mercury when the human said that he just wanted to get paid. They may have fought evil together, but he had no heroic expectations of the man.

"I have access to the value regulators." He didn't, "The gas pipeline is positioned along the stairwell. If you do not desist I will be forced to-" The gremlin paused and typed a query into the computer. He next looked at the administrator and narrowed his eyes. The duplicity of these big businesses never surprised him.

He was quickly back on the comms, "Hehnn. Do you know what a honeypot system is, Mercury?" Vex began hurriedly troubleshooting the system. All the major security systems had been quarantined, "Sometimes programmers make a fake system with deliberate vulnerabilities. They do this to entice hackers to attack the system. Once this fake system has been infiltrated the real one alerts the owners to the danger." The camera feeds were still running. Vex cycled through them to try and locate his friend, "You never had a window. They knew you were coming before you stepped in the building. It's a trap."

Vex went silent for quite a while, and that meant he wasn't going to be very entertaining anymore. "Vex? Buddy? C'mon, I'll give you a brownie if you come back." Nothing from the other side. Fine! Whatever! He'd just go do his job! Like any blue collar, working class citizen! Truly, he must be a model employee. Someone give him a medal.

He continued his happy whistling as he passed the halfway point between 13 and 14. These were a lot of stairs...like, a lot of them. He stopped and looked around. No cameras to take out, so not a huge problem if he takes a shortcut, right? He hopped up to the wall, running straight up it and backflipping onto the staircase, right next to the 14th floor door. "I know there aren't any cameras in here, but you shoulda seen that, dude. If this whole assassin thing falls through, I have a promising career as a parkour YouTuber. Trust me."

He kicked the door open, eyes closed and happy to take the time to gloat. "Hello assorted meatheads! I am but a humble messenger, traveling long, perilous journeys through elevators and staircases. I have traveled from dark metal box to dark metal box, stopping only for my own necessities and chocolate coffee beverages from Starbucks! I come bearing a message from your employers, being that your ti-" He opened his eyes and looked around. There were 5 guys with rifles all trained on him.

That's when Vex came back on the comms. "Oh. Neat. Guns." He said back, sparking with the kinetic energy he stole from the elevator. As they opened fire he ducked under the rain of bullets, blurring his way into the first guard, disarming him with a quick swipe of his hand and a kick to the elbow. Without a doubt, that elbow was shattered. Nothing would be recognizable as bone in there, just powder. If he was lucky.

Another, less lethal kick to the jaw knocked him out easily, and he grabbed the rifle from the floor, stepping around the hail of gunfire to his next target. Jumping upward, he used his face as a springboard to jump up over him, firing two explosive flares from his boots into the faces of the next two, allowing him to fall back downward and knock out the one he'd jumped off of with a swift knee to the skull.

A brisk jog and a jumping kick later, the two blinded guards were on the floor, and Mercury gave a snap kick to the last guy, sending him flying through the plexiglass of the office and into the nearby employee kitchen. They must have really planned this out, no employees around. Probably didn't want any witnesses. Still, the lack of screaming was unfortunate and...quite bland, really.

It was a few seconds until Vex heard from him again. Hopefully the gunfire hadn't worried him. Mercury smirked and leaned down to wag a finger in the downed thug's face. "You know, it's funny to me that you guys thought a few guns could slow me down or stop me. It's like you've literally never seen me before." He clicked his tongue and chuckled. "So which one of you set up this ambush? Hm? Who's your boss?" Evidently he couldn't have Ifrit hack their systems, so he'd just have to get it the old fashioned way.

As the guard opened his mouth, the radio on his vest sparked to life, along with the ones back in the office. "Yo, Charlie, where you at?" Mercury froze, covering the man's mouth with a vice-like hand. He snatched the radio off his vest and looked around. "...Charlie, if you don't pick up, you got trouble."

Mercury groaned and looked at the security cameras, then back at the office. "...Lemme guess, Charlie?" He pointed to the men he'd just likely put into comas. The guard on the floor shook his head, and Mercury slowly turned his finger to him. He nodded. Fuck.

"Charlie. Pick up. Now. Or I swear to god..." The man on the other end was getting a bit distressed. Mercury held it in front of Charlie's face.

"Do the smart thing, Charles. Tell him that you're sick on the toilet and you'll be back as soon as you can." He smiled and uncovered his mouth, pressing the button on the two way radio. He'd done this a million times, best way to get someone off your back, really.

Charlie blinked and cleared his throat, putting on his best sick voice. "Hey...uh...it's Charlie. I'm sick on the toilet...probably ate some bad food out of Steve's lunch in the kitchen or something...I'll be out soon."

Mercury stood up and took his finger off the radio. Several seconds of pure tension passed before a two word response came back. "Got it." Mercury raised his eyebrow at the tone coming from the little black box and turned down to Charlie, narrowing his eyes.

"There...I did it. Can I go now?" As much as Mercury wanted to crush his skull on the spot, he couldn't. He needed information.

"Not quite my little friend. First I need to know where your boss is." He put a foot over his rib cage and started applying pressure. How much? He had no idea. Hell, he couldn't even feel anything but the slow mechanical rumble of his prosthetic, crushing Charlie's ribcage.

Charlie gasped in pain and writhed about, trying to escape, but Mercury only increased the pressure. "Fuck! 20th floor! Big fuckin red door! You can't miss it!" Mercury stepped off of him and smiled. That was the tone of a man desperate for mercy. That was honesty.

"See, was that so hard?" He turned to walk out of the kitchen and stopped as Charlie propped himself up on the counter that employees would use to prepare their lunches. "...Hey Charlie?" He looked over his shoulder. "Why'd you mention the kitchen?" He turned on the spot, rocketing forward and giving his skull a knee, splattering blood and brains all over the room.

As he walked out, wiping off his pants leg, he radioed Vex up before checking the magazine in the rifle he'd stolen. 25 rounds? That should do. "Hey, Vex, I don't care if you aren't my biggest fan. I need eyes on these guards. Now. Give me a way out." This wasn't Felix, the guy who had been having fun until now. This was Mercury. All business, all the time.

"Fine. Just inform me your location." Ifrit had not been mistaken when she said floor 14 had no cameras. At least not in the board rooms. Kerzap had some facial recognition he could run, but it was far quicker if the mercenary just told him. Yet as he completed his manual camera cycle, he noticed various aspects of building security begin to activate.

Alarms were sounding on the bottom floor and the entranceway locking down. Lifts were suspended and workers confined to their offices. Security guards gathered in the stairwells and steel shutters began to divide sections of the upper floor hallways. An electronic alert went up to the helipad, possibly to put it on standby. Communication jamming was also in effect, but Vex barely had to spare that particular problem a moment's attention. His equipment was far superior to theirs.

The gremlin came back to Mercury, "First five levels are shut down. Windows included. Floors above yours are sectioned off by bulkward dividers. Have observed possibility on floor 17. Neighbouring high-rise crane within jumping distance. Wind speed at such elevation advises caution. But dividers lie in your way." Kerzap was typing furiously on the keyboard, "Am writing loop command into fire safety protocols, since the system isn't quarantined. If you start a fire, it will now disable the bulkward security measures allowing free passage. Can do nothing about personnel."

Speaking of personnel, there was the sound of a door opening. Vex had been so engaged in his work that he had forgotten the administrator. The human had unlocked the exit and was now shouting to the other rooms. Help was on its way. It was time to leave. A cable came out of the harness wrists and plugged into the CPU. Vex began downloading a program into the computer. And in waiting for which, men entered the room. They saw the intruder and brandished their weapons, opening fire. The bullets bounced harmlessly off Kerzap's electromagnetic shield.

When the program had finished, he threw an armour-plated fist into the monitor and then teleported again. This time he ended up on the roof of the building they were in. He was looking at a helicopter pad. The gremlin ducked into an equipment shed as a pilot came onto the roof. It was at this point that he remembered why he had come here. "Human. I trust your priority is escape and not following through on your futile mission. I still oppose your investment there."

Mercury listened carefully to the briefing, leaning up against the wall, prepared to breach the stairwell door. "Fire, eh?" He thought that one through. If there were still workers in this building, that'd be difficult to get away with. A lot of blood on his hands that he wouldn't be able to wash off like he normally could. It just wasn't beneficial. "...I may have an idea though." He scrambled over the broken glass and back into the board room, checking every container he could until he found some random papers. Some of them looked important, but fuck it. They'd do.

He turned back to the door, checked his ammunition, and kicked it open, knocking it into a guard on the other side who was just reaching for the handle. The door flew off its hinges, knocking him back down the stairs the fastest way possible; over the railing. He turned to the other three members of the task force and gave them three quick shots, all headshots. Generally what he could come to expect from his abilities at this point.

"So this thing is tied in to the fire alarm, right?" He scanned the stairwell walls for what appeared to be the smoke detector for this room, climbing up and hanging on the supports for hte next floor's stairwell. "Let's hope this works, shall we?" He smiled and started using what was left of his kinetic energy to superheat his metallic legs. Hotter and hotter they burned, and finally Mercury pulled out the papers from his pocket and pressed them into the searing metal. It wasn't long until they started to smoke, and then the alarm started to blare, clearing the way for him to keep moving upward. "Alright, I'm through." He said, sprinting up the stairs to his exit.

Lethal force was not something Vex typically condoned. But he was unaware of Mercury's heavy-handed methods. He was hidden on the rooftop, engrossed in his own tasks. The download he had made to the mainframe had been a simple Wi-Fi update. It made the intranet network an open one, so that he could pick it up on his devices even without sitting at a terminal. It was a very subtle alteration and could potentially go unnoticed for a long time. Not that the computer tech downstairs had a hope of logging back in anyway. He had broken their monitor. There were many fancy ways a hacker could lock a person out of their own system - but so far Kerzap had never seen a patch for 'being unable to see what you were doing'. People didn't just have spare monitors lying around.

This meant only he had access to the security network. Even if it was with a low tier access pass. But nobody of higher authority was in a place to bar him from the servers. The gremlin was tackling the security system quarantines when Mercury's next update came through. He could observe that the fire suppressant system was indeed active. Sprinkles came to life across the floor where Mercury had triggered the sensors. It would seem everything was going to plan.

"As said - the crane is near floor 17. Merely make the jump. Perhaps then I can brief you on what it is that your employers have been up to. And why it is I have involved myself in your business." Despite his reserved demeanour, Kerzap was still bombarding the security net with some current common exploits. He didn't trust that matters were yet settled.

Mercury burst through the door to the 17th floor, weapon in hand. He scanned the room and found no one, only further raising his suspicion. "Oh, I see. They just don't expect me to leave this way." He clicked his tongue as he turned to the crane. The damn thing hung out about half way across the street. Meaning the construction he was supposed to jump across was a good...eh...29 feet across? Plus it was a three lane highway down below, so that meant it as even further to the next building that Kerz was supposed to meet him on. "...I really hate gremlins." He muttered, looking around. The nearby window cleaner's suspended platform would give him a tiny bit of a better jump but...that wasn't what Merc was after. He walked over and kicked the window, breaking it easily. From there he just had to fire a flare.

With that flying through the air, he checked his six again before taking control of it telekinetically, causing it to rocket upward and destroy the supports for the suspended platform, and then he immediately grabbed the cable as it slid through his hand. It hurt like a bitch, honestly. But you know what that is? A practically never ending source of kinetic energy for him to absorb. As the rest of the cable slipped from his grasp and the platform fell to the ground 17 stories below, he shrugged. If anyone got crushed, that was their problem.

He took a light jog to the other side of the room and magnetized his weapon to his leg. "Next time, I'm making you jump over the stupid pit of death." He muttered, breaking off into a sprint toward the ledge, jumping. Maybe he'd absorbed too much kinetic energy, because he cleared the platform. He cleared the entire gap. And he slid to a halt on the roof of the next building, causing him to exhale loudly. "Oh lordy lord I thought I was a goner! I thought that was it I did!" He looked back to the office building with a look that was more annoyed than snarky. That was a rarity. Now they'd evidently planned to kill him, but they'd really just pissed him off.

Loop; (int el; Kerzap.expliots) Reiteration 127...


search *Userblock

System.Kerzap.exploit127

Redefining...

Initialising... Run? Y/N


error code 0xf007c113
error code 0xc0044xh3
systems error 53: network path not found

Systems.Kerzap.patches

Downloading... Reconfiguring...

Downloads executed

Loop; (int el; Kerzap.exploits) Reiteration 127 = True.

He'd mangled and rebuilt half the system, but he was in. Kerzap finally had full access to the security net. Little good it would do them. Since Mercury had just left the building. Still, Kerzap could map out the software and use it to theorise new exploits in future. He could also download key loggers and his custom trojans in hopes they would go undiscovered. Fat chance. But he might at least get some useful feedback before they were expunged.

The projected screen in front of Kerzap vanished as he let his background programs mine the data. His claws began typing at a different invisible menu to do with his GPD. The gremlin vanished off his rooftop perch and came to be on the same building as Mercury. They were a little ways apart, and Vex teleported again to close the gap. Looking down, Kerzap beheld the small crater in the street below caused by Mercury's shenanigans. His audio transmitters came online.

"This was your doing. It hit someone." From 17 stories up there wasn't much detail to the scene. Just a bunch of specs standing shocked and appalled at the pair of legs sticking out from underneath the window cleaner's platform. What a poor, senseless waste of life. Vex found it hard to put emotion into his computer generated voice. But he tried his best, "Why do I ever help you? You humans? You take and take and take and give nothing back. You are abhorrent."

Mercury slowly stepped up to the edge and clicked his tongue at the gruesome scene below. "OK, first, I have no idea what that word means." He said simply, demagnetizing the weapon on his leg and scanning the building he'd just jumped from. "Second, that was the only source of kinetic energy on the floor that I could find. And I had to make it. Your escape route, your problem. Or I could have kept looking and killed god knows how many security guards who were just doing their job."

He chuckled and sat down on the edge, placing his gun next to him. "So instead of bitching about one dude who was too busy to look up, no really, everyone else got out of the way except for that one dude, how about you give me a hand to shut down these assholes who are sending random guys at me and expecting to win? If you don't I'm probably just gonna go after them myself..."

That the excuses might have been genuine were lost on Vex. He'd seen Mercury clear such gaps before. His immediate and subconscious response was to assume the mercenary was lying. It did not help that the man's callousness helped fuel the gremlin's bias. Another innocent life lost. And for what? So a remorseless killer and a board of corporate slick-bodies could live. He felt sick.

What was even worse was that Mercury was right about the latter. Kerzap couldn't just leave. He had to stay put and ensure his 'friend' levelled his justice at the right bastards. Vex wasn't about to let him out of his sight now. He growled in his helmet, “Hhrr. After them? But they were also just doing their job, to use your words.” Vex asserted, “Those weren't just shareholders in that meeting, Mercury. You don't get armed response for that. They were meeting with government liasons. Venture co are a contractor company. They're doing research on a federal contract. And you threatened their lives.”

Doubtless his employers had neglected to mention this salient fact. Kerzap seized the thread, “What does it look like when you stoop to assassinating influencial bureaucrats? Does it say gun for hire? Or does it say terrorist? You would bring down armaggedon on your little band. And for what? What did your employers promise to pay you? Let's remind ourselves.” With a flick of his wrist the gremlin projected his computer screen onto a rooftop vent. He opened up a file that had a saved email upon it. The email belonged to Mercury.

“Thirty-thousand a head. But you know not the consequences of what you do. Did you do research? Do you understand the history? Do you even know who you wetwork for? You should. I have warned you all of them before.” Not that Vex knew for sure himself. He couldn't trace the money trail. That was incredably difficult to do considering the account encryption. But he had a theory. A theory made all the more damning by his lack of certainty. There was only one corporate entity who could beat him for transmission security.

“Pisystems Global.” Pisystems was a multinational telecommunications conglomerate. It was the planet's largest supplier of telephone services (both fixed and mobile), internet connectivity, and third for satellite service television. It also had a subsidiary 'child' company which specialised in sub-space communication. It was in the top ten list of the Fortune 500. It was a household name for wealth and success. And according to Kerzap, it was hopelessly, buffoonishly, corrupt.

Merc wasn't even about to lie to himself or someone else. He'd totally stopped listening about halfway through that and was hanging off the side of the building, his legs magnetized to the side and he was doing hanging situps. "For the record, it wouldn't be the first time I'd been branded a terrorist. Then I got hired to kill someone in Iraq or some shit..." Really, he couldn't even remember where it was. "The point is, big shots like that? They get bounty hunters. They understand us. As long as two people are still alive on this Earth, someone is going to want someone dead. I just offer a service."

He sat back up and stared across the rooftop at Vex. "Now, if you want to come down on your high horse and remember that we toppled an entire hostile civilization with innocents among them, we can talk terms."

Vex was the one who designed the chemical weapon that Mercury himself had planted. He did good business when you coerced him enough. But now Mercury had a target. Pisystems Global. Why had he never heard of these people? No like, seriously, how could he be that out of the loop? "You know how to contact me if you find anything. I'll put Ifrit on the job too." He said with a smirk, taking a leisurely stroll down the opposite side of the building as he yelled back over his shoulder. "Good luck old buddy old pal of mine!"