Private Luxury, Lies, and Other Technical Failures

[Ana Rix]

Ana stared at Jack through the entirety of his increasingly elaborate hierarchy of plans, and by the time he reached Plan D, the corners of her mouth were already threatening to betray her. Donovan's reaction finished the job, drawing a quiet laugh from her before she shook her head. "I'm concerned that Plan D sounds less like a plan and more like an inevitability somewhere between C and E." She settled into the nearby station and looked over the unchanged readings again. "Although I'm willing to skip directly to E if we're allowed to keep doing something useful while remaining calm."

The mention of the separate power station immediately caught her attention. Ana turned from the display toward Donovan, mentally fitting the location into what she already knew about the old facility. "That makes more sense. If the privacy system was added later and kept separate from the building's primary infrastructure, whoever activated it wouldn't necessarily have needed access to anything in here." It also meant the person responsible might not be somewhere inside the station at all. The twelve extra signatures had made that possibility tempting, but she wasn't prepared to trust anything the compromised scanners told them.

"Can the power station be reached without going outside?" Ana asked. "Maintenance tunnel, utility conduit, service access, anything like that?" Her expertise extended considerably farther into circuits than firefights, and walking openly toward whoever had deliberately trapped them wasn't especially appealing. "Because if our choices are walking across the grounds toward the people who may be doing this or finding some unpleasant little maintenance passage full of wires and dust, I'm volunteering for the wires and dust."

She glanced at Jack, a faint smile returning. "We can call that Plan F. Find out who's tampering with the building without giving them an easy target."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

The man looked at her. "I suppose it could but none of us are that small. even if I hold my breath and suck it in. You would need to be a child to really get in there and move with any control." He said it while moving over and showing the vents. "You would need to be smaller though to be able to get into the vertical vents that arre how it is accessed. A terrible way to be crammed in and suffocate." He said it while Jack was moving and looked at it. "Well if we can't use it then it is likely it can't be used against us. There are not as many good utility droids. Mouse droids are not common and would stand out."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana leaned slightly to get a better look at the vent Donovan indicated, but she didn't need more than a few seconds to abandon that particular idea. Even if she could squeeze herself into the opening, the vertical section sounded like an excellent way to become stuck somewhere nobody could easily reach her. "No. I have enough respect for my continued ability to breathe that I'm not attempting that." There were limits to how far curiosity and technical competence could compensate for basic physical dimensions, and apparently they had just found one of them.

Jack's observation made her study the vent again before nodding. "Probably not through there, at least. Anyone large enough to be useful is going to have the same problem we do, and sending some unusual little utility droid crawling through a nearly abandoned security station risks somebody noticing it." That didn't eliminate the possibility entirely, especially given how deliberately the privacy grid appeared to have been activated, but she wasn't interested in building theories around increasingly unlikely possibilities when they still had something concrete to follow.

She returned her attention to Donovan. "The privacy grid still needs power, though, and right now it's getting it from somewhere it shouldn't. We don't have to physically crawl along the same route to trace that." Ana gestured toward the controls they had already been examining. "If you can show me where the grid's power normally enters the building, I can work backward from there. Whoever is supplying it externally has to connect with the existing system somewhere. Electricity doesn't particularly care whether the person following it fits through the maintenance vent."

A faint smile touched her features as she glanced toward Jack. "So Plan F survives. It just involves considerably less crawling than originally anticipated, which I consider an improvement." She turned back toward the equipment. "Let's find the connection before we start inventing Plan G. Given your progression so far, I'm a little concerned about what comes after 'we're all going to die.'"

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

The man looked at her as he motioned. "It is in the basement." He was looking and moved with it to lead the way as they were going now for the moment. Jack could see it as they were going and past the rooms towards the stairs as Donovan was looking at it and they looked down. Donovan was looking at it and motioned. "POwer is in the basement but." He was lookng up at something and spoke. "I don't remember the skylight being opened." He said it and motioned though while he was going to look up the stairs and Jack was going down. The basement was still locked but Jack motioned with a hand."This is fine, cause bad stuff never happens in the dark basement with a random window open."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana stopped at Donovan's observation and looked up rather than immediately following Jack down the stairs. The open skylight bothered her considerably more than the basement did. Someone had activated a supposedly disconnected privacy grid using an external power source, their scanners were reporting twelve signatures that shouldn't exist, and now an opening nobody remembered leaving open had appeared above them. Any one of those things might have been dismissed. Together, they were becoming an increasingly uncomfortable pattern.

"You know, I'm starting to think Plan D wasn't as hypothetical as you made it sound," Ana said dryly, though she made no move toward panic. Instead, she studied the skylight and the area immediately around it, looking for anything visibly disturbed. "Before we go down there, can someone tell me where that skylight leads? Roof access, outside grounds, another section of the building?" If someone had opened it deliberately, she wanted to know what they might have gained by doing so.

Only then did she turn toward the stairs and Jack's invitingly dark basement. "And yes, this is exactly fine. Suspicious lockdown, phantom scanner readings, unexplained open skylight, and now a locked basement containing the thing we need." She followed him down cautiously, keeping close enough that she wasn't going to be left alone if something happened. "All we're missing is someone saying they heard a strange noise and volunteering to investigate it alone."

At the locked basement door, Ana's attention shifted immediately toward the access mechanism rather than whatever might be waiting beyond it. This, at least, was a problem that belonged in her world. "Let me look at the lock before anyone gets creative," she said, stepping closer to examine it. "If the power connection we're tracing is behind this door, I'd rather know whether somebody has already tampered with the access system before we open it."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

There was a look at her and Jaack was aabout to speak as the receptionist spoke from the hallway on for a moment. "That reminds me, former chancellor there is a noise in the showers, we should investigate it." She said it to lighten the mood and Donovan was looking at her as he closed the window and walked past. "Ah up there would be one of the landing pads for speeders." He said it and was pointing. "Though we don't have any up there it would have been for high value prisoners or more special teams to be able to leave." He was looking at it and moved down as Jack was at the door and they forced it open. "She is not wrong, everything screams danger but I choose to think we are lucky and not going to be stalked and skinned and some urban legend in a few decades."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana's head turned toward the receptionist, and for a second she simply stared before a laugh escaped her. "Absolutely. We should split up while we're at it. That always improves the survival rate." At least everyone was still capable of joking, although she wasn't entirely certain whether that was reassuring or evidence that the situation had finally pushed all of them over some collective edge. Jack's contribution did very little to improve matters. "And thank you for adding being skinned to the list of possibilities. Somehow that hadn't occurred to me yet."

Donovan's explanation about the landing pad was considerably more useful, and Ana glanced upward again as she followed the others down. An unused landing pad made the open skylight harder to dismiss as the result of normal activity. "So there's no reason anyone from this station should have been using it today." That did not prove someone had entered that way, but with everything else happening, she wasn't inclined to dismiss the coincidence. "Once we're done down here, I think someone should check that landing pad. Preferably someone who knows what signs a speeder landing or a person coming through there would leave, because that person definitely isn't me."

When the basement door finally gave way, Ana did not immediately follow Jack through it. She stayed just behind him and looked into the room first, searching for anything obviously out of place before committing herself to entering. "You can choose to believe we're lucky. I'll choose to believe that computers and electrical systems generally leave evidence when somebody does something they're not supposed to." That was considerably more comfortable territory for her than mysterious skylights and dark basements.

She finally stepped inside once it appeared safe enough, her attention already shifting toward the equipment Donovan had brought them down to find. "Show me where the privacy grid connects. If someone's feeding power into it from outside, there should be something here telling us how they're doing it." A faint smile returned as she glanced toward Jack. "And if we find a collection of knives, masks, or suspiciously human-shaped sheets of plastic instead, I'm invoking Plan D immediately."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

Donovan was leading the way as Jack looked around with a nod of his head listening. "It is a security station never know what they might have taken from crime scenes or disturbances." Donovan looked back only for a moment as he stopped and tapped it. The gutted stations there as the wires had been cut and stripped in areas. "The old power system for the primary. Essentials will be stripped and taken out next week. The secondaries and backups were tken longer back. THe wires go up tot he station and feed into some of the filtration systems for the vaults that would be used. Without power we don't really use orr go into them now."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana followed Donovan's explanation closely, her attention moving from the gutted stations to the exposed wiring. Jack's comment about evidence storage earned a brief look from her. "Wonderful. So the basement may also contain mysterious evidence from old crimes. I'm glad we're continuing to improve the atmosphere down here." Despite the dry remark, this was considerably more comfortable territory for her. Old wiring and partially dismantled systems made sense in ways phantom scanner readings and unexplained skylights did not.

She moved closer to where Donovan had indicated, careful not to touch anything yet as she studied what remained of the primary system. "So most of this should either be dead or drawing only enough power to support whatever essentials are still operating." Her gaze followed the wiring upward before returning to the stripped sections. If the privacy grid was receiving enough external power to operate, that energy had to travel through something that was still physically connected. "That actually helps. There are fewer legitimate systems left for an unexpected draw to hide among."

The mention of the vault filtration systems, however, caught her attention, and Ana looked toward Donovan. "Wait. Those vaults are still physically connected to this system, even though nobody uses them?" She glanced toward the wiring again, mentally tracing the route he had described. "And they're somewhere people normally wouldn't bother checking because there's no reason to go inside without power." Given everything else that had happened, she wasn't particularly fond of unexplored spaces attached to the same infrastructure they were investigating.

Ana looked toward Jack, then back to Donovan. "Before we start opening abandoned vaults in the dark and complete every bad-horror-story decision available to us, show me which lines should be feeding only the filtration systems and which ones lead back toward the station." A faint smile appeared. "If one of them is carrying power it absolutely shouldn't be carrying, we may finally have something real to follow instead of twelve imaginary people and increasingly suspicious architecture."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

"The lighting is, the filtration systems aren't so they are mostly sealed with minimal air that won't recycle. As far as I know all the stuff has been taken out of there. THe lights though are the only essential as well as some of the power. FOr the computers and other few systems we have like communications." He said it while he was moving and Jack looked at her and at the man. "It is all good, if it is sealed that is one less place for things to go. What else is there?" Donovan was looking at them and spoke. "We have the investigators offices, the droid bay but it is empty, the morgue storage and there is the armory but most things have been takenf rom there."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana listened as Donovan worked through what remained in the building, mentally sorting each location by relevance. The sealed vaults dropped considerably lower on her list once he clarified that only their lighting remained powered. "All right. Then unless someone has developed a particularly elaborate plan involving sitting in a sealed vault until they run out of air, I think we can leave those alone." Her attention returned to the stripped power system. The communications lines were more interesting, especially considering that communications had been one of the first things the privacy grid had taken away from them.

The rest of Donovan's inventory earned increasingly dubious looks from her. "An empty droid bay sounds wonderfully boring. I'm voting that one as least likely to become horrifying." The investigators' offices were plausible places for someone to hide or interfere with systems, while an almost-empty armory was worth remembering simply because almost was doing important work in that description. Then there was the morgue. Ana looked toward Jack. "And apparently you weren't satisfied with a dark basement and an unexplained skylight, so the building has thoughtfully provided us with morgue storage too. Your urban legend is developing an unnecessarily detailed setting."

Her humor faded as she returned to the actual problem. "Before we search rooms, I still want to trace the power. We know something that shouldn't be operating is operating, and that's the one piece of evidence we don't have to speculate about." She indicated the remaining lines with a small motion of her hand. "If communications, lighting, and a handful of computer systems are the only legitimate loads left, an external supply feeding the privacy grid should be easier to isolate. Once we know where that power enters the system, we'll have a much better idea of which part of the building matters."

Ana glanced toward Donovan again. "After that, investigators' offices first. Armory second, just to confirm what 'most things' actually means." Her eyes briefly shifted in the direction he had indicated for the remaining area. "The morgue can remain very comfortably at the bottom of the list unless the wiring gives us a reason to go there." A faint smile returned. "I may be curious, but I do possess some survival instincts."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

"I don't think they have anything in the morgue anymore." Jack said it as he was looking at her and shrugged for a moment though... there was a chance after all and that was what would make it the most dangerous. "Still you are not wrong." He was moving and Donovan looked at Ana. "The armorry has a suit of riot geat in case I need it and some spare power cells for the guns we got in case and a few perrsonal shields in case." He was speaking and looking at it. "ENough that when we close I can carry the cases out of here easily enough." He was looking at it though and the power she was talking about. "But ther eis nothing hooked up down here, it would likely be outside."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana gave Jack a sidelong look at his uncertainty about the morgue. "I would appreciate it if we didn't investigate that possibility purely for the sake of finding out." Donovan's description of the armory was more reassuring. A single suit of riot gear, spare power cells, and a few personal shields sounded less like an arsenal waiting to be stolen and more like the remnants of a station already halfway through shutting down. "All right. Then the armory probably isn't our immediate problem either. Though given our current situation, I'd remember those personal shields are there."

Her attention returned to Donovan when he confirmed there was nothing connected downstairs. That changed the direction of the search, but at least it narrowed things down. Ana looked once more over the stripped equipment and wiring before nodding quietly. "Then we've reached the end of what this basement can tell us. If the privacy grid is receiving power from an external source and there's no connection down here carrying it, we need to find where that source is actually feeding into the building."

She straightened and looked toward Jack. "Which unfortunately means going back outside." The prospect didn't particularly appeal to her after the unexplained skylight and everything else, but tracing the power was still the most concrete lead they had. "Donovan said the old power station is between the motor pool and the old labs. That's where I'd start. We don't need to understand everything that's happening yet. We just need to find something that shouldn't be there, and an active power source attached to a supposedly disconnected system qualifies nicely."

Ana started back toward the stairs with the others, then glanced at Jack. "So apparently Plan F has become 'walk outside toward the suspicious power source.'" Her expression turned mildly resigned. "I preferred the version with wires and dust. It involved considerably less chance of someone shooting at me."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix


He gave a nod of his head. 'Imagine how easy it would have been if we had just stayed at the party and drank with all of the other people. We could be hearing about trade deals." He said it while he was walking with Donovan though and they were going back up the stairs to check. "We'll have to go outside unarmed." Donovan looked at him and gave a nod. "I'll go with you but if there is something out there we don't want to leave the door open so they can come inside it would be more dangerous if we were in here with them. At leaast out there we can see them coming, they can hide in any number of rooms inside."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana followed them back up the stairs, and Jack's observation earned a quiet laugh. "Trade deals, bad drinks, and conversations with people pretending to be interested in both. That sounds wonderful now." At the beginning of the evening she probably would have considered it painfully dull. After chasing a shapeshifter, recovering a suspicious datapad, getting trapped inside a security station, and investigating phantom scanner readings, Ana had developed a renewed appreciation for boring diplomatic functions.

The mention of going outside unarmed made her amusement fade somewhat. Ana wasn't especially bothered by the unarmed part personally. Giving her a blaster would hardly transform her into the person anyone wanted facing whatever might be waiting for them. Still, Donovan's reasoning made sense. If someone was actually outside, opening a door and leaving it unsecured behind them could turn their relatively defensible building into something considerably worse.

"I'd rather they stay outside too," Ana agreed, glancing toward the exit as they approached. "There are already enough rooms in here for me to wonder what's around every corner without deliberately inviting anyone else inside." She wasn't particularly enthusiastic about walking out to investigate either, but at least outside offered visibility that the station's corridors didn't.

Ana looked toward Jack with a faint smile. "For the record, the next time someone hires me to work security at a diplomatic summit, I'm doing the job I was actually paid to do." She lifted a finger as she continued. "I sit at a terminal, watch the network, listen to people talk about trade agreements, collect my credits, and go home. No chasing anyone, no stolen datapads, and absolutely no mysterious lockdowns." Her smile grew slightly. "I didn't appreciate how good I had it a few hours ago."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

"Ah but then you wouldn't have been able to meet two of the best looking singles in your general aarea." He said it and patted Donovan on his shoulder as he was securing the door with a lock to be secured. THe man laughed. "Sure." Jack was looking at parts of it for the moment though and he was going as the office doors were getting closed after they culd look through them. "Make sure they are empty and closed, if someone does come here and opens one then we'll be able to knowor they will leave it in a way to lure us over and isolate from the group."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana looked at Jack, then at Donovan when the former so generously included him in that assessment. "Two of the best-looking singles in my general area?" she repeated, amusement creeping into her expression. "That's an impressively specific category." She wasn't particularly inclined to argue the point where Jack was concerned, though she kept that thought to herself. Donovan's reaction drew a quiet laugh from her instead. "I think you've overwhelmed him with the endorsement."

She stayed with them as they moved through the offices, looking into each room when they checked it and watching the doors close behind them. There was something almost comforting about how simple Jack's idea was. After compromised scanners, externally powered systems, and readings they couldn't trust, a closed door was refreshingly uncomplicated. If one looked different when they came back through, there wasn't much technology involved that could lie to them about it.

"I like this better than the scanners," Ana admitted as she glanced back along the corridor. "A door is either the way we left it or it isn't." Of course, Jack's second possibility wasn't particularly comforting. Someone deliberately leaving one open to draw their attention would fit disturbingly well with the rest of the evening. Ana remained close to the others rather than lingering around any of the rooms, quite content to let Donovan handle a building he knew far better than she did.

Her attention eventually returned to Jack, and the earlier amusement crept back into her expression. "Although I'm starting to suspect this entire investigation has actually been an elaborate advertisement for the local singles scene." She glanced toward Donovan before adding, "The security station lockdown seems excessive, but apparently you're both very committed to marketing."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

"There are studies that relationships formed under duress and extreme circumstances are usually lasting for a few weeks until the thrill of it died down. THe studies for it were promising maybe I think the conclusion was it was questionable." He said it while walking with Donovan who was doing one more and -locking the doors with a key caard after making sure they were cleared and closed. The break room where everyone was he moved around. "It isn't much but in is deeper in and secure for most thing. WIth the food and water here, just have three doorways that would need to be secured." He had the receptionist in there while closing the doors and secured two fo them while he was walkign with Jack.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana gave Jack a sideways look as he recited the findings of whatever study he had apparently remembered at precisely the right moment. Considering the conversation had begun with him advertising the two best-looking singles in her general vicinity, she had a fairly good idea why relationships formed under extreme circumstances had suddenly become relevant. "Promising, but questionable," she repeated, a small smile appearing. "That's a very convenient conclusion. It lets you cite the study without actually committing to whether you believe it."

She followed while Donovan finished clearing and securing the remaining rooms, watching the keycard locks engage behind them. The break room wasn't exactly where Ana would have chosen to spend an extended lockdown, but with food and water available and only three approaches, she could understand why Donovan had chosen it for the receptionist. More importantly, it put someone who wasn't involved in the investigation somewhere relatively protected, rather than leaving her alone near the front of the station.

Ana waited while Donovan secured two of the doors before continuing with him and Jack. "I suppose there are worse places to be stuck," she said, looking back toward the break room. "Food, water, and fewer directions for something unpleasant to arrive from sounds considerably better than wandering around the station." Given their current circumstances, her standards for comfort had fallen remarkably quickly.

Her attention drifted back to Jack as they walked, amusement returning. "Although now I'm curious how much research you've done into relationships formed while trapped inside mysteriously locked-down security stations." She regarded him for a moment before adding, "That seems considerably more specific than general duress. The sample size might be disappointing."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

"Less then I apparently should have but surprisingly more then might be suspected. I met Laori when the Wheel got attacked as a chancellor and we were all stuck then but later what really sealed anything was the misadventures on Zeltros after a rival tried to drug us and make problems. Having vulpesen and her went a long way towards preserving the office of the chancellor." He said it whileDonovan was securing things and leading the way. With a chance for them to be able to move around as Jack was checking on some more areas but let Donovan secure them. "And it could always get worse."