章 20: [1.20]: Breaching the Second Checkpoint
Karina stayed as quiet as a mouse while the Gaiter Goods Transport automatically made its way through the outer core of the facility. Even without eyes outside the vehicle, Karina could perfectly determine her position simply through precise mental calculations thanks to the bio-implant.
The region between the first and second checkpoint was narrow. It was primarily used as a way to separate the security personnel from the researchers, engineers and technicians that worked at the core of the base. This served many purposes, of which the most important was the need to reduce the chances of information leakage.
It is a well-known fact that a fortress is only as strong as its weakest link. And in the modern world, this weakness wasn't necessarily a physical property. The only thing necessary to crumble a monolith was to find leverage at the most vulnerable links. That was why Halcyon separated the researchers from the security staff.
Although, on paper, it would be safer to amplify security by allowing security staff to monitor the core of the facility. All it did was increase the number of uncontrollable variables with access to classified information. It wasn't practical in the long run. It would only take for a third party to find leverage on key security staff and 'persuade' them to share some of their observations.
Thus by limiting the personnel who come into contact with the research, not only does the company prevent such catastrophes, it also holds the researchers more accountable. Should the information fall into the hands of their competitors, the company would know that the breach was caused by the personnel at the core of the facility. Allowing them to crack down on those snitches.
Sure, the company could vet its staff thoroughly and place safeguards to prevent such problems. But if they decided to take such actions, the movement would be noticed by competitors and external agents operating within their ranks.
In the end, the simplest solution is often the most effective. However, given present circumstances, it was proven that even the sturdiest of ships was susceptible to leaks with the passing of time.
Simon would often ponder over the jobs he and his crew would take on. He'd imagine what he would have done differently as the defender, to shield himself against external threats. What he found most common, and ironic, was that it was the more prominent corporations that often left blatant weaknesses for attackers to exploit.
While his observation may be biased due to his limited experience working primarily in a Rank 4 system, the pattern was quite obvious. The more renowned corporations tended to pile up a ton of advanced tech with hopes that it would deter possible attackers. It was the same as peppering flypaper all over the household with the hopes of catching pestering insects. Although it was an effective strategy, it was time, resource, and space consuming. Heaping a multitude of advanced technology had a similar effect. Even though it prevented most threats it was expensive and largely redundant. All it took was one extremely precise and targeted attack to bypass the entire security, and that was one of the things Simon and his crew specialised in. By living in a rathole such as Eaton I, the orphans had turned into expert vermin capable of worming their way through even the most robust of nets.
According to Simon, the most effective security is one with purpose and functionality. It must tell a story.
What is a security system? It is a framework in place to protect an asset from any form of attack. That is its primary purpose. Everything within the system must adhere to this concept. To that end, the first thing that needs to be considered is the priority for the assets within a security system.
It is inherently impossible to protect everything. There will always be holes in the net that an attacker can exploit. An effective security system leverages this and ensures that the assets with the highest priority are never breached. It is fine to sacrifice a few limbs as long as the brain and the CNS are kept intact. Most people keep backups of their 'seeds' within personal vaults to ensure the propagation of their bloodline, so although painful even the reproductive organs are expendable.
Therefore, instead of spreading out the security across the entire system, it is far superior to arrange it in tiers. Not only does this save on expenditure, but it also ensures maximum efficiency in terms of safety.
The next detail to take into consideration is the functionality of the security system. Where will the system be implemented? What kind of breaches can be expected? What would be the most effective countermeasures to such breaches?
These are the questions a security tzar must ask themself when designing the security protocol for the asset under their care. Nowadays, large corporations opted for the one-size-fits-all solution that provided complete 360-degree coverage. It included everything from subterranean breaches to aerial attacks. While this was great, would it be of any use if the region to be protected was underwater?
In those scenarios, the security tzar should place themself in the position of an attacker and work their way around their system. Most companies in the past would even hire white hats to navigate through their security and identify problem points. But nowadays, such practices were slowly phased out. People started to place excessive trust in their machines and software, and less on the people that used them.
By the time Karina reached the second checkpoint, she had already switched off all electronic devices on her, including her communication device, so that the sensor wouldn't detect them. The non-sentient entity sensor essentially searched for any unregistered electrical signals or EM waves when anything passed through it. Additionally, it formed a dome and could sense and intercept any outgoing or incoming signal. Evidently, Halcyon Inc. wanted their researchers to only communicate through monitored channels.
Karina's primary goal after gaining entry was to gain access to the central system and plant a backdoor for Simon. She waited a while for the transport to stop, and quickly leapt onto the ceiling of the transport, sticking on like a lizard.
Her bodysuit blended perfectly into the walls; anyone would easily miss her if they swept their eyes across. She stealthily crept near the retracting door at the back of the vehicle and waited for it to open. While she didn't want to raise any alarms, precautions were mandatory. And so she readied a garroting wire… for safety…
Surprisingly, when the door did open, it was not a human that entered, but a robot. Karina figured this was another one of Halcyon's arcane security precautions. While the dome surrounding the facility intercepted virtual communication, it didn't do much to intercept the old-fashioned methods. The occupants of the facility's core could very easily sneak something into these regular transports.
There was sufficient headroom within the transports cargo hold for Karina to sneak over the robot. Even if it did have any sensors, it wouldn't catch her thanks to her bodysuit. She was worried that the robot might have a camera connected to the closed-circuit systems of the facility, but she had a belief that the person observing the scene would be focusing on other things and would overlook her.
Her confidence was rooted in her knowledge of the human psyche. Thanks to her 'programming', Karina had consumed a lot of information on manipulating human psychology. One of the topics she covered was the inherent filtration performed by the human brain on its biological sensors.
A human's senses are capable of logging a myriad of information. However, we only use a fraction of it regularly. The excess information is filtered out so that the brain doesn't overload. In fact, humans don't even notice the presence of their nose in their line of sight until someone brings it up.
There was an old experiment conducted to prove this, called the 'Invisible Gorilla' experiment. It consisted of a video with two groups of people wearing all black and all white respectively. One of the members would be holding a conspicuous ball. The instruction provided to the viewer was to count every time the ball landed in the hands of someone garbed in black.
Although the viewers were successful in discerning the number of passes, nearly all of them missed a person dressed in a furry gorilla suit, who walked in casually, thumped their chest, and just walked out.
So Karina had sufficient faith that a blip dressed in all-black slithering through the video would be overlooked as the flickering of shadows.
She inched towards the edge of the door and pulled out a grapple projector from her bag. Aiming carefully at a spot on the facility's cargo bay ceiling that was outside the scope of generic surveillance, she took the shot.
The hook hurtled through the air in a linear trajectory and found purchase on the target location. With a press of a button on her person, the almost invisible line started to retract, pulling Karina from her position on the vehicle's ceiling.
Right as she approached the point, she controlled her speed and secured herself onto the wall. She stuck upside down on the ceiling of the cargo bay like an insect.
From her current position, Karina had a complete visual of the cargo bay. It was enormous, yet sparsely populated. There was currently only one other vehicle parked in the bay, apart from the Gaiter Goods truck Karina hitched a ride in. The bay was well-lit by floor lighting, leaving the ceiling obscured in shadows. There were multiple accesses from outside, all of which were automated rolling shutters with reinforced alloys. There was another prominent gateway opposite from those accesses that opened up to a tunnelling walkway. Most likely it led to the facility's internals.
The other vehicle was much larger. And with a closer look, Karina could make out multiple turret platforms distributed across its sides. It was insanely fortified! She couldn't tell whether it was an assault vehicle or a cargo transport.
Stifling a whistle in awe, Karina shifted her attention and searched for possible ways out of the cargo bay.
Apart from the entrances into the bay from outside, and the walkway from the bay to the facility, there were two other possible passages for Karina to take. The first was a translating belt next to where the Gaiter Goods transport was parked. The robots moving to and from the back of the transport moved the manifests onto the translating belt, which carried it through a tight tunnel. Karina guessed the tunnel would move through a series of scanners to verify the contents of the manifests and thus struck out that option. She didn't know what kind of safeguards were placed inside the tunnel and didn't want to take any chances with her life.
The other option was a vent near the ceiling on the same wall as the walkway to the main facility. This was at a higher elevation, thus there would be a smaller chance of being tagged by surveillance.
She made her decision and shuffled coordinatedly towards the vent while keeping an eye on the area around her. It was her unconscious tick to look for possible entrances and exits as well as possible surveillance every time she entered a high-stress situation. Although outwardly Karina was calm and composed, inside, her mind was running at superhuman speeds. Her senses were in such a state that she could make out if a pin dropped at an occluded corner of the room.
Finally, she reached the vent and oriented herself upright against the wall. Gravity was still a thing, and even the bio-implant couldn't negate its effect. From her bag, she pulled out a black, dome-shaped device that was the size of her palm. With a press of a button, the top of the dome separated from the bottom.
The bottom part resembled a controller with a screen embedded in it. With a flip of a switch, the upper dome started to open up forming a four-legged articulated bot. Karina pulled a wire from the controller and attached it to a port behind her ear.
In her line of sight, an opaque screen appeared showing the perspective of the bot in her hand. She then removed a multi-tool from her bag and carefully slid open the vent, providing just enough space for the bot to move in.
Following that, she controlled the robot with the device in her hand, while observing its perspective.
Conveniently, the bot also projected audio feedback, so Karina could hear everything happening around it.
The robot stealthily made its way through the ventilation and reached the first opening in its path. It then amplified the audio sensors to determine what was happening on the other side.
The first thing it heard was an exasperated exclamation, "Why the hell is the transport not leaving?"
To that, another voice responded, "Should we go check it out?"
"Can't! Goes against protocol. Fuck! I hate this goddamn planet! Shitty climate! Shitty corporations! Shitty people!" the man sighed and continued, "Call it in. We need to figure out what's happening."
One of the robot's limbs contained a multi-tool. With instruction, the limb morphed itself and began to shimmy open the vent.
With sufficient leeway to squeeze through, the robot contracted itself and started to scoot through the gap.
Once it entered the room, the bot quickly scurried over to a dark corner. From that position, it began to perform a visual scan for the area.
The room it was currently in resembled a security and surveillance depot. There was a multitude of screens on one wall, with a massive control table positioned right in front of it.
Currently, there were only two occupants in the room. One of them was on a call, while the other was scarfing down a snack not available locally. Their attention was focused on a screen that displayed the Gaiter Goods transport which Karina used to shuttle in.
Karina controlled the robot to carefully move behind the control table. The table was basically an all-in-one installation that provided complete control over every unit in the net it was connected to. It was usually included in most high-end security suites due to its customer-friendly GUI.
The control table could tailor itself automatically to match the unit being controlled. Right now, it displayed a grid of options pertaining to controlling the entire surveillance network.
Karina found the port panel on the base of the control table. Due to the opacity of the control table model, the panel was occluded from the eyes of the two occupants in the room.
With a flourish on the controller in her hand, Karina caused a protrusion to extend from the underside of the bot. The tip matched the opening to the ports.
The bot positioned itself so that the tip was right above the port opening and plunged its member in.
Another translucent screen popped up in Karina's eyesight. It displayed a program window, which Karina was all too familiar with. Through a series of commands, the window changed and displaying an uploading animation.
Karina waited patiently while the loading bar started to fill up. Right as it reached completion, the window closed automatically.
Karina turned on her communication device and tuned in to the regular channel.
[We're in.] Simon's voice resounded in her ears.
クリエイターの想い 
Junior_Sundar
Junior_Sundar Word Count: 2584
We're entering the final stretch for this arc (only 5 more chapters + 1 epilogue)
You must've noticed by now that the cover page was updated. It may look empty now (w/ a lot of black space), but that is because we are still to meet the other MCs! The cover page will be fully completed once we enter Volume 3.
Also, the final MC from this arc is completed and uploaded in the comments.
Please consider voting with Power Stones to help me out :)
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