Chapter 17: Chapter 17: Preparation and Planning

A day passes. Driving along the street, Jamar, Ben, and John are in the back seats of a small car, it’s a nicer model but nothing too fancy. Up front, Peter and Rachel are looking around as Peter tries to focus on the road, driving. 

“You know I didn’t think someone like you would be seen driving something like this.” Jamar comments as Peter looks back.

“Not everyone likes to show off and besides this thing can go up to 650hp.”

Ben looks at the others confused.

“Is that good or bad?” He asks.

“It’s alright, your average sports car gets about a consistent 500hp. Most cars can’t go faster than that and the ones that do can only do it for a couple minutes tops.”

“Every second counts.” Rachel adds.

“Yeah, and they won’t expect something like this to be able to do it.” Peter finishes.

“Guess, we have our getaway car already.” John says.

Peter looks back at them.

“What? I thought you said it was going to be an easy run.”

“Anything can happen.” Jamar says.

“The buildings up ahead, it’s probably best if we get out here and walk.” John says.

Looking around the street, Peter signals and moves towards the shoulder.

Slowly stopping, he parks the car as he looks over at them. The guys start to unlatch their seatbelts as they open the doors as Rachel continues to look ahead.

“As planned, you guys go without us, while my brother and I are going to drive around and map out the area. We’ll be back to pick you guys up in an hour, got it?” Rachel says.

“Got it.”

“Good luck.” Jamar says.

Shutting the doors behind them, Jamar, Ben, and John watch as they drive off. John turns to look at the others who are dressed in corporate attire, dressed in suits, he looks at each of their faces as he begins to sigh. Jamar’s hair is braided up as Ben’s hair is unkempt.

“What’s wrong?” Jamar asks.

“We stick out like a sore thumb.” John says.

“Fuck it, we’ll just get rid of the survaliance tapes.” Jamar responds confidently.

John shakes his head as he looks around on the street as others already begin looking towards them, he looks at Jamar and Ben.

“What if someone recognizes us?”

“So what? Not like any of them will be around.”

John faintly coughs.

“You’re right.”

Jamar waves at them as he starts walking.

“Come on, now quit standing around, it’s probably making us look even more suspicious.”

The others follow him as they make their way towards the research institution. It’s more akin to a combination of an open university or college only at a much larger scale with an addition of spacious open areas for people to lounge in with a strange rooftop garden setup.

They make their way over to a concrete park where people can be seen lounging about, enjoying their breaks next to artificially painted trees and greenery. A few gardeners and maintenance workers can be seen spraying the trees. As others in lab coats in suits talk to each other and go about their days.

It’s both loud and quiet at the same time. As the people standing around each other seem to not even notice their existence. Almost as if they were in another world entirely.

“Jesus christ, this place gives me the creeps.” Jamar whispers to John.

Finding a place to sit, John, Jamar, and Ben sit down next to each other. Ben looks around the place as John and Jamar try to not garner any attention. They glance over at others for a moment as they notice a few glances back.

“So Will, any new reports on our quarterly numbers?” John says a little louder than necessary.

“Ah, it’s the same as always.” Jamar replies as Ben looks over at them.

“Eh, maybe we’ll need to start downsizing again, always works in increasing our productivity sheets. Plus we get to meet new guys like you.” John says to Ben.

A few lab coats can be seen visibly getting up and leaving as other suits scoff.

“So what do you think? Everything you thought it would be?” Jamar asks.

“I guess. I don’t know, something feels off.” Ben asks.

“Yeah, places like this always feel like that, there’s no real personal connection.” John says.

“Huh.” Ben replies.

“I don’t know, I guess I need a little more time to understand.” Ben says.

John raises his eyebrows as he looks at Jamar who smiles.

“Why don’t we have a look around then?” Jamar says.

Jamar stands up as John follows suit.

“I don’t know, I feel like it’s an inconvenience.”

“Don’t say that. Come on.”

Ben hesitantly looks over at them as he gets up. Jamar pats him on his shoulder as they walk along together through the campus. Doing so they walk past a few security guards who ignore them as they walk by.

John looks over at their backs and turns to Jamar.

“The security company checks out.” He says to them in a whisper.

“That’s good, at least they didn’t lie about that.” Jamar adds.

Walking along, we see in their suits a small dot protruding out from their pockets. As the lenses in them refract from the sunlight as they continue along.

They turn a corner as they stop in between a blindspot between two cameras. Jamar and John look around as they cover Ben who crouches next to a box attached to the building.

“You sure you can get into that thing?”

“Oh, yea. I used to lockpick things all the time for fun. It was a club at my university.”

“What? Why?” John asks.

“I don’t know, just was. some of the other guys were doing it so I just joined them.”

“The hell? That’s the sketchiest thing I’ve heard all day.” Jamar says.

After a few seconds, they hear a click as they look over to see Ben taking off the padlock.

“Ah, good thing these guys don’t seem to take security too seriously.” Ben says while he begins to open up the box, inside we see a moderately expensive looking router as he begins to take out a small thumb drive.

“What’s that?” John asks.

“It’s a RAT, Remote Access Tool.”

“Don’t put that in, we don’t know anything about their security yet.” John says.

“Oh, okay.” Ben says.

“I’m not sure if it’s going to be a big deal.”

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“Just don’t. It might trigger something.”

Putting the thumb drive back into his pocket, Ben seems a little disappointed as he brings his phone out instead.

“Alright, let me just take a picture of the serial no of this router for later than.”

“Hey, security is coming over.” Jamar says.

“Almost done?” John asks.

“Yeah. Yeah.” Ben replies as he quickly tries to get the cover back on.

Seeing them walk over and Ben not done yet, John glances over at Jamar as he thinks to himself. He feigns a cough. As Jamar looks over.

“You’re going to hate me for this.” John says.

“For what?” Jamar asks.

John punches Jamar in his stomach as he falls to the ground.

“How many fucking times do I have to tell you. How you look matters. You really think that when they see that shit they don’t talk about it to me behind your back? Get your shit together.” John leans into it as he looks over at the guards who are now stopped.

“What are you looking at?” John says.

The guards begin to walk away as they don’t look back at them.

“It was nothing, just a domestic issue.”

Hearing this, John cringes as he looks at Jamar who struggles to get back up. He looks up at John as if waiting on cue, John gives him his hand as Jamar immediately gets up.

“You alright?” John asks.

“Yeah. Yeah.” Jamar says as he seems to check his system.

Looking back they turn to Ben who’s finishing up locking up the box. He turns around as he looks at them.

“Sorry.” Ben says.

“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.” John replies.

“Is that it?” Jamar asks.

“Well we’d need to check another box to be sure they’re using the same equipment in all of them, but it’s a good enough guess.” Ben says. John stops him.

“That isn’t possible. Let’s leave before we attract any more attention.”

John begins to urgently walk back as the others begin to follow him.

“Is there any way to see what systems they’re running?”

“Yeah, we can sniff around for packets but that's only for systems that are connected to the wifi, there’s a lot more steps involved, they probably have their own internal systems too.” Ben replies after thinking for a bit.

“Got it.” John says.

“Looks like that’s everything for now, and just in time.” Jamar says.

Heading back towards the front of the institution they see Peter and Rachel driving back. Walking towards the shoulder they wait as their ride makes it way over.

Opening the door, Rachel and Peter don’t look over.

“Take us back to the warehouse.” John says.

Shutting the door behind them, John looks in front as Rachel glances at them through the rear view mirror, without saying a word she begins to drive off. Ben takes out his cyberdeck as he begins to work on it as Jamar looks towards him.

“So… How did it go?” Peter asks.

“Went, great. Confirmed some basic info and got some other stuff out of it too.” John says.

“That’s good to hear.”

It’s quiet inside of the car as they all seem to do their own thing.

Rachel looks over at John.

“So… What do you think?” Rachel asks.

John looks over.

“What do I think?” John replies.

“You know, the job and everything.” Rachel continues.

John thinks to himself.

“Too hard to tell yet. But I think we’ve got a decent chance at pulling it off.”

Rachel looks away as she focuses on the road.

“Good.”

 

---

 

Back at the warehouse, the gang stands around the table as Jamar drags a smart screenboard over, basically just a large ass touch screen. John looks over at Ben who’s still on his cyberdeck pressing a few buttons he looks over at the screen. It updates showing his screen and the footage from the visit along with several notes.

“Great, you took notes.” John says.

“Oh, yeah. It’s on the model numbers and other stuff I noticed.” Ben says.

“That’s good. Good.” Jamar says.

On the screen, the video footage begins to speed up as they make their way through the plaza and around the building looking into the building. On the side, Ben get’s work extracting the 3D Model of the building as a loading bar can be seen.

“Give me a second, I’m going to run a machine learning model that should make it so that we can track our footage to the relative location on the model if it’s right.”

“Right.” Jamar says as he looks over at the others who just stare at the screen.

It updates as it shows their relative locations as dots and matches the footage to the relative location on the model. For a brief moment they seem to look away in relief. As they continue to watch on. Besides a few hiccups it follows pretty closely.

They continue to watch as they circle around the place. Then selecting a layer, Ben shows the first floor and a side by side comparison of it. A few things have been moved around but the designs are similar.

“Looks like it’s close.” John says.

“It’s probably an older model from when they built it.” Peter mentions.

John sighs.

“What’s the plan?” Jamar asks as he looks over at John.

“We don’t know if it’s going to match perfectly or at all. But for the most part the information we've got looks good. It’s still a gamble, we don’t have shifts or anything just that there won’t be any security on us for a few hours. You guys still want to do this?

The others look around the room in silence, no one seems to say much as Jamar nods.

“Yeah, I’m still down. And by the looks of it, so is everybody else.”

John closes his eyes and opens them.

“Alright, here’s the plan.”

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