"Let me make this clear: there's nothing to negotiate. You created the problem, so take it to headquarters if you want help. I can't—and don't have the authority to—fix this for you."
"Losing two A-plus combatants at once? Not even our base director can cover that, let alone me."
After saying that, the Finance Officer hung up and set the phone aside.
"Sigh… grasping at straws when you're desperate." He slumped onto the sofa, exhausted.
But he'd barely sat down when something felt off.
"Why is the door open?"
Staring at the crack, the Finance Officer tensed.
He eased from the sofa back to the chair behind the main terminal, slid a hand beneath the desk, then froze—watching, waiting.
Nothing else moved, yet he refused to believe the door had opened by chance.
He lifted the terminal and dialed.
The call connected after a single ring.
"Finance Officer?"
"I think we have a breach," he said grimly. "My door's been cracked open. Can you check—"
"Already on it."
The voice cut him off.
"It's not just you. The director's, accounting, and project offices were all cracked at the same moment. Footage shows the four door opened simultaneously."
"Plus, nearly ten researchers just reported their Level-3 clearance cards missing. One or two might be carelessness, but ten—gone at once? I'm betting we've got an invisible-type intruder."
The Finance Officer's brow knit.
"If they invisible, how'd they get in here? Level-3 cards alone aren't enough for this zone."
"They used Dr. Neil's Level-2 card. Dr. Neil left the base earlier—must have been lifted then. The system just logged that card opening the Data Center door. I've triggered full lockdown; we should trap our ghost inside."
"Good. Bag that rat! A whole base and Security lets one invisible mouse scurry in—what do they even do?"
He ended the call.
Patting his pocket and finding his own card still there, he exhaled, leaned back, and set the terminal aside.
"Ten Level-3s and one Level-2—how slick is this freak? Nobody noticed their cards lifted?"
He couldn't fathom it; even against an invisible thief, surely you'd feel something.
"Whatever. After this, Security will come begging for more funding. Better start calculating their cut now…"
He opened the terminal and began crunching numbers.
The moment he loaded the base's liquid-cash account, he froze as if cast in stone.
The balance that should have read over five million now showed a single, glaring digit.
[0]
"S-system glitch… right?"
He rubbed his eyes, closed every window, and refreshed frantically.
After half a dozen F5s, he logged in again.
Still zero.
A shrill shriek tore from his throat…
Minutes earlier, elsewhere—back to Cipher.
In the Administration lobby, a turning over coin hovered, spinning lazily mid-air.
Cipher stood outside the finance office, gazing at the quantum storage in her hand like it was a money tree.
"System gear really is broken—five million credits, swiped in a blink!"
She'd figured the cash was gone when she saw the large terminal logged in.
Those rigs can't pay in credit points; only personal units can.
Yet on a whim she'd slotted the quantum storage into the terminal—and it drank the balance dry.
That's when she grasped the device's real power.
Any logged-in account, on any hardware—siphonable.
Absolutely busted.
So if she could jack someone's personal login, she could bleed their credits clean—no transaction pin needed.
That free ten-pull purple keeps gaining value.
And bonus: the officer had claimed "barely five million left," yet she'd drained 5.23 million. Someone's been skimming.
Not her problem—she'd happily take whatever the heavens offered.
Once she calmed down, she eyed the other three office doors.
She twirled the quantum storage, a grin spreading.
…tedious looting skipped…
Back in the lobby, Cipher stared at the 7-million-plus total (a million of it her own) and her breath hitched.
Over seven million credits—worth more than seven thousand stellar jade. Jackpot.
Forty-plus pulls. Add her earlier thirty and she was near pity.
"Easy, Cipher. Pulls can wait; the job can't."
After a short pep-talk she steadied herself.
"Missions and gigs barely scraped twenty pulls, but one little base heist nets forty. Old job really do pay best."
With a nostalgic sigh she pocketed the turning over coin and slipped out of Administration to explore further.
Jogging down another corridor, she spotted a second Level-2 door, Data Center.
"Experiment archives?" she mused.
She shrugged the thought away.
"I've got the card; let's peek."
She swiped Neil's badge; the lock clicked open.
Inside, a lobby like Admin's but with only three doors: Server Room, Data Vault, and Mainframe.
She was heading for the vault when sirens blared.
Red strobes flashed, the entrance slammed shut with a pneumatic hiss—lockdown engaged.