She’s smarter than you. So much smarter. Once your name is cleared, you need her as your manager. Better than that useless draanthic who let you walk into a dodgy medical.
The thought should have stung his pride. Instead, it just felt… true. She operated in a different field, with different tools, and she was good at it. Really draanthing good. He could watch her work all day.
“Okay, that’s us through the door. Now, who works there?” he asked, setting down his mug.
She looked up, surprised. “What?”
“You’ve got the building, the schedules, the entry points. But who’s actually inside? What does the loader team rotation look like? Is there a supervisor on the floor during that shift change window, or does everyone clear out at once?” he asked. “I assume most delivery pilots and crew stay with their ships, so if we go wandering around, someone’s going to be asking questions?”
She frowned as she pulled up more records on the screens in front of them. “Shit. Did we find personnel files, Fred?”
“No. They’re in the same data-protected area as the patient files.”
She lifted her head and frowned. “Can you decrypt them?”
Raaze shook his head before the AI could answer. “It’s unlikely. That encryption is likely to be B’Kaar-level, especially for Healer’s Hall records. But we don’t need them,” he added.
“You’ve got delivery schedules. How many signatures on the intake logs? Are they the same names every time, or do they rotate? If it’s the same names, that means they’re a small team… tight, and they’ll probably know each other well, so they’ll notice a stranger. If they rotate, that’s a larger pool… makes it easier to slip in unnoticed.”
She pulled up the delivery logs and scrolled through the signature data. “Three names on the morning shift. Same three, every day.”
“Tight team. Bad for blending in.” He traced a path on the holographic map. “What about security checkpoints? Any place where one person controls access?”
“Here.” She highlighted a junction. “Main corridor to the records archive. Single security station here.”
He narrowed his eyes as he studied the schematic. “Just one guard?”
“Looks like it.”
Choke point. One guard meant one obstacle and one person to get past. But, he didn’t like it. The situation felt off, and if he had Cait with him, she could easily get hurt if he had to take the guard down. He frowned, studying the map closer. The records archive was deep in the building, past the security checkpoint, down a corridor with no alternate access points.
One way in, one way out. Unless…
“What’s this?” He pointed to a narrow shaft running parallel to the main corridor.
“Wait a moment,” she checked the codes on the schematic, a slender finger running down them until she found the one she needed. “It’s a ventilation system.”
“Big enough for a person?”
Checking the specification, she pursed her lips. “Barely. It’s designed for maintenance drones, not humanoids. We’d have to crawl.”
“But it bypasses the checkpoint.”
“And dumps you into the archive from above. If you can fit.” She eyed him skeptically. “You’re not exactly small.”
“I’m lean.” He shrugged. “Warball players don’t bulk up like warriors. Slows you down.”
Security patrol data acquired, Fred announced. The checkpoint guard walks around every forty-five minutes. Duration: twelve minutes. The station is unmanned during that window.
“Twelve minutes.” She pulled up the archive layout and displayed it in front of them. “That’s not a lot of time to find specific records in a system we don’t know.”
“It’s enough if we know exactly what we’re looking for.” Raaze tapped the screen, turning the schematic so he could see it from all angles. “And we do… V’Teth’s patient files. My diagnosis. That’s it.”
“Narrowing down the search parameters,” Fred said, and for a moment, Raaze had to fight for control of the plans on the screen as Fred turned them around, highlighting a section of the records room. “Here. The files you need should be in this data cluster. The problem is, there’s a secondary security door here to protect the mainframe.”
“So we go in hard.” Raaze pushed back from the console, energy building in his muscles. “Fast entry, minimal time on target, out before they know what hit them. Don’t give them time to react.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Absolutely not. We go in quiet. No trace. Get the records and get out before anyone knows we were there.”
