Ex Machina; Infiltration

[animusmods]

Characters: Riki and the infiltration team
Setting: administrative levels
Format: any
Summary: Riki's efforts must be sabotaged. Stealth is the name of the game and time is of the essence.
Warnings: psychological horror

Though the chipped unit does not follow, he sees to it that the team advances the rest of the way. At the end of the lit corridor is a set of double doors, heavy-duty polished metal with small windows set into each one.

Through the windows, a massive machine is visible, connected to thousands of holographic screens that are hard to make out at the speed at which they're being manipulated. The machine sits in the center of the room and is networked to four elaborate terminals stationed along the walls via a complex tangle of panels, wires, and towers. Each of these terminals controls its own set of floating screens; the sheer amount of holographic monitors in the room is disorienting, and really, it's hard to tell what's connected to what.

In the chair in the middle of the enormous set-up is Riki, maneuvering all of the screens with the same ease with which most people breathe. His back is to the doors that lead into the room, and for the moment, he is utterly engrossed in his work.

Comments

FOURTH TERMINAL

[animusmods]

A faint blue glow emanates from the primary monitor of the fourth terminal. The holographic screens don't cease in their movements as they are approached, rendering them impossible to make out. The primary monitor remains stationary, but all of the text flashing by isn't in any language the characters know.

Team... hey, well, he's not really on a team

[greyerrant]

[ Garviel has removed his power armor, and moves quietly towards the fourth terminal in a hunch, ghosted by the green-armored, silent phantasm that is the Persona which is all that remains of his brother. Taking advantage of the distractions, and his own innate hunter's training which was honed spending 6 months on a hostile, demon haunted world to move in stealth. ]

How 'about Team WE MEET AGAIN, DOCTOR JONES?

[megazero_to_superhero]

[Meanwhile, David—who hasn't doffed his suit of power armor—is also making his way through Riki's machine room as quickly and as stealthily as he can, courtesy of the armor's flight and cloaking systems. Having spoken with Veronica prior to entering the machine room and agreeing to seek out separate terminals, and having seen two teams of people head for a different terminal each, he's heading for the remaining fourth one as it appeared no one else was going for it.]

[Well, at least it looked that way at first. On his way over, David notices the big guy and his glowing companion going for the terminal as well. In fact, he passes close by to the Astartes as he does so.]

[While David's been focusing on keeping away from Riki and any security measures he has in place—just to be doubly sure that he isn't caught should his glamoured powers prove ineffective—he's not so careful about avoiding detection from fellow Tower residents. The suit's QD-LED paint job is quite effective at blending in with the surroundings on both the visual and infrared levels, but the quiet whooshing of the suit's plasma thrusters (not to mention their faintly-glowing blue exhaust) are some of the more obvious tells to David's presence.]

[greyerrant]

[ Loken welcomes the possible distraction from david, keeping low and hunched, concentrating on making each step from his huge frame improbably quiet. It is an act of absolute concentration as he apprioaches the terminal.]

[megazero_to_superhero]

[Once David's near the terminal himself, he swings his legs out in front of him to come to a halt. He glances around, checking back over to where Riki is to make sure the Administrator hasn't noticed—and then drops to the floor, cutting power to his flight systems.]

[Whereas David would normally just drop out of the air like a stone—something he can afford to do given the suit's cushioning and protective properties—he doesn't want to make a lot of noise on the off chance that Riki can see right through glamoured stealth powers. That, and well—if David did attract Riki's attention with a noisy landing, he'd probably notice the guy with his glowing green buddy over there. And that would screw everyone over just the same.]

[So, soft and quiet landing it is. Once he's on the ground, David looks over at the terminal with his fists on his hips. He doesn't fiddle with the controls just yet—he wants to first confer with the other guy before messing with the terminal.]

[greyerrant]

[ Loken raises a hand, then approaches the terminal. Rather than watching the content of the scrolling information, loken will observe the pattern for a few moments, setting the Astartes eidetic memory to the task of puzzling out a pattern. ]

[megazero_to_superhero]

[David's got his game face on—the only part of his body that's fairly easy to see what with the active camouflage QD-LED layer on his suit. While the big guy and his ghost(?) buddy inspect the terminal, David glances at the technology supporting it.]

[Once it comes time to shut this thing down, well ... if they can't figure out how to work the terminal, it'll have to come down to disconnecting it physically.]

[So while Garviel's trying to figure out what's on the monitor, David carefully gets in closer, off to a side, and gives the hardware and cabling a close inspection. He doesn't touch anything, but he does trace his fingers along cables, trying to figure out what's going where—and if there's any labels that might help sort out what does what.]

[animusnpcs]

[While some of the symbols on the screen do seem to be used more often than others, there is no truly discernible pattern.

David's inspection of the hardware and cabling doesn't tell him much. It isn't labeled, if only because the primary user doesn't need labels to know what it does. The terminal itself will be able to give them more answers, once they get it to respond.]

[greyerrant]

[ Loken will reach out to touch the terminal screen with an immense finger, then, trying to determine if it has a touch interface.]

[animusnpcs]

[The screen itself is not a touch interface; the terminal is very much like the standard network terminals in the upper levels of the tower, with a keyboard and tablet-like touchpad embedded below the screen. While touching the monitor does nothing, selecting the symbols onscreen will pull up what appears to be a command prompt.]

[megazero_to_superhero]

[By this point, David finally gives up on trying to locate another way to disable the terminal, and carefully makes his way back over to where Garviel is.]

[He glances back to the terminal in time to see the Astartes' experimentation with the monitor, then looks up to the man proper—way up, given their difference in height. David speaks to Garviel in a hushed tone ... just loud enough to hear over whatever ambient din may be present in the machine room.]

Didja find anything yet?

[greyerrant]

[ Loken shakes his head, and will reach out, touching any key that looks like an input function, like an enter key in shape, rather than a key that more clearly delineates a letter. ]

[animusnpcs]

[When the key that looks to be the closest to an enter key is pressed, the command screen prompt blinks, but doesn't change aside from that. It seems like that is indeed the return key.]

[megazero_to_superhero]

[After watching how the terminal reacts to Garviel's input, David takes a moment to assess this—he'd been spending most of this time not looking at the monitor, after all.]

[Okay, it looks like that was some sort of enter or return key ... but other than that nothing on the monitor jumps out at him as making any sort of sense. It reminds him of a popular sci-fi movie he vaguely recalls from a decade ago, or the Arc Server at Architect Entertainment ...]

[Unable to sort anything out from the monitor, David instead examines the keyboard. The admins have to be some sort of humans given Ruana's true form, so—the keyboard layout has to be something that's logical to humans, right? Maybe even a QWERTY layout, even though the symbols don't look anything like a Latin alphabet ... but having messed with Rikti computers before, David doubts they'd be that lucky. But maybe the keys are laid out in a way that might be easy to guess their input ...]

[animusnpcs]

[The keyboard is like the terminals in the upper levels, changing to match its user.]

[megazero_to_superhero]

[David stares a few moments longer, frowning—with Garviel presently using the terminal he can't quite understand the layout. Low/High Gothic and tens of thousands of years of linguistic evolution and all that.]

[Still ... Even without being aware that the terminals change to match their present user, something has a shred of familiarity about the keyboard—enough for David to look up at the Astartes, motioning at the keyboard to get his attention.]

Dis layout look familiar to you?

[greyerrant]

[ Loken shakes his head. }

No, you?

[megazero_to_superhero]

Some of da keys look like dey might be in da same spot, like in da terminals downstairs—

[David's pointing to the key Garviel used to bring up the command console.]

—but it don't look like keyboards from home to me.

[David's a little hesitant to just start experimenting based on that observation alone. He takes a closer look at the keyboard to see if, maybe, there might be other keys that look familiar based on their location on the keyboard layout.]