Damien mentally cursed at Kat for dragging him into all of this, but he couldn’t outwardly express his irritation. Instead, he forced an enthusiastic smile and waited for the appropriate moment to add his own comment. “Wow,” he said as he forced his eyes open and his eyebrows upward, “that’s fascinating.”

That was a lie. It wasn’t fascinating. Not in the least. But the young woman across from him apparently couldn’t see through his half-assed admiration, and she continued to not-so-subtly brag about her job title and all the work she was doing within her corporation. Just listening to her mundane words was tedious enough, but the pretentious way in which she spoke pushed the one-way discussion to a level that was almost unbearable.

And she wasn’t the only one, either. After spending the last half hour unwillingly participating in conversations with the other guests, Damien had decided that they were all crazy; each one partaking in some kind of collective delusion. All they did was talk about their banal work lives or gossip about their fellow Minerva members. To help him get through it all, he resorted to an age old remedy: pounding back a few drinks.

Initially, he’d worried about being discovered as a fraud, but those fears were quickly squashed once he started to interact with the other guests. They turned out to be exceptionally self-absorbed and they rarely displayed any interest towards him. The few time that they’d asked him personal questions, he’d been able to brush them off with the back story that Kat had given his character, before guiding the topic of discussion back to them.

Damien took another sip from his wine glass and continued to nod along with the woman’s stories until a pop-up message from Kat snagged his attention.

Found the meeting place on the third floor.

Gonna call you in a minute.

Damien politely excused himself from the conversation and moved toward an empty section of the dining hall. Just as expected, the call came exactly one minute after the message, and Kat didn’t waste any time giving orders.

“Get your ass up here. I need you to be my lookout.”

“Took you long enough to find it,” Damien said in a quiet voice. “I’d be happy to leave this place, but how do I get up there? You said that the patch you gave me doesn’t have platinum access.”

“That’s right, it doesn’t. I’m sending you a route to take right now.”

A brief moment later, Damien’s mini-map refreshed itself, revealing the layout of the mansion as well as a highlighted route from his current position. However, he immediately spotted a problem with the proposed passage.

“Hold on, you want me to just cut through the kitchen? Won’t I be spotted by all the workers who keep coming out of there?”

“Of course you will,” Kat said bluntly, “but that’s not a problem unless you make it one. You don’t have to avoid detection outright in this case; you just have to avoid being called out. All the men here are dressed the same, so just move quickly and act like you belong.”

“Wait, that’s the infiltration plan? No hacking or putting guns to peoples heads?”

“That’s not necessary. Sometimes simple is best. This place doesn’t have high security, and no one’s gonna question someone who’s acting with purpose. Now, grow a pair and come up here. We don’t have all day.”

Damien closed the communication line with a groan then turned to face the kitchen door which blocked his path. Neither he nor Kat had brought their weapons into the mega-mansion, so they had nothing to fall back on if things went south. He pushed that thought to the back of his mind and took a deep breath before marching toward his destination. For some reason, the thought of getting called out scared him almost as much as getting into shootouts with gangs.

He waited until one of the servers entered through the door before following closely behind. Almost immediately after stepping through, he felt eyes stick on him, but he kept his chest out and gaze straight ahead, walking with a decisive and purposeful step. He continued around the maze of cooks and kitchen appliances, and he slowly felt their eyes peel off of him one by one.

It wasn’t until he made it to the general employee area on the other side of the kitchen that Damien finally let out a sigh of relief. All that remained was a short elevator ride to the third floor.

Once he reached it, he found Kat standing nearby in front of one of the few doors along the corridor. She waved him over, then turned to press some keys on the digital lock pad beside the door. When Damien approached, the door slid open and he saw a small passage ahead with two suit-wearing bodies laying on the floor. One door stood on each side of the passage, and a metal hatch similar to the one in Zero’s base was stationed along the far end.

Damien stared at the two bodies. “Did you kill them?”

“Nah, just knocked them out.” Kat said. “The side doors are empty but the people I need information from are having a meeting behind that metal one. It’ll take me a while to get through the lock system, so I need you to stand guard out here.”

“You don’t want me to come in with you?”

“No, I can handle it on my own. Just don’t let anyone come through.”

“Got it. Anything’s better than dealing with those people downstairs.”

Kat nodded then slipped inside, letting the door close behind her. Damien turned his back to her and eyed both directions of the hall. He’d expected it to be much more lively up here, but there was no one around. His only company were the small statues that had been stationed every few meters from one another. They stood just ahead of the pristine white walls which were covered in intricate patterns of gold trimming. Combined with the ornate red carpets underneath, this floor looked even fancier than the one below.

Time passed as Damien admired the craftsmanship of the statues and the trimming along the walls. It wasn’t until fifteen minutes had passed without a sound that he began to worry about Kat. Could she really handle a group of people without a weapon? He decided to open the GPI to contact her, when a small notification interrupted him. It was a message from Marcus.

Just received word from Zero’s assistant.

He’s finalizing the details of our next job right now- it’ll be a direct attack on TrillTech.

Expect to be called in for a briefing soon.

A moment later, the door behind Damien opened, and Kat emerged without so much as a strand of hair out of place. “All done,” she said as she casually removed a Mind Chip from her temple. “Got the info I needed.”

“Did you kill them for it?”

“No, it wasn’t necessary. They are corporate dogs, but they don’t need to be killed. I merely disabled them, but they’ll be back to normal in fifteen minutes.”

“Then we should get out of here. Did you get that message from Marcus?”

“Yep. It’s about time we start taking down those bastards at TrillTech.”