"Thinking of checking out the old home while there?" Kal asked.

"No," Nyz answered. "I need to deal with this, then get out."

"Alright," Kal said. "Follow the map on the nav system. From the Scavengers that have gone to Troak and returned, that should be the best path there. This doesn't include a report from the group that took this job and returned."

"What did they say about this?" Nyz asked as he glanced at the nav system, which had switched to show him the route he should take. "I find it suspicious that Zenitk didn't give much information regarding why it's been up so long. Normally, there's past combat data to account for."

"Want to know what the official file says?" Kal asked.

"If it said something, wouldn't you have already told me?" Nyz asked.

"Exactly," Kal told him. "The crew that came back? They actually didn't make it into the city. They said there were too many monsters on the way there. They attempted it twice over two weeks, and both times, the fog monsters were quite active, so they decided to give it a rest."

"Leaving the perfect opportunity for us," Nyz said.

"Yeah," Kal said. "It's weird they were so active for two weeks, I noticed other reports from other Scavengers mentioning how difficult it was to go this way. Now it's so quiet."

"Think I'll be attacked?"

"No," Kal responded. "Chances are low of that, all things considered."

"True," Nyz said. "Let me focus on driving now, the roads are rather bad and I don't want to bite my tongue."

"Got it," Kal said.

Nyz focused on the roads, keeping his eyes peeled for any signs of attack. He noticed a few of the fog monsters hiding in buildings where the light of the beacons didn't reach, as well as a few normal magical animals that ran when they noticed the van navigating the rubble and broken road or simply wandered between buildings, unbothered.

It took him nearly half an hour of navigating the city, making several turns to avoid damage that wasn't listed, to reach the walled-in complex. A single building with four different heights to it with walls of glass on the exterior.

Nyz pulled through the broken gate and into the parking lot, then up to the main entrance of the building and parked. Unbuckling, he slid out of his seat and walked into the back of the van, then pulled off his sunglasses, revealing a pair of dark brown eyes.

He undressed, hanging his suit up on a set of hangers, leaving his socks and underwear folded neatly on the bench beneath them. Then, he grabbed a bodysuit from another hanger and pulled it on, making a face of annoyance at the feel of the fabric snug against his skin.

"Why do I have to wear this stupid thing?" He muttered.

"Because it's part of the connection to the combat suit," Kal answered through the commpiece, which Nyz had left in. "I'm working on a bodysuit that feels better for you, Nyz, but it takes some effort to create a whole new feel of fabric."

"It's not the fabric," Nyz complained. "It's how it squeezes my body."

"It's not squeezing your body," Kal said. "It's just skintight. Deal with it."

"Whatever," Nyz muttered, then began pulling on the dark blue combat suit piece by piece.

Each section of it save the gloves was made of metal or a high-quality material just as flexible as the body suit, but stronger, and by the time he finished pulling it on and connecting the pieces, there wasn't an inch of skin or bodysuit left visible, apart from his hands and face. Nyz removed his commpiece and set it in a tray set with foam, a hole shaped to the piece within it.

Nyz slipped on the pair of dark blue gloves the same near-black color as the rest of his suit, then picked up the helmet and inspected it. After his inspection, he pulled on the helmet and fixed its yellow-tinted glasses into place over his eyes, then pulled down the violet-tinted visor, obscuring his face.

Dressed in his combat suit, Nyz began opening up trays beneath where his combat suit had sat, pulling out the weapons and checking them before slipping them into their holsters. Four handguns, two pairs of knives, and several grenades were equipped before Nyz began checking magazines and slipping them into slots in the sides of a rectangular metal backpack the same dark blue as his suit.

None of the magazines contained bullets, each instead containing a bright blue crystal cut into a rectangular prism. Nyz slid each crystal out, checked it, then slid them back in with swift, fluid motions, his keen eyes catching the enchantments written into them in only a fraction of a second.

After sliding ammo into the backpack, Nyz grabbed a smaller, rectangular device one and a half inches wide, four inches long, and half of an inch thick, then clipped it onto his belt.

Sending a look at the red-and-gray combat suit which sat across from the one he had pulled on, Nyz let out a sigh.

"Yes, I know, you wish you could use your suit for both jobs," Kal said over the helmet's built-in communicator. "Sadly, you'll need to use the Class C now that we know Zenitk is able to monitor at least part of the job and since Asterox will probably check your suit to see what type it is if they check you."

"Can we get a time update?" Nyz asked. "It took me half an hour after arriving in Troak to get here, which they might factor in."

"It's within reason," Kal stated. "You'll be fine."

"Got it," Nyz walked to the back door of the van and opened it, stepping out and jumping onto the ground.

He closed the door to the van and pressed his hand against it, hearing the lock click a moment later. Cracking his neck, Nyz mentally activated the rollers on the boots of the suit. They popped down out of the soles, and he bent his knees before taking off.

To a normal person, the world would whip by as he moved, but to Nyz, it was no different than going for a light jog or a walk. Instead of a blur, he could take in every detail of the world around him, monitoring the beasts nearby.

A few of the more predatory beasts attempted to attack him, but Nyz simply jumped around them, his speed in the Class S suit too great for them to keep up with. He wanted to kill them, but that would leave a trail leading straight back to the Zenitk facility, and he didn't want to do that. If he needed to, he would kill around the facility, but he wasn't going to leave a trail of beasts leading back to the Zenitk facility.

It took him only a few minutes to reach the Asterox Corporation facility, also surrounded by a wall of its own. Unlike the Zenitk facility, the Asterox facility consisted of four buildings, each fifteen stories in height, surrounding a single, dome-shaped building.

"Rerouting power to the building in three… two… one!" Kal said. "Your time before their arrival starts now!"

With a thought, Nyz deactivated the rollers on his boots and ran up to the doors of the southwestern building, pressing his hand against it. The scanner glowed for a second, then the glass doors slid open, allowing him entry.

Nyz entered the building, the doors closing behind him, and he set a swift pace as he walked towards the elevators. He pressed the down button, then waited for the elevator to arrive. Stepping into it, he pressed the button for B4, then unclipped the box from his belt and pressed it against the scanner. A red light above the scanner changed to green, and he returned the box to his belt as the elevator began to descend.

"Okay, good," Kal said. "I was right, they didn't bother scrambling the codes. That makes this much easier."

"Wouldn't your key work, anyway?" Nyz asked.

"Yes," Kal answered. "But my key relied on the old code system."

"What are the odds of them attempting to scramble the codes while the forces are en route?"

"Low," Kal answered. "They can't do it remotely, they need access to the same servers you're going to."

Nyz continued walking until he reached the section of concrete wall the map on his glasses led him to.

"That's a good masking," Nyz said as he pressed a hand against the wall. "A normal person wouldn't even notice it."

A section of the wall four feet in width and eight in height slid backwards on foot, then to the side, disappearing into the wall of another tunnel. Nyz stepped into it and began walking, the hidden entrance closing behind him.

"Yeah, it's decent," Kal told him. "When I was in the academy, I liked messing with them by opening the passages remotely using a ghost key. They changed the codes every time, but never managed to figure out how to stop me. Of course, they didn't know it was me, but still, it was amusing."

"Why did I need to use the box in the elevator?" Nyz asked. "Rather than you simply accessing it through my suit?"

"The elevator uses an older system," Kal told him. "Which has its quirks. The box was necessary."

"Got it," Nyz said. "And I'm guessing I'll have to use the provided Zenitk authorization box in their facility?"

"Yes," Kal said. "You've been there for two minutes."

"Have the forces been deployed yet?"

"No," Kal answered. "They're sending four choppers, each with ten guards. You have another two or three minutes before they take off."

"Four seems excessive," Nyz said.

"They can't be sure what's going on," Kal said. "Their attempts at stopping the reroute are failing, so they know they're not up against an amateur. I didn't just reroute power to that building, either, but rather, to the entire district it's in, so they aren't sure if it's actually their compound that's targeted or not. Three choppers are set to investigate the entire district for activity, the fourth is to check on you. Zenitk already alerted Asterox to them having a Scavenger active."

"Got it," Nyz said. "I didn't sense anything here, is the entire facility still sealed?"

"Yeah," Kal said. "You saw the enchantments on the glass, the place is pretty well-protected."

"I wasn't looking for enchantments," Nyz said. "The glass just looked like glass to me."

"Oh," Kal said. "Well, it's reinforced glass enchanted with durability enchantments. It could take a missile without issue."

"My issue with taking missiles is that they destroy my clothes if I'm not in this suit."

"You have never taken a missile before," Kal snorted. "Anyway, hurry to the other room, it might take awhile to do it."

Nyz picked up his pace, eventually arriving at a pair of doors. He placed a hand against the panel on the side, which scanned his hand, then beeped as the light above it turned from red to green.

Opening the right-hand door, Nyz stepped through and into a room filled with row after row of servers, the light hum of them filling the air.

"I hate the sound of magical servers," Nyz muttered.

"That hum you hear," Kal said. "Is only heard by those with sensitive ears, Naz. Also, it's a sign of inferior magitech servers. Then again, theirs are considered the most sophisticated, most advanced magitech servers out there. Mine don't hum."

"Yours are magitech?" Nyz asked.

"See?" Kal asked, and Nyz heard the smile in his friend's voice. "You didn't even know they were magitech because they don't hum! Yes, they're magitech. Anything else is too unreliable, in my opinion. Jeez, look at these things. I almost feel sorry for Asterox and the other corporations, having to work with such inferior goods. One of those servers can hold up to one hundred, twenty-eight terabytes of data. Pretty advanced in their opinion. Mine can hold one thousand."

"I've seen the server farm on the island," Nyz said as he followed the directions supplied by his helmet's glasses. "What the fuck do you need that much storage for?"

"Most of it's actually empty or just redundancies and backups," Kal told him. "I just wanted to be prepared for future projects. That said, the island's defense system takes up fifty of those servers."

"Only fifty?" Nyz muttered, causing his friend to snort.

"Only fifty," Kal said. "Open up that server and place your palm on it."

Nyz opened up the server highlighted in the glasses, then placed his palm on it, watching as a string of code and text flashed across the glasses.

"Now pull out the access box and set it on top," Kal told him, and Nyz complied. "Now we just wait."

"How long will this take?" Nyz sat on the floor across from the server in use, his back against it.

"According to my data, twenty-four minutes," Kal answered. "That gives you a little extra time to get back to the van, get changed, and get inside."

"Okay," Nyz said, then closed his eyes and began the wait.

Until the uploads and downloads completed, there wasn't much he could do.

"Will they be able to stop you?" Nyz asked. "Or delay you?"

"No," Kal answered. "When you linked to the server with your suit, you ensured my ghost key was activated, and from there, I overwrote several protocols and did some other tech stuff you wouldn't understand. The short version is that they have no idea there's an upload or download going on, and their system isn't registering it, either."

"Okay," Nyz said, then returned to waiting.

Several minutes passed in silence.

"I pity those guys," Kal muttered.

"Why?" Nyz asked.

"Sorry," Kal said. "Talking to myself. The elite forces coming your way are using modern tech, which means it's inferior to what we have. They can't get a signal very far in the fog, so they're in short-range communications, unable to actually contact HQ. At least, until they arrive, enter the facility, and access the comms there, since those are wired."

"Want me to do anything else while I'm waiting?" Nyz asked.

"No," Kal told him. "This is the only important thing there."

"Got it," Nyz said. "So nothing in particular you want me to destroy?"

"I destroyed that a long time ago," Kal told him. "By the way, the Asterox forces sent to investigate if you're at the Zenitk facility are under instructions not to hinder you if you prove to be legit. If they do, mention it when you report on the mission."

"Will do," Nyz replied.

Nyz opened his eyes and gave a mental command to the helmet to pull up a game for him to play as he waited, though he kept it strictly single-player. Any games which relied on strategy, he would lose at against Kal. His friend's superhuman intellect ensured that.

He was four minutes into a lengthy boss battle when Kal informed him it was time to grab the box and go. Closing the game, Nyz stood up, walked to the server, grabbed the access box and hooked it back onto his belt, then pushed the server back in and closed the door to it.

"I estimate," Kal told him. "That you'll have approximately twelve minutes before the chopper arrives at the Zenitk building. Go!"