The interior of the first floor repeated cubicles about half way through the building was straight cubicles. Every now and then a cubicle contained some personal items that were visible as one passed by it, pictures of families, pets, or even various awards lined their interiors. The seemingly endless cubicle farm though stopped and after a small series of doors led to the NovaCorp lobby. Before even exiting the cubicle farm though, Konpeki and Nobutora could both see the back of the NovaCorp representative speaking with the press, their camera's flashing madly through the glass doors of the lobby.
The interior of the first floor repeated cubicles about half way through the building was straight cubicles. Every now and then a cubicle contained some personal items that were visible as one passed by it, pictures of families, pets, or even various awards lined their interiors. The seemingly endless cubicle farm though stopped and after a small series of doors led to the NovaCorp lobby. Before even exiting the cubicle farm though, Konpeki and Nobutora could both see the back of the NovaCorp representative speaking with the press, their camera's flashing madly through the glass doors of the lobby.
Konpeki seeing the crow of people in the lobby turned to Nobutora and said, "Yamamoto-san, perhaps it would be prudent if we went with Plan B and see if you can locate the office location from one of the terminals in those cubicles."
"Ah. Yes, I believe that would be wise," replied Nobutora. He pulled his gait up short and looked around, hoping to find a terminal both close and out of sight of the doors.
Konpeki turned and visually scanned the area to make sure no one was paying attention to them.
"To make it clear, are we to maintain that you are an employee and I am a contractor being escorted by you?" said Nobutora, continuing the search. "I'm afraid I do not have the capability to replicate a NovaCorp badge myself."
"Yes, and I've not had the opportunity to borrow one from someone who resembles you." Konpeki replied. "You suggestion mirrors my thoughts."
Luckily the pair were far enough off that there weren't any camera's pointed directly at them, and they could step back behind the door rather quickly. It wouldn't take Nobutora long to find a terminal, of course the Yamataian was presented with a formidable foe when he sat down. The standard, although old, login prompt.
"Ah," muttered Nobutora as he spotted the terminal, and the ubiquitous, but perhaps unsurprising, prompt. "Would your code cracker work on this, Eika-hei... er, Eika-san? Plugging in my equipment might be... indiscreet."
Konpeki considered for a moment, "No, the unit I have is only intended to work on electronic locks for doors and safes. Not a keyboard system."
"Perhaps you could disconnect the terminal and attach your equipment directly?"
"Perhaps..." Nobutora quickly looked around the terminal, feeling for a catch or button to release it.
Unfortunately for Nobutora there were no cables other than the lone power cord, though as Nobutora reached back his head dipped closer to the machine and he could 'feel' the machine's wireless connection to the network.
"Unfortunately it appears that I would have to rip off the casing in order to reach any attachment points and it would take far too long to crack the wireless security with brute force." Nobutora paused and took a deep breath. It wasn't like him to suggest anything but technical solutions, but... "Perhaps it might be best to, ahem, interrogate an employee for the information directly."
"Okay, now lets see if we can find someone for me to approach." Konpeki said as she looked around for a likely person.
The office was hardly populated at all, though there was one face that Konpeki did recognize. It wasn't the gentleman from earlier, he appeared to be in a back office absorbed in computer work.
"Wait here I will attempt to gain the office location." Konpeki said, she walked over to the gentleman. She took a stance that would show off her curves in a flattering manner. "Pardon me, could you help me?"
The Yamataian's eyes flicked up to Konpeki then flicked back to his terminal before suddenly snapping back to Konpeki this time dragging his head with them. "You look new, I haven't seen you around here before. What can I do for you?" the Yamataian asked as he leaned back in his desk chair.
"I am new, actually just transferred here." Konpeki said giving a concerned look. "I am supposed to meet with Iro Sukimade, but the lobby is rather busy with reporters and such. I was wondering if you could help me and tell me where his office is? I do not wish to be late for my meeting."
The Yamataian's face flashed a small amount of dissapointment before speaking again. "Sukimade huh, I think he's up on the third floor. I heard he's a terminal monkey though, I don't know which one he'd be using. If you want I could get you a transfer down here, you'd definitely make more money than up on 3."
"I will keep your offer in mind if I find the position with Sukimade to mind numbing." Konpeki gave a friendly wave. "See you around." And she walked away with a slight sway to her hips.
Nobutora watched her return with... professional interest. Evidently, her... manipulation of the target had been both fast and highly successful. Swallowing, hopefully discreetly, as she came to stand next to him, he nodded. "Do we have a location?"
"According to the gentleman Sukimade is located on the third floor. He didn't know what terminal. But he did offer me a better paying position." She said with a grin.
"Ah. Well, he may be a useful source at a later point," he replied, looking away quickly, a little worried about what exactly that grin might mean. Gathering up his bag and checking his pistol, again, he turned back to Eika. "We ought to locate the traitor as soon as possible, in case he attempts to run."
"To the elevators then." Konpeki said, moving down the hallway.
It didn't take long for Konpeki and Nobutora to find and take an elevator to the third floor. As they stepped out of the elevator though an entirely different view awaited them. An entire lab of back to back computers sat before them. This time there were no cubicles separating each one, only a sticker on the corner of each desk detailing information about each machine such as it's number, and internal network address. There were a few people sitting at various places in the lab, but they didn't notice when the elevator arrived.
Wonderful. Konpeki thought, she had been expecting a floor with office spaces, not a server farm with terminals. "Great now all we have to do is locate Sukimade's workstation without arousing suspicion. Any ideas?"
Meanwhile, Aeto's 'friend' outside was getting an earful. In fact the guard was getting slightly annoyed. After going a short distance the guard had finally heard enough. "Sir, you need to leave this area NOW." the guard said firmly. The fact that Aeto had completely butchered his name wasn't helping anything. The guard reached for his NSP and unstrapped it from it's holster but didn't remove it. The gaurd found the irony in the previous conversation about shooting people but didn't visibly show it.
"Hmm. This could indeed present a problem." Nobutora looked down at the network addresses on each machine. Sitting down at the nearest terminal without a word, he took out his laptop and attached it to the machine. After a moment of typing and cracking through the security features, he looked up at Eika. "I am attempting to ping Sukimade's terminal from the outside. I have his external address from the previous hack. The response to this machine, on the inside, aught to provide his internal address." Turning back to type for a moment more, he finally stood back up. "I have sent the ping request. Now the only question is if it will reply."
The response was similar to that of Nobutora's initial hack. The server suddenly choked and couldn't find the machine. Something unusual did happen however, one of the terminals across the room that were facing Nobutora and Konpeki lit up a bright red before returning to the screen saver at the same time that Nobutora sent the ping.
"Alright, alright. Have it your way. My words'll sink in sooner or later. When you're ready to step into a REAL direction in life. Well. This probably won't be the last time you see me." Aeto shrugged as the guard became more standoffish. He nodded while patting his unwitting target on the shoulder, looking through his glasses towards the distant door. This was as long as he could stall. With that, he slowly walked away.
Nobutora was entirely engrossed by the information being displayed on the screen to notice anything else in the room. He sat back down and began working rapidly at the keyboard again. "This is quite odd. The terminal failed to respond even to an internal ping." He looked up at Eika. "I'm afraid I'm at a bit of a loss at the moment. The security on this terminal is going to take far too long to overcome from here while remaining unobserved."
"Yamamoto, I did notice that terminal there lit up with a red screen briefly around the same time as you sent your ping." Konpeki said, indicating the terminal with her hand.
"Really?" At a momentary loss for words, Nobutora stood up and looked in the indicated direction. The screen was now identical to those around it, but he shrugged. "That would seem to be quite an amateurish security program to visually indicate itself, but at the moment, I believe investigating it may be our best course of action," he said, already unplugging laptop and stowing it in his bag.
The juxtaposition of the sophisticated software side of the security system's on the traitor's system with the really childish red flash had Nobutora so distracted and confused he didn't even notice, let alone comment, on Eika's relatively casual use of his name.
Konpeki looked for place where she could causally observe the other people without appearing obvious. Positioning herself between them and Nobutora so as to sheild his activities.
The terminal appeared to be pretty standard, there were standard input devices, a mug of what appeared to be coffee or tea sitting next to the terminal. The screensaver, a billowing NovaCorp logo, was gently floating across the screen.
A weak, whining sigh of a message was sent from Aeto to his otherwise busy team as he made his way back between the press conference's onlookers, waiting for a small rablle to begin talking. "Oh well. Looks like Mr. Protector finally went back to what he was doing. Sure hope it doesn't take too long for these guys to get to the point." He trailed off while looking through the reporters. One of them would do something interesting for the sake of stealing glory. Either that or he'd make them do something.
Sitting down at the terminal, Nobutora simply stared at it for a moment. With the level of sophistication he had seen from its security before, he had no intention of hooking up his laptop and losing more hardware to a virus. Instead, he began feeling around the case, until his fingers caught upon a device in the back. He pulled it and set it down in front of the terminal. "This is the external memory device Sukimade was using. If you can provide cover for just a moment I will copy the data." He pulled the network segregator from his bag and attached it to the device before attaching another one of his portable drives to the segregator. Hitting the button on the drive to begin the copying, he sat back and glanced around.
Konpeki picked up a notepad from a nearby desk, and pretended to be reviewing it, she made a variety of head shakes and nods as she pretended to read the paper. Then she picked up a pen and proceeded to correct the document. All the while she kept looking at the other people out of the corner of her eyes, and trained her CDLD's to make sure that no one was talking about them.
The transfer seemed to be going nicely before a small whining noise came out of the portable hard drive that Nobutora had brought. Seconds later the device disengaged automatically with a faint smell of burnt electronics gently coming out of it.
