Outrun – Cyberpunk LitRPG

Chapter 180

I carefully pulled myself through the hole, dodging a mound of bones just before me. I had ways of taking care of visual detection, but any sound I made could set off the security lurking in the shadows of the theatre. Good thing I had ole reliable Fox's Paw to take care of noises.

Once I was through the gap, I stood up and flicked on Cold-Blooded. Combined with my poncho, they completely removed any chance of getting detected by thermal sensors even with my tech active.

I twisted my wrist so I could access the pad on it, lightly tapping around through the menus. I found the right one and tapped on a closed-eye symbol. From my pack, a ball slowly raised on a small pole. With one last tap, electricity ran through the Blinder as its unique radiation completely hid me from any cameras.

I checked the pad as it flicked to a different menu. This one showed a bunch of sensory data from the Blinder. It was just data from the device itself, letting me keep track of its vibrations, temperature, power draw, radiation output, and a bunch of other data that would be nice to know. I'd be able to disable it before it could blow up or fry itself thanks to all the data.

First thing’s first, getting the door open. I clambered up the door, using the shutter plates as holds to pull myself into position. Then I used the pillars framing the door to get up onto where the shutter mechanisms lay. I put pressure on my back and feet to hold myself in the gap between the two pillars. Rather uncomfortable, but it got the job done.

Accessing the mechanism was easy. A screwdriver here, a wrench there, and the cover popped off as I got my first look at what I was dealing with. I tapped on the machine with my finger, sending a pulse through it as its shape popped into my mind.

Originally, the shutters were made to raise and lower. With the lockdown initiated, they had activated a failsafe where the shutters were entirely disconnected from the rest of the power grid. It would be impossible for an intruder to open them. Or at least, that was the idea.

I messed around with my self-harming shock gauntlets I still had yet to fix, disconnecting the power source from one of them and linking it up to the shutter. I manually activated the gauntlet, carefully feeding power into the door's mechanism.

The metal groaned sharply before slowly lifting up and out of the way. Once more, the entryway into the foyer was free of obstruction. At least, in this one spot. The rest of the Squad would be free to come and go. Just as Hampton requested. I fixed my gauntlet and dropped back to the floor.

With all my gear setup and the door open, I took my first steps into the Foyer. My training from Fox’s Paw easily allowed me to find the gaps in the bones and debris all over the floor, smoothly gliding across the ground without making a sound. I headed for a receptionist’s desk on the far side of the room. 

The dusty terminals in the reception area were almost all shot to pieces, as were the scattered fragments of bodies behind the desk. There was one terminal that was still in mostly good shape though. I wiped the dusty screen off as I turned it on.

There were a bunch of programs on the device, most of them useless to me. I skipped past the majority of the programs and went straight for the system's data. After glancing through hundreds of guest lists, opera showings, and various scripts, I found what I was looking for.

A rough map of the entire place spilled out before my eyes, giving me a look at how truly grand the theatre was. Outside of the dominant house, stage, and backstage, there were plenty of rooms. 

Unfortunately, this one wasn’t the technical blueprint, so it only showed slightly more detail than the public one I saw back at Athena’s. I’d probably have to get down into the Archive to get what I wanted. Or at least a terminal with higher permissions.

Speaking of the Archive, I spotted it on the map. And it wasn’t just a small one either. The archive looked like a massive library taking up an entire sublevel below the house and stage of the Laurus Theatre. Probably all sorts of goodies down there.

I still wasn't a hundred percent sure what loot here would be worth enough money to send a full company to check it out, but the Archive would be a perfect first stop to take a look. Knowledge is power and all that.

With a destination in mind, I clicked off of the terminal, shutting down the ancient tech once more. I stood up- 

A bot stared directly at me, a machine gun hoisted high. A chill filled the air as I stared down the long barrel for several long moments. Cold-Blooded kept my heart from pounding as the bot seemed to look through me, sweeping the receptionist booth from side to side.

Now that I was closer, I could see flayed synthskin covering the bot's metal body. It seemed to be from before they got the formula just right. The skin was incredibly pale, pulling off of its robotic face in large patches as though it had some kind of disease.

The security robot itself was dressed in a red attendant’s coat, one that was tattered with several bullet holes lacing through. Someone hadn't gone down without a fight. The robots probably acted as the Laurus Theatre's attendants way back before this place fell. They were probably a marvel of the future, showing off just how capable Acumen Industrial was.

The robot walked around the desk, carefully inspecting every corner. Its movements caused subtle screeches as its rusted internals rubbed against each other. As it approached exactly where I stood, I silently slunk backward out of its reach. My feet nimbly dodged past the bones of long-deceased people as I backed away.

The robot checked the terminal for several long seconds. Its arms dropped to its sides as it entered a more neutral stance. A speaker in the head sparked to life. “Error. False Report. Error. False Report. Error.”

It froze up as it repeated the same words over and over, its logic seeming to break. I moved around the side, making my escape past the robot as I left the receptionist's desk behind and started my journey to the archives.

My eyes caught on my entry point. A full squad of robots had appeared at some point, about a dozen of them. They circled the opened door, frozen as they stared at the outside world. They most definitely didn't have protocols to leave, so they just stood around my exit with guns at the ready. That was a problem for future Shiro though.

I thought through the maps I'd seen so far. The quickest way to the archives was an access staircase in the backstage. That meant cutting through the house--where the audience sat--to the stage would be my easiest path. I headed for one of the grand doors into the actual theatre part of the building, which was helpfully held open by what looked to be a hip bone.

I walked past the door, getting my first look at the stage and house. And I have to say, Acumen Industrial didn’t hold out in the slightest when making this place. Intricately carved pillars and arches covered every surface, giving it an ancient majestic feeling.

Gold and white paint filled the place, evoking a certain posh richness from every single corner of the house. Red splattered around, acting as highlights as well as the color of curtains. There were other splotches of red too, literally splattered against the wall. Or at least, they had been red at one point. Now the splotches were a rusty brown hue.

Chairs covered in red felt filled the entirety of the house. They looked as though they would've been extremely comfortable at one point. Long aisles led down toward the stage, sloping gently down to it so every row would have a perfect view of the stage.

Along the walls sat countless booths, which at one point might’ve seemed like a status symbol to be able to watch from up there. Where there was a chance to show off wealth, the rich bastards wouldn’t hesitate even if the pricing was way out of whack. The booths sat on several different levels, with the top floor being the most grand.

The entire place was damn impressive. I recognized a lot of the design choices and styles. Back when I had to learn a bunch of theoretical knowledge for Tech. I'd seen similar designs. The entire chamber was set up so that even a whisper on the stage could be heard clearly from the back of the room, sharply driving up a viewer’s immersion.

Although there was a certain richness and beauty to the theatre, it was drastically overcome by the horror spread out everywhere. Dozens of bots spread out as they stalked up and down the aisles or cut through the countless rows of seats seemingly with a purpose.

Each of them moved and looked reminiscent of a Dune Walker as they patrolled around, carefully watching for any ‘intruder’. The years hadn't been kind to their fraying bodies, and each movement caused subtle groans of metal.

All around I could see the previous victims of such drastic security measures. If I thought the foyer was filled with bones, then it wasn’t even a drop in the ocean compared to the vast sea of dead filling the theatre. It seemed as though no one was spared. Seats were filled with the dead, and great mounds of bones and sundered fabric piled up around the aisles. 

No one was spared. No one. Not even those that managed to escape the house, as the corpses filling the foyer showed. Not even those wealthy enough to have their own booths. Money couldn’t save their life in this case. I saw several bodies, only held together by their clothes, dangling over the balconies covering the walls, sharply driving up the place’s horror.

Even the stage was covered in the corpses of long-deceased performers. They littered the stage, almost as if they didn’t even have time to run before the security systems of the Laurus Theatre turned on them. 

I'd only seen such a scene once back with Mira. This though? This was so much worse. So many lives were snuffed out in mere moments... a chill went down my spine as I looked around the place. The dim lighting from the red emergency lights didn't help the ominous aura radiating off the sea of the dead.

I raised my guard higher. Scenes of great tragedies like this had a chance to spawn Remnants and Revenants. With how fucked the Aether is in this city, there's no telling what monstrous entities might lurk in the deepest parts of the theatre. If any.

The bots, uncaring in the slightest about their surroundings, continued marching through the sea of bones. Surprisingly, they brought me a small amount of comfort. At the very least, I didn't have to worry about running into something horrifying up here. The bots would've already killed or been killed by it.

I looked around, spotting several charging ports scattered around the place. A few bots sat in them, recharging their batteries. There weren’t enough ports though, so they probably had some kind of charging rotation. I could sabotage the charging ports, that way the eventual push from the Crimson Company would face much less resistance.

I slunk along the walls, careful to stay out of the machines' paths. Although they couldn’t see or hear me, if one of them ran into me it would definitely detect something was wrong. They were most definitely all connected to whatever remained of the Laurus Theatre’s network too, so if one was alerted the rest of them would be. 

They didn’t move too fast though, so it wasn’t even an issue to stay in the gaps as I approached the first charging station along the back wall. If anything, they moved too slow. Cold-Blooded helped me stay calm as it suppressed my building nerves.

I approached the pod-like charging port and tapped on it with my hand, getting a look at its internals. I shifted to the side of it, scanning more and more of it as the charger’s blueprint slowly built up in my mind.

The charging port was pretty simple all things considered. Sure, there were several power converters and various other bits and bobs, but at the end of the day, it was just like a phone charger. The bots just walked over and plugged themselves in.

Speaking of, one such robot was already in the charging port. I took the opportunity while it was in a half-disabled state to scan it and copy down the blueprint. They were forty years old, but they were also the creation of a major corporation. There might be something in their blueprint that I could use someday.

While memorizing the blueprint with Eidetic Schematic, I took the chance to check the batteries that these things operated on. They weren’t insanely good. Each one would only last a day with the kind of power that these things devoured. The bot had three of them though, so about a three-day charge each.

With a decent understanding of the charging port, I popped open the back and cut power to it entirely. Unless the security system had something to maintain it, which I highly doubt considering the state of the robot attendants, then this charging point was done.

I moved along the walls of the theatre, carefully disabling every charging pod as I went. The effects of my sabotage wouldn’t be immediately shown, but in three days this place would be practically free to take over. At least, free of the robots. I’d spotted more than enough turrets set up around to cause problems.

It was stupidly easy moving around the robots. Just goes to show how important it was to have the right equipment. If I came out here without my Blinder or never got it up and working, my current tactic would be nearly impossible with the sheer number of eyes the security here had. I shudder to think how poorly a full frontal assault would've gone.

With all the charging ports in the house taken care of, I carefully worked my way toward the stage.