Chapter 194: Facility Inspection

Chapter 194: Facility Inspection

I had my body double continue to show his face around Elevate City while I took the trip to NLA with Thorne. As always, we used our holographic projection tech to disguise ourselves as average Joes.

That meant we wouldn’t be getting an escort from Vin and our men from the airport to our compound. Instead, we got a hotel like any normal visitor would do and settled in. We checked in with our luggage before I met up with Thorne in the lobby.

“You double-check you got everything?” I asked.

All the stuff we would be leaving in our room was just props. If we couldn’t return in time for some reason, we wouldn’t mind losing it.

“Of course.”

I stared at him for a second and waited, but he didn’t do anything. It made me give him a nudge.

“Oh...right.”

A look of realization set in before he stood close to me. That was because we were currently disguised as a couple. To the onlookers, I would be just another man traveling with his partner, holding on to him.

We walked onto the public streets and began following the arrow drawn by our optics. It guided us toward a secluded, dark alley. Without a word, we moved over to a rusty manhole cover and removed it.

With the strength of our cybernetics, we were able to easily toss it around like a toy. Still, we ensured we closed it properly after we went down.

The smell swiftly intensified the further down we climbed. Thankfully, it wasn’t flooded, so there was ample room on the elevated walkways beside the sewage flow.

As we walked down the musty wastewater network that spanned the entire city, we made sure to be on guard. There were various critters like rats in here, and I heard there were crocodiles or even the occasional mutant that snuck in as well.

Whether it was true or not, I never had a good experience in the sewers. Every time I came down here, it was either to infiltrate into an enemy base or rescue some mercenary from her pursuers.

As if the world knew what was on my mind, the sound of crumbling suddenly rang out behind us. We turned to see the stone walls that we had just walked, now had a crack on its surface. A moment later, the crack grew and several fist-sized pieces of debris fell into the wastewater.

“This place is disgusting,” I said. “The sewage system in Lion City was way better maintained than this. Even though the smell was no better, at least I didn’t have to worry about the literal walls falling on us.”

“It’s not too different from Elevate City. It’s what happens when the people in charge will only do anything if there’s an imminent and catastrophic failure,” Thorne shook his head as if reminiscing about a particular incident.

“What? What happened?”

“Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t anything important.”

I narrowed my eyes at him for keeping his story a secret. It was cruel for him to mention it, only to decline when asked to elaborate. Too bad he didn’t seem to care and kept walking. It may be because we both wanted to get out of here quickly. Shaving off even a second of having to breathe in this foul air was a huge boon.

Before long, we spotted several people in rags lying to the side. They were beggars Vin had rounded up. Many of them normally slept down here, so we offered them some essentials in exchange for relocating to our specified locations. They would act as our makeshift sewer sentries.

I ensured their trustworthiness by installing them with the same monitoring implant I used with my employees. I couldn’t take any more chances, so I made sure to add a safeguard in it too to eliminate them if they proved to be a threat.

It wasn’t long before the arrow led us toward a dead-end. However, we continued walking. That was because we knew the wall was a fake projection we had set up. As soon as we passed through, our scenery changed for the better. It still stunk of sewage, but at least the infrastructure was new.

I went inside one of these labs and ran the course like a typical trainee would. The first thing I had to do was to literally complete a test. I sat by a terminal and began answering various questions. The questions would be consistent with the contents of the cassettes they used. For me, they just used whatever was already pulled up on the device for our little mock test.

Afterward, the lab was equipped with various tools that one would see in my workshop. Its comprehensive collection allowed our researcher trainees to experiment and try out applications of their newly gained knowledge.

Overall, the facilities weren’t something too alien. It was similar enough to what I’d seen before. That was why we waited for the next batch of trainees to arrive, so we could spectate.

“The geeks have been telling me our new methods allow us to train security personnel twenty times faster than before. Less than two weeks with your sleep-learning stuff is equal to a year’s worth of training,” Vin informed me as we glanced over all the trainees.

“Yeah, but that’ll also be as far as they can go with this method. They’ll have to train themselves the old-fashioned way after that.”

“Are you sure you can’t cook up those cassettes with more advanced skills?”

“The more complex logic reasonings in those skills will make the brain endure most stress. It’ll be easy to overload—” I realized Vin’s face was screaming disinterest despite my attempts at simplifying it, so I stopped. “Bottom line is, no. For now, that’ll be the best we got. We haven’t figured out a way to safely create an advanced version that also doesn’t instill exploitable habits. Genuine training is still king in this area.”

“Don’t mean to complain,” he shrugged. “It already cuts down a year of training time for me. Couldn’t help but get greedy, you know. It’s the corpo way, right?”

Vin nudged me with a grin. He never identified as corpos, even after how far we’ve come. In his heart, he was still a mercenary of some sort, doing a long-term gig. That was fine. I didn’t need everyone to start acting like stuck-up corpos. I was glad he remained unchanged.

Next up were the tactical training facilities. It was similar to what I saw when I trained with Thorne and our first batch of recruits back in the day. Holographic technology combined with modular platforms allowed them to set up any terrain quickly.

It was a given the most interesting part here would be the people themselves, so we had our new recruits put on a show. Vin had scheduled this even earlier already, a competition among the new hires, so there was no confusion.

Various cameras and Nyes kept track of their exercise, allowing me to see every detail that went on.

“Is this the updated training curriculum you updated?” I turned my attention to Thorne.

“That’s right. The cassettes only contained the general skills they wouldn’t form bad habits from. We need to shore up their experience with dealing with our potential enemies.”

By potential enemies, he meant power armors hailing from powerful corporations.

The training scenario he had come up with included facing off against power armor and zero-g combat. Holographic simulations only went so far, so they included our real armors in the exercise as well. They were all equipped with energy shields, so it was more difficult to damage than not.

In partnership with Vin, Thorne had compiled a new set of tactics to go up against similar challenges they may face in the future. I could tell it was heavily inspired by my protector’s fleet, where they worked together in unison with assigned roles to whittle down the enemy.

Unfortunately, our equipment was much worse. It made them come up with a tactic to drag the fight out as long as we could. They needed to either drain the shields or create an opening for melee weapon wielders.

It brought my attention to the major weakness I have been deliberating about. Our weapons were bought from the market. They were reliable, sure, but they weren’t anything special. While it was fine to use against most opponents, the large corporations that have set their sights on us were a different story.

I naturally opened up my status screen and my eyes drifted toward the upgrade section. There were numerous things I could upgrade. With twenty points to spare, my vision zoned in on the choices I had been keeping an eye on.

I just need our software project to earn well. Then I’ll be able to start addressing this weakness of ours.