The lobby of the Sector 4 Data Vault was an architect's dream and a human's nightmare. Everything was made of polished white marble, frosted glass, and brushed steel. There were no chairs, because sitting was considered an inefficient waste of administrative time.
Silas led Aria and Vera toward a row of security elevators at the far end of the atrium.
"Keep your mana signatures suppressed," Silas murmured, his voice barely carrying over the synchronized hum of a hundred corporate drones walking in perfect grids. "The biometric scanners in the elevators will check for emotional spikes."
"I am perfectly calm," Aria stated. Her back was rigidly straight, her silver hair pinned up in a severe bun that looked surprisingly good with her glasses. "The architecture here is devoid of soul, but the structural load-bearing math is quite impressive."
Vera, on the other hand, was sweating. She kept tugging at the hem of her white skirt. "This fabric is a prison. It restricts my dark aura. And why is everyone staring straight ahead? They look like reanimated corpses, but boring."
"Just blend in," Silas whispered as he pressed the glowing blue call button for the elevator.
The glass doors slid open with a soft chime. They stepped inside. Silas immediately reached out and tapped a specific rhythm on the glass panel—Jax's bypass code. The standard floor buttons vanished, replaced by a single, hidden prompt: [DESTINATION: SUBLEVEL 99 - DEEP STORAGE].
Before the doors could close, a polished black shoe wedged itself into the gap.
The doors slid back open. A man stepped in. He wore a crisp black suit adorned with the silver lapel pin of a Level-4 Supervisor. He had slicked-back hair and a face that looked like it had been permanently frozen into a condescending sneer.
Silas tensed, subtly shifting his weight to stand slightly in front of the girls.
"Going down?" the Supervisor droned, glancing at the elevator panel. He frowned. "Sublevel 99 is restricted to Root-Access Engineers. You three are coded as Administrative Assistants."
"Routine maintenance audit, sir," Silas lied smoothly, utilizing a decade of pent-up corporate jargon. "Admin Zero requested a manual defragmentation of the legacy cooling runes. We are simply delivering the physical diagnostic drives."
The Supervisor eyed Silas, then shifted his gaze to Aria. He looked her up and down with cold, calculating eyes. "Your glasses are not regulation. The frames exceed the standard width by four millimeters. It is a visual inefficiency."
Aria tilted her head, her cyan eyes glowing faintly behind the offending lenses. "My visual processing requires a wider field of view to calculate the exact structural weaknesses of my immediate surroundings."
The Supervisor blinked. "Excuse me?"
Vera, unable to contain her chaotic energy any longer, leaned forward, her voice dropping an octave into her best 'World-Eater' register. "She means she can see exactly how many bones in your body would snap if this elevator went into freefall, mortal."
The Supervisor's face went pale. His hand twitched toward the panic button on his collar.
"She's joking!" Silas laughed, a loud, artificial, incredibly strained sound. He slammed a hand onto Vera's shoulder, squeezing hard. "Ha! It's a joke. We are running a beta test on a new 'Humor-Inject' patch to boost office morale. As you can see, the sarcasm module is still a bit... aggressive."
The Supervisor slowly lowered his hand, his sneer returning, though he took a distinct step back. "Humor is a deprecated function. I will be reporting your department for wasting bandwidth."
"Understood, sir. Have a highly optimized day," Silas said through gritted teeth.
The elevator chimed, and the doors opened to Sublevel 12. The Supervisor stepped out, casting one last suspicious glare at them before walking away.
The moment the doors closed, Silas slumped against the glass wall, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. "Vera. I am begging you. No death threats until we are back in the Recycle Bin."
Vera crossed her arms, a triumphant smirk on her face. "I intimidated a high-ranking minion of the System. The World-Eater bows to no corporate dress code."
Aria adjusted her glasses, looking at Vera with a hint of genuine respect. "Your verbal strike was highly inefficient, yet undeniably effective. I must update my social protocols."
"Please don't," Silas groaned as the elevator began its long descent into the freezing depths of the Vault.