Xaviers!

Nailah, with her wings tucked under an oversized trenchcoat, is cowering on the roof of the roof of the soccer club across from the barbed-wire-tipped fence of the Royal Mint. She taps the unfamiliar ear-piece.

"Alright, I'm on the roof. I got an eye on the main entrance."

Nailah could see one security guard on the outside, walking around the perimeter of the facility. Most of the external security, though, were just the cameras and wire -- this wasn't a military installation, after all.

Natalie was walking down the street, head bent over her phone as she tried to get a sense of the camera layout of the place.

Sam is in a nearby alleyway as she reaches out to the guard's mind, trying to find some simple vice or urge she can plant to get him to walk away from where the cameras can see.

There were a bunch! The place was under pretty heavy surveillance, including the access road leading up to the public entrance to the facility -- it was almost military-grade security, and it looked like coverage was fairly universal. They were all hooked together into some kind of large access control system, from what Natalie could tell.

The security cameras meant she was almost surely on candid camera if she was walking down the street. It certainly wasn't against any rules to walk down this street, but it's a fair bet they'd notice her, if she wasn't just some punk kid on a cell phone, probably on facetweet or something.

There weren't any independent cell-phone signals coming from inside the building -- or it was just very well shielded, which seemed less likely.

Samantha McManus wrote:Sam is in a nearby alleyway as she reaches out to the guard's mind, trying to find some simple vice or urge she can plant to get him to walk away from where the cameras can see.

The guard was very disciplined -- probably ex-military, or at least similarly trained. However, "trained military" doesn't mean "psychic protection", and he wasn't equipped with any specific anti-telepathic protection or things; Sam could probably figure out some excuse to lure him over to a dark corner, if the security cameras weren't an issue.

Natalie's voice comes over the comms without her mouth moving, "Nice security, but we expected that. There's more cameras than I can grab, so we're going to have to pick our battles."

"I'll see what I can do," Natalie sends, trying to grab the signals for the cameras Sam needs and make them send repeat footage of the guard... well... standing guard.

Tosh, a San Francisco Giants baseball cap obscuring his face, was walking slowly down the sidewalk, busily pretending to be a punk kid on facetweet or something.

Natalie Denisov wrote:"I'll see what I can do," Natalie sends, trying to grab the signals for the cameras Sam needs and make them send repeat footage of the guard... well... standing guard.

Natalie is able to fairly easily sync with the camera, and sending false data was a fairly simple matter -- they wouldn't know what hit them, at least for a short while.

"I've bought you some time, but you should hurry."

Sam tries to implant the idea that there's something suspicious in one of the alleyways, but best to confirm it before he reports it on the radio.

To his credit, the guard didn't just immediately dash over. He continued his patrol, turning around at what, to a casual observer, would seem like a natural point, and headed towards the alleyway, subtly reaching towards his belt to free a weapon.

Sam then tries to hit him with the overwhelming need to sleep.

The man slowed down, blinking and yawning. He shook his head a couple times, trying to clear the cobwebs, and slapped his face.

Realizing something was amiss, he moved his hand towards the walkie-talkie on his belt....but it was too late, and he slumped down just inside the fence by the alleyway, beginning to snore.

Sam gets to work stripping the man down and securing his arms and legs with zip-ties.

Not long after, the "guard" steps out of the alleyway as if nothing had happened.

"Alright," she says in the guard's voice into her earpiece, "I need Intercept to make a false move. Then I'll haul her in 'for questioning' and she'll get security down for Samebito and Sphinx."

"On it," she says, pulling up some augmented reality game on her phone and following it towards the guard's patrol route like any stupid kid.

The "guard" perks up as Natalie approaches.

"...just what do you think you're doing, young lady?"

"Walking. What does it look like I'm doing?" She snarks.

"I know you think you'll catch a charflezard or something, but I assure you there's none here."

"Says you. There's one right over there," she says, brushing past the guard to point.

"The only place you're going is straight to the security desk so we can see if your mum knows you're here," the "guard" says with a rough reach to grab Natalie's arm.

"Oi! Get off," she says, wrenching her arm away from the guard, "You leave my mum out of this!"

Sam's walkie-talkie came to life in a burst of static.

"Everything alright out there, Oliver?"

"Just some punk," Sam says in the guard's voice into the walkie-talkie. "I'm bringing her in to call her mum to pick her up," she says as she gets a firmer grip on Natalie.

Natalie struggles a bit, but it's only token resistance now that she feels she's made it look genuine.

"Roger that. We'll cover for you, over and out."

Sam then proceeds to escort the little facetweeting punk inside the fence and heads for the building.

The entrance to the building was publicaly accessible, and Sam dragged her troublemaker in through there.

The receptionist looked up briefly, bored, and gave a nod to Sam as she passed by.

The first door, out of the lobby, was essentially unguarded, but to get deeper in the facility, there were biometric fingerprint sensors.

"Let's see where Oliver is allowed to go," she mutters, putting her hand on the sensor.

Natalie takes a deep breath as 'Oliver' does so, getting a sense of the information the system is sending so she can screw around with it later. She still continues to glower at 'Oliver'.

Oliver is allowed to go through the door into the back! On reflection, it makes sense that security would be allowed into the secure areas of the facility.

The system is a maze of specialized and individualized access zones -- most people have access to only one or two areas of the facility, presumably the areas they work in. Makes sense; with so much global currency being printed here, you want to have high levels of security to prevent theft. It seems like most entries in the system would have clearance for the area they worked in, and nothing more, with a few notable exceptions.


The door opened up into a hallway -- mostly empty, but with the sounds of machinery coming from all directions. The plant was in full production mode. Doors lined the hallway -- without a convenient map, it was hard to tell exactly where they were, but it looked like the main security office was down the hall, at least.

Sam keeps this businesslike, marching Natalie down the hall towards the security office.

Two guards are resting in the office, one sitting down on a couch with his hat pulled over his eyes -- on break? -- and another watching the security camera feeds.

"Can't keep your hands of the women, can you, Oliver?" she said, glancing over as they entered the room.

Natalie looks around the room, her brain immediately making contact with the system, looking for the things it needs to blind the security desk to the outside world.

It was a top-of-the-line security system -- the very latest, with decentralized access points, independently monitoring cameras, motion detectors, access control points, direct connections to the police -- the works.

Of course, it was not designed to have a technopath standing five feet from it, interfacing with the security.

If any one attempted to go through a door they did not have access to, an alarm would be set off in the security center. If no one responded to that alarm in 30 seconds, the police would automatically be notified. If either connection was broken, the appropriate alarms would sound -- Natalie would have to essentially send dummy "everything's fine" information back and forth through the system to stop either alarm from triggering.

It takes Natalie a few moments to get a feel for what the signals should be before she's prepared to insert herself into the mix. Complicated. So much information, I... there. I think I've got it. The 'everything's fine' signals started passing through her for a bit before she started replicating what needed to be replicated, assuring the entire system that nothing was going wrong and nothing would go wrong.

At least as far as Natalie could tell, everything was going alright. She was in!

Something that sounded like a distracted version of her voice came across the team's earpieces, "I'm in. So far so good. You can proceed."