This story contains incidental themes of space slavery.
Attention: Simulation persona environment event ended. Mission parameters reached.
Warning. Summary not available due to mental contamination. Memories have been occluded.
Resuming from realtime. You are now returning to normal operation.Tsin opened his eyes. To him, only a moment ago, he had just activated a personality shim onboard their ship, allowing him to go deep undercover without even knowing it was a cover. Now, eyes adjusting to scan the dark room around him, he confirmed he was indeed still deep under cover.
The lynx shifted, and then gently started to lift the bedsheets up and off of himself, tucking to the corner enough to slip quietly from the bed he found himself in. His eyes focused on the other furren in the bed - a much larger tiger male than himself. His target. The shim terminated itself because it had gotten him exactly where it needed to - in a secure position with Malen Tals, the most notorious crime lord of the west sector.
How he had gotten into this position, unfortunately, was now unknown to him. The shim reported mental contamination.. his fingers slipped up to his neck. A collar. Ah. Not an uncommon way of getting in close with targets like this, and what he had to go through to get there is considered too unsafe to recall. It was part of the mission, but the loss of even a summary of his memories would bite him in the ass as soon as Tals discovered him in this state.
Tsin looked around the room. While from the files he recognized that this should indeed be Tals' personal bedroom, there was nothing useful here that would have justified waking him up in this moment. No weapon to defend himself, no computer to access the files he's after, nothing but discarded clothes and .. bondage gear. Not exactly a surprise. Unfortunately this meant he would have to go hunting.
The lynx thought for a moment, while his eyes stared down the casually sleeping body on the bed. Mission timer is at 4 months, about right for this depth of infiltration. The shim must have done its job very well, because the idea of being this close to the tiger (normally wrapped around with five or six bodyguards) without any other form of restraint or control was insane to think about. He perked an ear. No, there must be a couple keeping guard in the house, the bedroom is probably just off-limits. Moving was risky. He'd have to play dumb.
First, the most obvious thing to Tsin was to move into the bathroom. A natural reason to get up, after all. And a great excuse to get near a window. He scanned the room, eyes catching on a sliding door that seemed right for the bathroom. Opening it as quietly as he could, his paws set on cold tile once passing the threshold. Slipping the door closed behind him, he let out a sigh of relief.
The room was dark, but a wide window towards the end shone the glimmer of stars in the distance. He moved up close, paws outwards in caution to make sure not to bump into anything or make any noise. Once he got up close to the window, he reached up with his right paw. Flipping it up, exposing his wrist, he tapped his thumb and third digit together twice..
Tsin watched as a small holoprojection of a clock appeared. He repeated the gesture, and then a view of the planet that zoomed in to the surface. A spot blinked to indicate the compound, and another blinked higher above. The ship. Good, that means they were still in orbit keeping an eye on him. That meant he could make contact.
He held his thumb and second and third digits together at the same time for a moment, then let go. The display blanked out. Then, more tapping, in code..
reporting
A text response appeared on the projection.
'Tsin! Mission status?'
on program
'Understood. What's your sitrep?'
lost mem need order
'Shit. You're going to have to do this tonight then: get to a computer and run the exfiltration package.
None of their stuff is on the Network. As soon as you're done fire a flare and we'll pull you out of there.'
ack
Shit was right. A small circle had begun to fill itself in, as his implant began downloading an EW package from orbit. In and out. He was already in.. getting out was going to be the hard part. He was going to have to carry it out, uplinking to transmit was too risky. That was always the plan.. Tsin had just hoped he'd at least be able to play his part. That version of him at least knew the general layout of the compound!
Tsin opened the door back to the bedroom and slipped inside. This time, the tiger rumbled from the bed. "Come back to bed.." he mumbled.
"J.. ust a sec, I'll be right there.." the lynx replied, starting to move quietly towards the bed. It was evident, though, that by the time he stepped close, the tiger was fast asleep again. Lucky.
Navigating around the bed, Tsin made his way to the external door. Locked. The code was probably buried in his memories, even if just by glancing over at the right time, but for now he'd have to do this the hard way. He tapped the lock pad to turn on the screen, and then held his wrist up to it. Once he started this the likelihood he'd be caught soon rose exponentially, so tonight was going to be as long as he had left here.
The display flickered as his implant went to work hacking the door controls. After a moment, it made a quiet, corrupted chime and the door slid open. Tsin winced, and then realized he was standing right in front of it.. thank the gods nobody was right outside the room. Partly, because in the dim light of the hallway, he had only just realized he was fully nude, too distracted to notice before. Tsin stepped through and quickly tapped the door panel from other side to shut it again. Keeping the tiger in the dark was the most important thing right now.
Gentle lynx paws stepped through the carpet of the hallway, moving past the long closets of clothes towards an adjoining hallway. This time he carefully peeked around, being more careful as there was a source of light here to give him away. This hallway led him to a larger room in the back of the house, where everything seemed quiet and still - really, as one would expect their home to be. Tsin was starting to wonder if there were guards here at all.
As he moved through this room, his question was unfortunately answered for him - thankfully not inside, but a light illuminated the lawn outside past the tall glass windows. Outdoor patrol, of course. He ducked to the opposite side of a table and monitored their route. Yet again, memory of their routes would be very helpful right now. If he'd thought about it, he could have polled the ship for them, since it should be visible from orbit. But moving stealthily through the middle of a sizable room, he was much more worried about being undetected...
The lynx made it across, and carefully searched a few more rooms. A normal house, really, at least for someone of Malen's stature. He was really just starting to hope there was an office in the main house, since all the computers could very easily just be in another building.. but if he were a crime lord, the lynx determined, he'd not want to have to go outside to get all his work done.
To Tsin's relief, it wasn't long before he found another door armed with a keypad. Another hack later, and he was rewarded with a dark, windowless room. His feline vision mixed with a light from down the hallway made it easy enough to verify this was what he wanted.. the cat slipping inside, letting the door shut, and making his way up to the terminal at the large desk in the center.
The display flickered on, and the module Tsin received made quick work of the local security and began to hunt for and download the files they were looking for. His mission was to pull some records that had been destroyed in a fire, intentionally, by Tals's syndicate. A copy was being kept for blackmail, but the system government was desperate enough for the documents to pay the OTC to retrieve it. His implant flashed at him. It was done.
No more than a few seconds after Tsin shut off the terminal and began to stand up, he heard the door chime and slide open. Tsin froze, only just able to step away from the desk as the dark outline of a tiger stood in the doorframe, between this windowless room and the outside world.
"What're you doing in here? I thought I toldja to come back to bed.." the tiger grumbled, clearly tired.
The smaller lynx's heart was pounding, his neckfur stood on end. Improvising was not his strong suit. "Oh, I was, looking for some.. leftovers.." Oh gods. Why did he say that.
"Kitchen's next room over," the tiger said.
"Oh! I thought I found the fridge," Tsin tries, and drew his paw behind him to bump into a cabinet.
A snicker came from the doorframe. "Gods I swear if you weren't so cute I'd have just left you with the guards," the tiger says. "Getcher ass over here and come back to bed."
The lynx felt a wave of relief, and stepped gingerly over towards the tiger in the doorframe. He kept his eyes fixed on him the entire time.. the tiger can't be that dumb. There's no way. Or is he just in deeper than he thought?
Malen slipped a large paw around the slimmer lynx's waist and drew him out of the office, soon landing on his butt as he 'encouraged' the other cat back to the bedroom. Malen just seemed interested in fetching his toy, but Tsin quickly realizes as they start to cross the main room that his clock for escaping is quickly ticking. As soon as anyone so much as glanced at the door logs they'll know they've been had.
Tsin gestured his implant, and kept his wrist tucked up against his body so the visual response doesn't make any light. By the time they've gotten halfway across the room, it gave off another flash. This time the tiger noticed, and glanced over curiously at whatever was flickering next to him.
He needed to create a distraction. Tsin returned the tiger's gesture by letting his hand gently grope the tiger's butt.. and no more than a second or two after that second confirmation light, there was a bright flash outside, followed by a sudden shockwave causing all the windows in the compound to ripple and shatter.
The lynx winced, but saw this part coming at least - exit plans had been discussed before the mission started, thankfully. He twisted his form from the tiger's paw, and made a break straight for the window. The ship in orbit had fired an impact weapon straight at the open yard of the compound, with the impact going supersonic and creating a way out for him that didn't involve finding a door. Bearing through shards of broken glass, he leapt out into the yard, past several shouting, confused guards, and made a break for the edge of the cliff face the main house sat upon.
Most furren would not consider leaping off a two-hundred meter cliff an escape plan. Luckily for Tsin, that contact in the bathroom earlier had triggered the most important part of getting away: the dropship would have already deorbited from the main ship, and both had been tracking him the moment he got out into open air. The risk of Tsin's jump and freefall didn't even occur to him until his paws had left the ground - the waves and rocks below him were suddenly illuminated in the open moonlight, until his vision had been replaced with the open door of the back of a dropship diving up to catch him.
He tumbled in, and the door shut behind him, practically panting as he lay sprawled out across a mix of hard metal floor and netting intended just for this purpose. He felt the floor shift as the ship righted itself, and then a rush as it rapidly ascended up to low orbit, wasting no time or risk of being given chase.
After a few moments, a coyote in full tactical gear came around the flight deck to help the lynx up. "You all good?"
"Y..yeah, made it," the lynx answered.
The coyote laughed. "Not what I asked. Next time maybe be a little more subtle, less action hero."
Tsin slid himself from the ground upright against the cold wall, still working to catch his breath as the dropship began to dock. His implant came to life to share the data back to the ship's local Network.
"How about," he panted, "next time, no improvising."