Mischievous Function

"So, how do I look?"

Liy turned around to find Remote pulling her guard vest over her shirt and gave her a grin. "Like you hate your job."

"Well, if I had to worry every day about this"—she gestured to the two brown body bags in the corner—"happening to me, I probably would."

They picked up their guns from where they lay next to the body bags and slipped them back into their holsters before heaving up a body bag each and making their way up the stairs. As they lifted the covers of the dumpsters, Liy turned to Remote and frowned. "You sure your robot arm's not going to be a liability?" she asked. "I don't think they have too many of those around Slalom."

Remote shrugged. "It'll turn some heads, for sure. But no one wants to get fired for harassing a disabled person, right?"

"Fair enough."

They both dropped their body bags into the dumpster and lowered the covers before stepping back and staring at the backside of the bank. Remote headed toward the dumpster camera and began to loop it while Liy squinted her eyes in thought. "So the lower door's sensor locked," Liy mused quietly, "and neither of the guards had keycards on them. What now?"

"I got a plan," Remote said after she had finished looping the camera. She pointed at the locked door between the dumpsters and said, "Pick that lock. We'll go in from the first floor."

Liy arched an eyebrow and frowned again. "You crazy? Every guard's going to recognize that we're not from here if we step foot into the main bank."

"That's why we're going to take all of them out," Remote replied. "We shouldn't have to worry about the employees since they probably don't even remember what the guards look like, and avoiding the manager shouldn't be that hard. Not counting the camera guards, there are eight guards in total. We already took out two of them, and two of them don't ever leave their posts. That leaves, what...four? The two roaming guards in the basement probably didn't leave, so the two we took out must have been from the main bank. That means there are still two up here. According to the blueprints, there's a camera at each level in the stairwell: one covering the area leading into the second floor, one for the first, and one for the basement. We sneak into the basement stairwell, disable the camera, and lure the two guards down there, and if they don't have keycards on them either, then I'll use my scrambler to get into the basement and into the lower cam room."

Liy nodded. "That's a good idea. Okay, then."

She walked up to the door and pulled out her lockpick kit to start picking the lock while Remote waited and kept lookout. After several seconds, they both heard a click, and Liy pushed the door open. "Come on," she whispered.

Just as Remote was about to follow her into the bank, Liy stopped her and pointed up. "There's a camera above the door," she said. "What now? It'll take you too long to loop it."

"Act natural," Remote said dismissively. "The camera guards are probably bored out of their minds. If we stay quiet, they likely won't notice us too much. Hell, they might even think we're the same two guards that got sent out."

The two of them walked through the door into the bank and closed it behind them. They casually made their way through the bank, with Remote sending slightly offended glares at anyone she caught staring at her arm, and soon entered the stairwell.

Making their way downstairs, they found a camera high up in the corner of the basement stairwell area facing a keycard-locked door on the left wall, which they assumed led into the basement itself. Liy quickly pulled out her gun and shot the camera before they both scurried to hide behind a potted plant in the corner.