The criminals continute their encounter at the nightclub, handily defeating 8
Vallandian police officers who mysteriously turned off their body cams and transponders before starting the fight. The gang took one of them alive, who was promptly taken to a secondary location and tied to a tree for interrogation. With the
Witch's terrifying hallucinatory magic and
Mara's mental probing, they are able to step into the officer's mind and learn the following information:
This officer got a call with the rest of his squad to eliminate the invader of Madame Kreller's office, who was just before killed on an order of Null, an order and murderer of which this officer was not privy to. Turning off their body cam and transponder to remove all evidence of their superior assignment from Null, they entered the nightclub thinking just some nightclub-goer had happened upon the highly sensitive information within the office, not expecting five deadly criminals. While he was in the nightclub, however, this officer found a black slip of paper belonging to Madame Kreller, containing only two lines of information: a set of coordinates and the words "YOU ARE INVITED TO THE UPPER VOID". With the officer having no other intention but to kill himself to avoid murder at the hands of Null,
Nora fired a shot directly into his skull.
Stakeout
The criminals ventured to the coordinates, which led them to the mountains bordering Valland City, specifically a very small valley in the midst of them. As they soon realized, only those who had touched the slip of paper were able to actually see the building, revealing an entirely black skyscraper, built only with black concrete and tinted glass windows. They could not see into the skyscraper whatsoever, and decided to wait until night to spy on anyone entering or exiting the building. Over the course of several hours, they saw not a single person enter or exit the building.
Infiltration
The group broke into the building using Venus' grapnel arrow, creating a zipline accessible by the part.
Nora used her Wallcutter to cut a perfect hole into the glass, proving a point of entry for the party. Inside the building, they found several floors of just writhing mazes of bookshelves, all filled with sleek, black books with not a single word on them; not on the spine, not on the cover, not on the pages.
At the very top floor, the group located the Server Room, in which the security camera database and the central computer were housed. Using a familiar spider,
Mara was able to hack into the computer currently in use and download its information, where they found another eerie secret of Null.
Null was currently conducting a project known as Project Reunion, which was Null's attempt to revive the Slicers in concept, although with different members. With a mercenary squad as powerful as the Slicers that operates wholly at Null's order, they could command the entire criminal underworld of Valland, and likely foreign and even domestic government. On their list of potential members was
Aurelia Nailo,
Avaahn Casper,
CDA-2,
Jinx Castellan, Kara Anteros, and Venus Viadon. Before the group was able to see all of the members,
Mara wiped
Jinx, her true identity, off the roster. At the very end of the list, in a document still being worked on, was a member known as "the Beast", originating from Kalleia and currently located at this very compound. The group ventured to the lowermost level to find this member.
The Beast
Infiltrating Level Zero of the Upper Void,
Mara used
Nora's pistol gadgets to lower herself just above the group tripped with a magical motion sensor. She teleported her way into the backroom where she found a console displaying vitals and a button labeled "OPEN", and a small metal sphere located at the back of the room. Pressing open,
Mara found that Null had located the most recent incarnation of the Kalleian Minotaur, containing all of the memories of its past lives. The group stole the sleeping toddler, able to escape the building without a trace.
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