Corpo Age

Chapter 237: Investigating Aurora Pt.3

Thorne - Halls Corporation

After Thorne had parted ways with Rollo, he proceeded to clear the upper floors of the Aurora Corporation headquarters. The unsuspecting office workers had no chance of discovering him, while he was particularly careful around the patrolling security personnel.

The only challenge he faced was when he arrived at the fortieth floor. It was the level where numerous guards were stationed.

This is probably where the security control room is.

Fueled by the desire to avenge his mother’s death, Thorne fearlessly ventured onto the floor filled with danger. The high tension only lasted a minute before Thorne realized everyone there seemed less vigilant than he expected.

They were frolicking around on their optics or playing various games with their peers while gossiping about mundane matters. Their attitude made it clear that incidents rarely happened so far up in the building, and they were just there as a precaution. After all, many executives stayed near the top floors.

However, one of the rooms that Thorne had set his eyes on was heavily fortified. The doors to the room were made of thick metal, like a bank vault, with several soldiers standing guard beside it.

He recognized it wasn’t something he should risk infiltrating on his own. Especially without his usual gear. Still, he found a corner to survey the area for some time. He got himself comfortable on top of a beam supporting the place as numerous guards walked by below him.

“Hurry up, Manager Brune is scheduled to be in the garage in the next five minutes. We can’t let ourselves arrive later than those we serve.”

“Brune? I swear that guy is never on time. Just ask the security people inside. Bet you he’s still lazing about in his office.”

“As if we’d break protocol so you could justify your tardiness. Let’s go!”

Hearing this, Thorne quickly turned on his active camouflage once more and caught up to the guards. He tailed them until the elevator doors closed behind them, where he then stared attentively at the screen showing which floor the elevator was going. After verifying the guards had gone down to B7, he remained unmoved, scanning through all the other elevators.

He kept track of all the movements until he finally noticed someone from the forty-seventh floor had gone down to the same floor as the security guards.

Without missing a beat, he snuck back into the stairwell and headed straight for his new target.

He soon made it to the fourth-seventh floor and found a completely different layout from the floors below. There were no longer two glass partitions for the two offices, only concrete walls. There were eye-catching signs in front of several doors that informed the reader who the room belonged to. It made it especially easy for Thorne to find Brune Maver, the Relations Vice Director’s office.

Injecting the program Rollo prepared for him, the door clicked open by itself after a minute. Even so, he carefully controlled his cybernetics to project an image of the closed door as he carefully opened it.

Once he was in, he finally let out a sigh of relief. He had finally gotten access to an executive’s office. All the other ones he had come across were occupied, making it almost impossible to access. He could only spy on their screens over their shoulders, but he luckily discovered this manager was heading out.

After recollecting himself, he didn’t waste any more time and began going over the terminal in his office. The security took three times the amount of time to breach compared to the door, but it wasn’t long before he deemed it worth it.

That was because he found some files related to what he was searching for. It was some communication and receipts for hiring procurers of biological research material. It didn’t tell Thorne if Aurora Corporation was responsible for his family’s kidnapping, but it did confirm they had hired kidnappers and their identity.

Checking the time, he found the two hours were almost up, so he was prepared to begin exiting the building. Just as he was getting to the door, he heard it click open, causing him to instantly duck for cover despite being invisible.

“I told you people to only target those without any backing. Do you realize how your team’s carelessness has turned the HR department against me?” A short and stocky man strode in with a handheld terminal to his ear. He casually strode over to his desk and plopped himself onto his chair. He then turned around to face the window as he continued his conversation.

“No, no. The meeting is off today. I don’t care what it’s costing you to feed your stock. My superiors aren’t allowing anything near our facilities for a while. There’s no point in talking any longer.”

The man ended the call and sighed to himself. He took a moment to appreciate the view before him before picking up the terminal again.

“Ida, start searching for some new suppliers for Lab Trobax, and before you ask, no third-party testers. I don’t want a repeat of what happened with that no-name company again.”

The man paused to take a breath mask from beneath his desk and took a whiff of it. Thorne recognized it as Cloudpuff, what many corpos apparently preferred over alcohol and other vices.

“I don’t care if they’re based in their own space station or how many times larger they are than those previous idiots. I’m not authorizing any of our prototypes to be sent to any third parties again. Those guys last time barely did—”

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Manager Brune gave a passionate retelling about everything that had gone wrong with the previous company he had worked with. Several tidbits of the information alarmed Thorne. He had his suspicions, but the more the manager spoke, the more he believed he was talking about the place he had once been kept captive.

So they were behind it!

Thorne quickly moved into action the moment the call ended. He took out a syringe used to knock people out and stabbed it into the man’s neck without hesitation.

However, as soon as the man went unconscious, the doors to the room automatically burst open.

No one entered, but it still spooked Thorne.

It took him a few moments to realize this was likely connected to his victim’s state of health. There must have been some system that monitored his vitals and reacted accordingly. Right now, the system thought the man was having a medical episode, so it unlocked the room to allow help to arrive.

It’s only a matter of time before someone comes. How do I get him out of here with me without being immediately pursued?

Thorne only had a few moments to come up with an idea as time was running out. He glanced around the room before his eyes settled on the terminal on his desk.

He knew after using the breaching program, the terminal would have traces of their forceful entry now. It wasn’t something they minded, as they were disguising themselves as high-tier mercenaries. A few flaws with their tools and equipment weren’t anything out of the ordinary, but it still bothered Thorne.

That’s why he didn’t hesitate to take out some explosives and strapped them to the terminal. He then carried the stocky man off his shoulders as if he weighed nothing, and his Shade automatically moved to conceal the man as well.

They then stepped outside when the elevator door opened at this exact timing. Three people carrying a large bag strode straight to Manager Brune’s room, ready to rescue him. Seeing this, Thorne had no choice but to take action sooner rather than later. He dashed into the elevator before it could close and activated his explosives without hesitation.

A strong shockwave rocked the building as warm air rushed into the elevators with him just as the doors closed.

The only part left was to wait for the elevator to reach the ground floor, where he would be free. Until then, he could only hope his Shade would last out, as having an extra person with him only added to its burden.

---

“What the hell was that?” I screamed as soon as the doors to our vehicle closed.

I didn’t even care about the captive Thorne had brought along with him at the moment. Our mission was simply to investigate if Aurora Corporation was involved in the series of kidnappings for human experimentation, but it somehow ended in Thorne bombing their headquarters, of all things.

“I—I found something, from this guy here. Knocking him out tripped his health monitor or something. It was the only way I could think of to allow me to escape without having someone hot on my tail.”

“Yeah, this way they’ll pursue twice as hard once they find out what happened. You think a corporation is going to stand for a blatant attack like this? Especially by mercenaries? No! They would have to retaliate in order to protect their prestige. We have to leave the city now!”

“This is why you had us remain disguised as mercenaries, right? Once we disappear for a while, they won’t be able to do anything about it.”

“Yeah, sure, but our little space tour is over because of this. It’ll be risky to even meet with Strand and her people as Shake and Echo. These identities are burned. Aurora will be on high alert for some time, too. We won’t be able to do any more digging while that’s going on.”

“That’s what I wanted to tell you. I found something already. Proof of them hiring kidnappers and the contact for them too. We should track them down immediately.”

“Thorne, you’re getting too emotional right now. I know what this means to you, but if you can’t rein in your emotions, you’re better off sitting this one out.”

“Rollo! There’s no way I’m going to do that!”

“Enough! We’re not arguing right here. Let us get out of this goddamn place first.”

We then drove to the spaceport in silence, but in reality, I was frantically messaging Claire and the people back at the company to monitor any of Aurora’s movement moving forward. We stirred a beehive, and we can’t afford to let our guard down, even back home.

Any competent corporation could track our mercenary identity back to both Soluna and Aegis. We had to prepare to change the exterior plating of our ship, transponder codes and every serial number within the ship.

We threw our tied-up captive into one of the vacant rooms and took off from Redspire.

Our ship soon accelerated out of the peripheral of Mars, and I finally turned to Thorne for the details of his findings.

“So what did you find from that guy that made you instantly jump him without checking for safeguards?”

“As if I can check for anything when you forbid us to use anything mercenaries wouldn’t have access to!”

“Then you shouldn’t have made a move! We could retreat and come up with a plan later.”

“You mean to drag this out for another few days? I was hoping you fully realized how dangerous just a few days of being experimented on can be, especially after your whole ordeal with Nova Tech. Or was I wrong? Either way, I’m not letting any more people die from these sick fucks!”

“This is what I mean when I said you’re being too emotional about this. In your state right now, I don’t think you’re fit to save anyone.”

Thorne said nothing. I could feel his glare growing in intensity, but I didn’t bother acknowledging it. I continued to pilot the ship as an awkward silence took over the cockpit.

“I can do this, Rollo. Just let me use our gear. I’ve trained hard to take on threats like Nova Tech. A C-Class corporation isn’t a problem.”

“We’ll see. For now, tell me when you found—actually, just send me the recording from your optics.”

“If you want. It’s just some boring message between this Manager Brune and a group called The Hired Hands.”

“Woah, what an original name!” I exaggeratedly exclaimed.

I began perusing through the documents Thorne had saved. It was only when I listened in on the recording of the call he had eavesdropped on that I understood why Thorne believed they were the ones related to his family’s capture.

However, before I could dig into it further, alarms from our starship rang out. Our radar detected three vessels burning at full speed directly toward us.

“Damn it!” I shouted. “If they were a little slower, we would’ve lost them.”

There was no way any tracker on their manager could’ve revealed our location. We had fitted our restraints with signal jammers. If they were on our tails, it could only mean they tracked us from our trajectory as we left Redspire.

As I watched the bleeps on the sensors close in, my hand hovered over a panel I had kept shut until now. I sighed as I contemplated if I should go ahead with unlocking it.