Warframe: Earth-Bet Protocol

Breaking into the PRT ENE headquarters would be surprisingly straightforward for the Tenno. Not due to any lack of competence on the part of the staff, nor solely because he was utilizing Ivara Prime's stealth abilities, but primarily because he had Ordis. The Cephalon's ability to seamlessly bypass and manipulate security systems proved invaluable.

By the time the Liset had entered the city limits of Brockton Bay, still cloaked, Ordis had already begun peeling through the PRT's external firewalls. Real time camera footage editing, spoofed alarms, dummy sensor data—basically turning their security system into a puppet show.

 Even so, caution was still exercised. After all, even if the security system would be blind to him and his machinations, the people could still notice something if he made a mistake. That wasn't even getting into the complication that would be parahuman technology and powers. 

Luckily, due to his recent engagement with the Simurgh, the Protectorate heroes of this city were gathered on their sea fortress, still waiting for news on if they would need to fight. So aside from the junior division of the Protectorate, the Wards, no other parahumans would be in the building.

As the ship hovered high above the base, the Operator, already invisible, dropped from the belly of the landing craft. The wind flew by loudly as he rapidly descended from air to the ground. Just as Ivara was about to make impact with the helicopter pad and undoubtedly grab the attention of the guards by cratering it. On nothing but air, Ivara jumped, arresting her momentum in an instant to land softly. 

The PRT Troopers, none the wiser of the intruder among them, kept talking amongst themselves near the door. Generating a trick arrow in their hand, the Operator casually threw it to his left while walking away from it. The trick arrow burst into energy and let out a ping.

 Despite their conversation and the wind, the troopers heard the noise of the trick arrow, allowing the slight mental compulsion of the sound to take effect. All four guards got quiet, readied their weapons and went looking for the source of the noise as the Operator circled around them and approached the door.

The access door clicked open without resistance. Ordis had already hijacked its controls and spoofed the feed—anyone watching the camera on it would see a door that never moved. The Tenno could hear the guards report into their radios the noise they heard as the roof access door gently closed behind him but was not worried about it. Ordis would handle it. 

Inside the stairwell, it was all clean lines and white walls. The Operator descended each step with soft, quick, and deliberate movements. The sound of distant chatter and office bustle began to bleed through the walls the lower he went. Ordis had marked a path through the building, and the fastest route cut straight through a floor of busy office space.

There were longer, safer routes the Operator could have taken to get to the servers but he chose the faster one because he was confident in his stealth skills, especially when he had the Infiltrate augment mod on. Any traps or surprise alarms that Ordis couldn't detect or hack could be easily bypassed as the mod strengthened Ivara's Shroud to the point she could walk through even laser grids without tripping them.

Once he finally made it to the office floors, he stopped at the door that he would need to cut through.Using the mini-map and the camera feed Ordis was steaming to him, he perfectly timed when to open the door and slip in when no one was paying attention to it.

What greeted him inside were rows of cubicles stretched across the space, broken only by clear-glass meeting rooms and the occasional cluster of uniformed troopers speaking in low tones. Parahuman specialists, techs, analysts—most focused on their terminals, a few sipping coffee or pacing with tablets in hand. Enough eyes and ears to ruin everything if he slipped up.

With Ivara, he could put the whole room to sleep in an instant and go past, but the Operator didn't do that. Instead, he scaled the wall with barely a sound. Hands and feet latched onto the vertical surface with practiced ease. Ivara moved less like the huntress it was and more like Oraxia, crawling sideways, upside down, climbing across support beams and ventilation rails. 

Below, a worker in a blazer stretched at their desk, glancing upward and saw nothing. Just the ceiling, even as Ivara in all her gold and white glory, was crawling right above him.

At a tight bottleneck, where the ceiling dropped low and two groups converged near a hallway intersection, he perched silently above them. Ivara clung to a horizontal beam as two small crowds passed directly beneath, exchanging jokes about the Liset being a U.F.O. 

The time it took for them to thin out caused his latch to weaken significantly, so he dropped silently to the floor and rolled behind a wall partition for a few seconds to get it back to full power. 

A moment later, he was on the ceiling again.

He moved quickly across the room now, using wall latches and silent bullet jumps where needed, slipping past clusters of people and furniture until he finally reached the far end of the office floor where the second stairwell was located. He entered without pause.

Down he went, floor by floor, slipping past the occasional worker or trooper moving between levels. Eventually, he reached the designated floor—one level below the underground parahuman containment wing and just above the Wards' quarters. This was where the backup generator and main server room were located.

The difference between this floor and the rest was stark. No windows. Colder air. Dimmer lights. Sparse foot traffic.

Even so, the Operator didn't let his guard down. He kept Ivara's Shroud active, moving briskly but alert down the corridor. A few staff and guards moved about, but with space between them there was no need to stop. He stepped around their paths cleanly, avoiding contact.

Almost a minute of walking and following Ordis markers had passed until Ivara finally reached a hallway where a reinforced door waited at the other end—solid steel with a biometric lock panel and dual authentication scanner, guarding what was clearly the server room. 

While walking up to it, the locks disengaged with a soft click the moment the Operator got close. He slipped through the now-unlocked door, letting it seal quietly behind him and Ordis relock it. Inside, the air was colder still, almost sterile. Towering server racks filled the space, blinking with rows of indicator lights and humming with low, constant energy. Cables snaked in every direction, some suspended from overhead tracks, others coiled neatly along the floor. Cooling fans droned steadily, masking all but the loudest noises.

Near the central control terminal sat a lone tech—pale, shaking, probably from stress or lack of sleep. His eyes were wide, fixed on a screen. Whatever data he was monitoring had him too distracted to notice the door or the shadow moving through it.

Without a sound, the Operator raised a hand and summoned a sleep arrow. With a light toss, it whistled softly through the air and on impact with the tech, burst into energy. The man didn't even twitch before slumping forward in his chair, breathing slow and steady.

The Operator gave the body a glance to confirm unconsciousness, then looked toward the main terminal. "Ready Ordis?"

"Always, Operator," came the Cephalon's prompt reply.

With that confirmation, the Operator jammed the Parazon into the terminal. The device interfaced seamlessly, its tendrils of code weaving into the system's architecture. Data streams flowed across his HUD, lines of information cascading as Ordis navigated the network.Lines of data flew by—encrypted PRT logs, internal reports, facility schematics and much more. The Operator narrowed the search parameters. Portal. Interdimensional. Professor Haywire. Earth Aleph.

Seconds passed before Ordis spoke.

"This is odd…" He said, voice tinged with digital frustration. "The data is heavily compartmentalized. All files related to the Aleph portal are stripped of meaningful content. Logs contain only surface-level details—public information we already possess. All technical and operational specifics are restricted."

The Operator frowned behind the Warframe's helm. "How restricted?"

"Only accessible to Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown, the President, and select cabinet-level personnel. No backups exist here. The encryption systems enforce total lockdown unless queried from verified central terminals."

The Operator pulled the Parazon free, the connection severing. He stared at the console a moment longer, then let out a low, annoyed exhale through his nose in the transference pod.

So he'd been right. Getting home wasn't going to be easy. And unless he was willing to stoop to kidnapping world leaders, that technology was going to stay out of reach. Sure, the politicians were probably far from innocent—but he'd already besmirched his honor by breaking into the PRT and trying to steal classified data from an organization that wasn't even his enemy. He wasn't ready to cross another line. Not yet. Not when he could still wait for the Lotus to find him.

Ivara turned and retraced her steps, gliding through the cold corridor like a ghost. The tech slumped at the console would wake soon, unharmed, never realizing he'd even lost consciousness. The terminal would show no breaches. No tampering. No sign anyone had ever been there.

The Operator took the same route back up—through the stairwells, keeping to shadows and blind spots as Ordis quietly cleared the way. He didn't stop. Didn't pause. Just kept moving until he reached the ground floor. 

There, under the cloak of Ivara's shroud, he waited near the exit, looking at the floof's in the gift shop until a group of tourists began exiting the building. He followed close behind them, slipping out the door without issue.

He walked away down the city's street to the designated evacuation site.

Annoyed at this waste of time and more than a little frustrated.