Afterlife

24

Most of the city's citizens were now fast asleep in their homes when Connie met up with Luke at their agreed upon location near the outskirts of the city's edge. Each of them was dressed in dark clothing and carrying minimal weapons, such as daggers or some in city IP gear that they may or may not need to sneak into the Commander's office undetected. Once they agreed upon a plan of action, they then made their way into the sleeping city, making sure to keep to the shadows as they made their way towards the IP headquarters. It was unlikely that anyone would notice their movements at this time of night, even if they hadn't been IPs, but that didn't stop them from taking every precaution to ensure that the opposite did not occur.

As was expected, they made it to the headquarters without a single diversion necessary, but the real test would come when they were inside the building.

Most of the IPs that were normally charged with running the headquarters were gone at this time of the night, meaning that there would only be a skeleton crew of IPs still running the place, probably the Commander's group themselves. This, however, could be either a blessing or a curse for Connie and Luke. While having the smaller group of people guarding the place would make it easier for them to sneak around inside, if they were caught by a member of the Commander's group, there was a higher risk of one of them seeing through to their true intentions than actually falling for Connie's original plan to trick anyone who'd caught them in the act. Plus, if the Commander really was behind all this, which by now there was very little doubt to the contrary, then it was very unlikely that he would leave his office unguarded, even if he was trying to avoid suspicion. It was logical to assume that there would be at least one guard outside the room. Luckily, Luke had brought this fact into consideration when they had made their plan earlier, and thought of a possible solution. The only question was... would it work?

They managed to slip through the long, darkened halls of the headquarters without being noticed for most of their way up to the Commander's office. Most of the lights in the building had been shut off other than in a few key areas, making it easier for them to sneak by unnoticed for most of their trip, other than a few moments here and there when they just managed to escape around a dark corner or vanish into the shadows just mere seconds before the guards would turn to check in their exact direction, but aside from that, they seemed to be making great progress in reaching their goal. It wasn't until they reached the final corridor that they encountered their anticipated problems.

As Connie and Luke peered down the hall from a hidden position around a dark corner, Connie did her best to consider what their next step should be. Around the corner was a short, wide, dead end hallway with three doors in it, one on the back wall, and one on each of the side walls. This hallway, however, was one of the more well lit ones, and there were two guards posted at the door to the back, which was the door to the Commander's office. They also had no way of knowing whether the Commander himself was still inside the office. He didn't usually stick around at the end of the day, but in situations like this, it wouldn't be completely unexpected for him to do so.

"What do you think?" she whispered to Luke as they backed further out of sight behind the corner, to be sure that they wouldn't be noticed.

"Hard to say," Luke replied in the same hushed tone. "There's a good chance that the Commander could still be inside the room, and there's a much higher chance of us being noticed if there are two guards outside instead of one." There was a short pause as Luke looked around the corner once more before he looked back at Connie and said, "We need to find a way to distract them, so they'll leave their post. Then if we're lucky, we'll also be able to find out if the Commander is really inside the room. If he is, the distraction might just bring him out of the room as well. Making it even easier for us to sneak inside."