Academy Infiltration
Mission Log: Academy Infiltration
Operative: Ina Thalios
Assignment: Data Extraction – Cross-Conclave Intelligence
Location: CliffsTop Educational Complex, Sector 12
Date: October 15, 2098
Classification: Eyes Only
0600 Hours – Insertion
They say the best place to hide is in plain sight. That’s why I’m wearing a student uniform, carrying textbooks I’ll never read, and walking through the front gates of the most prestigious academy in CliffsTop like I belong here.
The CliffsTop Educational Complex serves children of the professional class—future engineers, doctors, administrators. More importantly, it serves as a training ground for young operatives being groomed for Conclave intelligence work. The academy doesn’t advertise this. Parents think their brilliant children are simply excelling in “advanced political science” and “strategic studies.”
I know better. I was recruited from a place just like this eight years ago.
My target: the Registrar’s Archive. Buried three levels below the main administrative building, it contains personnel files on every student who’s passed through this academy in the last twenty years—including those who were flagged, recruited, and deployed as operatives for the Tech Conclave.
My employer wants to know who the Tech Conclave has embedded in the Industrial Conclave. Corporate espionage at its finest. The Conclaves are always watching each other, always maneuvering, always trying to gain advantage.
I’m just the knife they use to cut each other.
0845 Hours – Establishing Cover
First period: Advanced Systems Theory. I slip into the back row of a lecture hall designed for two hundred students. The professor drones about resource allocation algorithms while I study the building’s layout on my neural interface—discreetly, buried beneath layers of legitimate student data I’ve loaded as camouflage.
Security here is sophisticated but predictable. Biometric scanners at every entrance, but they’re calibrated for faculty and enrolled students. My forged credentials are good—bought from a hacker in the Underground who specializes in identity work. As far as the system knows, I’m Marina Reeves, transfer student from a BridgeView academy, scholarship recipient, model citizen with a loyalty score of 87.
The real Marina Reeves is currently on a “study abroad” program in the Orbital Stations. She’ll be gone for six months. She’ll never know I borrowed her identity.
Between classes, I map patrol patterns. Security guards rotate every four hours. Automated surveillance drones sweep corridors on predictable schedules. The weak point is the shift change at 1400 hours—a seven-minute window when human guards are distracted and drone coverage overlaps inefficiently.
That’s when I move.
1357 Hours – Breach
The administrative building’s lower levels require faculty clearance. I’ve been watching Professor Kaminsky all morning—elderly, forgetful, the kind of academic who leaves his access card in his coat pocket and his coat on the back of his office chair.
It takes me ninety seconds to lift the card, clone it to my interface, and return it. He never notices. He’s too busy arguing with a colleague about some obscure theoretical framework.
At precisely 1400 hours, I descend the service stairs. My neural interface projects a false status to any scanner I pass—just another faculty member accessing archived records for research purposes. The system doesn’t question it.
Level Three is cold. Climate-controlled for data preservation. The Archive is less impressive than I expected—rows of server towers, some old physical file cabinets (redundancy in case of digital failure), and a single security station manned by an automated AI.
“State your purpose,” the AI requests, its voice neither hostile nor welcoming.
“Research access. Professor Kaminsky, credential alpha-seven-seven-delta.” My cloned access transmits seamlessly.
“Verified. Time limit: two hours. Unauthorized data extraction will result in immediate lockdown and detention.”
I smile. They always warn you right before you do exactly what they’re warning you against.
1445 Hours – Extraction
The files I need are buried in subsection seven: “Advanced Placement Candidates – Flagged for Secondary Evaluation.” That’s the polite way of saying “students we’re recruiting as spies.”
I find what I’m looking for in forty minutes. Cross-referencing graduation records with known Tech Conclave intelligence personnel, I identify seventeen individuals who passed through this academy and are now embedded in Industrial Conclave operations.
Names. Current positions. Original recruitment dates. Handler designations. Operational histories.
This is dynamite. This could start a corporate war.
I don’t care. I’m being paid to extract it, not to consider the consequences.
I upload the data to an isolated partition in my neural interface—no network connection, no trace, completely offline. Old-school data smuggling. Then I carefully cover my tracks, resetting access logs, scrambling my digital footprint.
The AI doesn’t notice. I’m below its threat threshold—just another professor doing boring research.
1530 Hours – Complications
I’m halfway back to ground level when the problem emerges: a girl, maybe sixteen, standing in the corridor I need to traverse. She’s staring at her interface, but her body language is wrong—too alert, too focused.
She looks up. Our eyes meet.
“You’re not Professor Kaminsky,” she says quietly.
My hand moves to the neural disruptor in my pocket—a last resort, something that will scramble her interface and give me seconds to run. But I hesitate. She’s a kid. She’s exactly who I was eight years ago.
“No,” I admit. “I’m not.”
“You’re stealing something.”
“I’m extracting information that powerful people don’t want exposed.”
She considers this. “Which Conclave do you work for?”
“None of them. I work for whoever pays me.”
“So you’re a mercenary.”
“I prefer ‘independent contractor.'”
She smiles slightly. It’s not a friendly smile—it’s the smile of someone recognizing a kindred spirit. “They recruited me last year. Tech Conclave. They said I had ‘exceptional aptitude for strategic intelligence gathering.’ They made it sound like an honor.”
“It’s not.”
“I know.” She pauses. “I’ve been looking for a way out. They own you once you sign. You can’t quit. You can’t refuse assignments. Your loyalty score becomes tied to your performance.”
I see where this is going. “I can’t take you with me.”
“I don’t want you to. I want you to do something for me.” She pulls a data chip from her pocket—physical media, untraceable. “This contains evidence of illegal recruitment practices, blackmail against students who refused, and names of operatives they’ve burned when they became inconvenient. Put it somewhere it’ll cause damage.”
I take the chip. “Why?”
“Because I’m stuck in the system, but maybe I can rot it from the inside. Because they recruited me by threatening my family. Because I’m tired of being a knife.”
I understand completely.
1642 Hours – Exfiltration
I walk out the front gates at shift change, just another student heading home. Nobody stops me. Nobody questions. I’m invisible because I look exactly like I belong.
The data I extracted is encrypted and isolated. My employer will get what they paid for. But the girl’s chip? That’s going somewhere more interesting. I know a journalist in BridgeView who specializes in Conclave exposés. She’ll know what to do with it.
Maybe it’ll make a difference. Maybe it won’t. Maybe it’ll just get people killed.
But at least that girl tried. At least she fought back the only way she could.
1830 Hours – Debrief
Mission successful. Target data acquired. Zero detection. Clean extraction.
But I can’t stop thinking about that girl in the corridor. She’s sixteen and already trapped in a system that will use her until she breaks or becomes too inconvenient to keep alive.
I was her. I got out by becoming exactly what they trained me to be—just for different employers.
She won’t get out. None of them do. The Conclaves don’t release assets. They bury them.
I’ll deliver my payload, collect my fee, and move on to the next job. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m good at.
But tonight, I’ll drink to that girl. And I’ll hope her chip causes enough chaos to make the bastards bleed.
End Log
Ina Thalios
Independent Operative
“Loyalty is a commodity. I sell to the highest bidder.”
Mission Statistics
- Insertion Time: 0600 hours
- Exfiltration Time: 1642 hours
- Total Duration: 10 hours, 42 minutes
- Files Extracted: 17 personnel records (Tech Conclave operatives in Industrial Conclave)
- Complications: 1 (resolved without force)
- Status: Success
- Payment: On delivery
- Next Assignment: TBD
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Recruits tested under shadows of deception.