Heist in The Heights [RP]

E jumps at Herma's outburst and turns to shush her.

Then: "What is it?" She asks when she sees the other girl standing with her arms crossed firmly across her chest.

"Magnets." Is all Herma will say, blushing fiercely.

"That was cool, though." Demi says giving a sulky looking Lys a nudge, but he does not respond, merely stares at the girls and the 'cool new people' resentfully.

---

With this bot dealt with, you have probably bought yourself a little time to get through the door. It should not be hard to force it, working together.

What do you do?

- Blank -

"That's you!" E exclaims. "I can't get past level 3, but Lys was second on the scoreboard for a while. Weren't you Lys? Didn't you say if you ever met number 1 you wanted to ask him how he got a perfect score on... something or the other?"

E's enthusiasm just seems to make Lys even more sulky. You suspect he is used to being the big dog in his group and is now feeling like a little fish all of a sudden.

What do you do?

While the kids resent the interruption to their fascinating C.A.K.E. discourse, and seem to want to find fault with Winston's plan on general principle, they also really want to see what on the other side --and each want to be the first to step through, you suspect, so you may need to take action if you don't want them bundling through heedless of danger, each trying to jockey for that 'first' position. They jump to the task and quickly have the barrier moving outwards --with some grinding and screeching that carries a lot further than you would like.

The door becomes easier to move once it gets past that midway sticky point and will soon be open enough for all of you to pass through.

What do you do?

Sticky as it is, it will be a challenge to get the door closed.

It looks like there was, maybe, supposed to be some sort of time-delay-automatic-closing, but the software has given up on that due to the jam. It may kick back in again at some point --maybe if you can get the door fully open and trigger a rest-- or you may be able to manually close it --or make it look closed-- with some effort, or the software could be hacked back into action.

If you move fast enough an open door might not matter.
If you need to get out fast, and open door may be a good thing.

What do you do about the door?

The corridor looks like it has been abandoned for a long time, the treads of the little robot have left deep tracks in the layer of dust, and the air smells stale, like the air-conditioning filters have been neglected.

Automatic lights turn on as you pass, many flickering badly while some failing to light, leaving pools of dimness.

The view through the window at the far end of the corridor confirms that you are still below the smog-line, so you would need go up several levels to get to where the labs are suspected of being located.

The teen foursome struggle to keep their excitement under control, for them it is like they have stepped into a long-fabled fairy-tail land. If the grubby disuse of this corridor puts them off, it does not show yet.

What do you do? Do you head straight upwards --looking for likely laboratories-- or are there any preparations or precautions you want to do first?

"A Second Door?" Demi says in awe, pronouncing the capital in 'Door' as though it is some sort of mystic relic --which, to them, it kinda is. "Wow!"

Your employer did not mention a second barrier, but there is no way they could have known about such a thing if there is one. You will just have to deal with what you find.

Your briefing did speculate that the residents living quarters were in the levels above the smog, where the view was grand, and that the work-areas might be located in or below the perpetual smog band. While you can see out the windows, they have that slight murky effect you associate with two-way mirrors, and no one been able to see in from outside.

While these are all good questions, the briefing was unfortunately brief on facts about the High-Levelers. Not much --next to nothing, really-- is known about them since they have had no contact with the outside world since sealing themselves off and are pretty big on their personal privacy.

You know you will not be welcomed, but whether these people still even have any concept of outsiders as being a thing that can happen or that they need to look out for, you don't know. So far they don't seem to be paying attention to the security features you have encountered.