Mr. Pike, Rose, and Kirk were in the banquet hall as well, and going by the positions of the green dots, they were keeping to the outer perimeter, remaining near one of the doors leading to the interior of the mansion. The news should have reached them by now, so they were likely preparing to execute the plan.
A sudden wave of anxiety washed over Dante at that moment. How wrong he was to think that the mission difficulty couldn’t climb any higher. With Blue Ember under siege, escaping with the artifact seemed next to impossible. The NVPD had already killed someone for daring to go past them, so they were all trapped inside until the siege ended.
Dante had a few options for escaping the blockade. The main one was Type 8-5 Teleportation, but he wanted to avoid relying on that if possible. Type 8-4 should be able to extend the range of Rift Creation, and Type 5’s Instant acceleration should make it possible to outrun anything the NVPD or BEO have, unless they somehow got Hyperdash or one of the other speedster heroes to play tag today.
The more he thought about it, the more it felt like finishing the heist solo was the right way, but somehow he felt that he was missing something.
Looking at the 3D model once more, Dante noticed something odd. Three of the red dots that had entered through the ground level were moving through the building with great speed, climbing from one floor to the other using the emergency stairs on his side of the building.
’Strange...’ He thought. ’Give me a visual on this one.’
A screen appeared right away, showing the landing between the twentieth and twenty-first floors. The area seemed as clean as the rest of the hotel, although a lot simpler in its flooring and the railings of the stairs.
Blue Ember didn’t have the conventional stairs on the first three columns and relied entirely on elevators to move things and people between the first and the fifteenth floors. It still has more than one fire escape for emergencies, however, and that seemed like the perfect route for anyone looking to infiltrate the building.
Of course, whoever designed the building wasn’t so stupid that they would let such an obvious vulnerability in its security. The emergency stairs benefited from much higher security, especially around the access points of every floor. they were kept closed most of the time and required the permission of several administrators to gain access to them.
At the moment, Volcan was the only one with access to them, and since he had no reason to open it, no one should have had access to those stairs. The three red dots reached the area captured on the screen before long.
Volcan did as commanded, capturing the intruder and allowing Dante to get a proper look at them, and as soon as he did, his face scrunched up with disdain.
Three weirdos draped in black cloaks, their heads covered in hoods, and their faces hidden behind featureless white masks. Just seeing them filled Dante with disgust, and he had more than one reason to feel that way.
The first one was because he had developed a hatred for people who dress this particular way after what happened in Factory Town. As for the second, it was because he recognized the trio.
When it came to the so-called superheroes operating in Neo-Vatra, one of the more famous teams was Raven Heart, which was strange considering their brand was built on them being mysterious darkness dwellers who work in the shadows. Funnily enough, their territory was in Edge Valley.
’Well, let’s hope we don’t run into them.’
As if responding to his wish, the three red dots representing team Raven Heart came to a stop at the exit leading to the twenty-fifth floor, and before he could even wonder what they were going to do, they slipped to the adjacent corridor, bypassing the gate sealing it and invading the floor.
’You gotta be kidding me...’ He thought. ’No way... right?’
Unfortunately, his doubts didn’t last for long as he noticed the three weirdos in black were taking the shortest route to the restaurant where he was. They were moving swiftly, too, causing the distance between them and the blue dot representing him to decrease faster than he would have liked.
Not waiting to see when they arrive, Dante activated Rift Creation with a mental command and opened a portal on the door of the stall he was sitting in, quickly stepping through it. He exited into the room right above, having already checked that no one was there.
A new screen appeared right away, this one showing footage from a security camera in the corridor where the three red dots were. They were still running in the same direction, but one of them came to a stop not long after, prompting the other two to follow. They faced each other, likely speaking among themselves, then turned at the same time and looked straight at the camera.
As if hearing his thoughts, one of them whipped their hand, and the next instant, the screen turned black.
[They know we’re watching...] Said Volcan.
’They know where we are.’ Dante thought. ’And that we can move between floors...’
He figured that they had already received the news about their side losing control over the security system, and since they decided to destroy the cameras as soon as he moved between floors, he received one more evidence that they were after him.
It didn’t escape his attention that he also gave them confirmation that he was the one who took control over the hotel’s security system. Unfortunately for them, cameras were far from his only source of surveillance data.
The question bugging him was how they were able to figure out his location, but its answer was very simple:
’I have to kill them...’
There was no point in trying to discern how they were tracking his location. Whether it’s a device of some kind or one of their abilities, the only way to be entirely safe is to remove them from the picture completely.