BXBX NOVEL Chapter 138: Hiding in plain sight
"Yeah, I'm fine," I rolled my eyes as I responded, too damn tired to give even a single fuck about courtesy of manners.
I've pulled a full all-nighter doing nothing but soldering the circuit boards, an accomplishment that grew all the harder when Claire suddenly decided I was pushing myself and tried to get me to stop.
If I did stop as she wanted, however, then we would end up with merely half of the circuit boards that we had now. And given how the number of the circuit boards now pretty much matched the number of the plastic frames. And with all the other resources allegedly already moved into the project's warehouse…
"Can't we just get someone else to finish those devices for us?" Claire suggested, torn between throwing fiery looks at her father and then snuggling up to my site in a desperate attempt to stave off some of my exhaustion.
"I know it's going to be an added risk, but if we prove that this project works on a larger scale, we will have to expand the manpower involved in it anyway!"
Chihiro's face grew a bit tenser than usual. And as I looked into his eyes…
'Whoops,' I thought, quickly moving my hand over Claire's before giving her fingers a gentle squeeze.
"It's a risk that we can avoid taking for now. As for what happens in the future, it all depends on today's results anyway. That's why, even if we will end up hiring more people, we are merely at the starting stage of this lengthy process, nowhere near the point where we actually start looking for people."
While not to the same degree as was the case with CLaire's face, I could read Chihiro's expressions to some degree. And seeing him turn all serious as he gave Claire a dismissive… no, disapproving glare, I could pretty much tell what he actually wanted to say.
'Are you going to let your emotions cloud your rational judgment?'
Even though Chihiro never ended up speaking those words, I didn't even need to think long or hard to agree with the sentiment.
Any attempt at hiring more people in the early stages of the project was only inviting trouble.
Now that the news of the attack in the zone was slowly spreading throughout the high society, Chihiro's clan was quickly increasing the rate at which it harnessed the attention of the others, all the more now that the rumors of cooperation between CLaire's father and the city's mayor were starting to make their rounds around the city as well.
If we were to go ahead and start a hiring process in those circumstances, I wasn't quite sure if we could find a single proper applicant along the mass of spies all the other clans, factions, or influential groups would push in hopes of getting an ear inside Chihro's relatively reclusive clan!
And all of that would have no other reason but Claire's wish to spare me the further endurance run of actually taking all those circuit boards, plastic casings, and then all the other materials already prepared on the site and assembling them all into a series of the finished devices!
"Sirs, we are about to arrive," the driver's voice filled the back of the long car, coming through fancy speakers perfectly well hidden within the inner chassis of the car.
"Lighten up the windows, then," Chihiro responded right away, even going as far as to tap his knuckle against the tinted glass of the window. "I want to see what kind of security they have in place."
As if by a touch of a magic wand, the heavily tinted windows suddenly brightened up as the driver modified the degree of tint, thus allowing more of the light from the outside to seep through the tint. And after enduring a momentary light blindness, pretty much all three of us looked outside, eager to see just how great of work my uncle did…
Only to end up staring at the most ordinary-looking factory surrounded by just your everyday fence and a small number of guards actively patrolling the inner perimeter within the fence.
'On the outside, it looks like just another fabric in the industrial part of the town,' I thought, only to squint my eyes as I endeavored to take a closer, more inquisitive look.
And that alone proved enough for me to see beyond the illusion my uncle crafted and into the actual state of affairs at this place.
The outer fence surrounding the factory ground was just the simple steel mesh spread between the metal poles erected from a heavy bar of concrete buried deep into the ground.
All in all, it was a solid piece of protective work, good enough to stop any random trespassers from getting onto the property… or, at the very least, slowing them down enough to let the guards arrive on the spot and take care of the problem.
But that was just the outer fence. A lot deeper into the project grounds, however, there was another layer of the defenses, this time consisting of huge, metal beams arranged in a cross-fashion and extended all along the perimeter of the building, with yet another layer of simpler fencing hidden behind it.
With this, no vehicle could ever stroll beyond the middle, solid fence. And even if someone were to stop there, dismount their vehicle, and charge ahead… They would be stopped at the third and the last layer of the outer defense in the shape of a seemingly ordinary steel-mesh fence.
Yet, judging by the small sparks I could spot appearing all over the metal mesh, this inner fence was actually connected to the grid and carrying enough electrical charge on the live wires of the fence to cook anything that was stupid or unlucky enough to touch it.
And all of that came with several elevated watchposts, several ground watchposts, and a series of shallow trenches that were just deep enough for one to move through them without giving anyone outside of the factory ground any notice about it.
"I think they could've hired a bit more guards…" Claire commented as she immersed herself in the sights, all the way to the point where she struggled to move even when the car passed through all the checkpoints and finally came to a stop at the innermost courtyard of the project grounds.
"I don't think that's a good idea," I commented as I stretched my arms a bit, doing my absolute best not to let myself fall asleep. "Right now, the core of the protection scheme appears to be all about hiding out in the open. The moment they add more and more security to match the value this project can bring…"
I shook my head.
"The moment they do so, everyone in the city… No, everyone in the province if not the whole damn country will be scrambling to take a look at just what exactly is going on inside this place," I explained, only to stretch my hand out and then help Claire out of the vehicle, only to then turn my eyes to the final boss of this area that gave us the courtesy of coming out to meet us himself, rather than awaiting us in its throne hall surrounded by semi-bosses and all the other mobs we would have to first go through.
"Welcome to the project grounds, everyone," Clayton called out while spreading his arms open in a weird mix of a welcome and invitation. "I hope you are ready because everything else already is!"