"Do not get spotted... Do not get recorded..." Marcia repeatedly thought to herself. She peeked out of the door to a supply room situated in a long hallway. Over her usual style of dress which included a galaxy-patterned skirt and silver boots, she wore a light gray hooded jacket with a silver belt. It covered her snow leopard ears and her hair, which was a light teal with frosted white tips. The jacket was also long enough to hide her tail. At an angle the hood obscured her face, but she knew that she was still going to stand out if anyone saw her.
Natural daylight from the large windows shone on the light gray walls and white doors; the walls, door frames and window frames each had rounded corners. The vents along the walls were unobtrusive; they looked like they were some of the lines sculpted into the walls.
Marcia briefly looked up at the ceiling which had curved, elegant but simple chandeliers neatly spaced along it. A line of LED light ran along each edge of the ceiling; they were recessed so slightly to look like they were part of the ceiling itself, and another line of LED light ran along the bottom edge of the walls to light up the edges of the floors at night.
She stepped out of the room to take a look around the hall before the next room she planned to visit. Between some of the doors were framed paintings and photos. She took a closer look and noticed they were in similar styles that some of her teammates were known for, but they weren't the exact same pieces of art she recognized. Everything looked simple and elegant, but a bit sterile.
Spaced between some of the doors were also sleek white couches with metal frames, and each couch had a coffee table next to it. The table had a glass top and simple curving shapes that complemented the chandeliers.
Polished metal lights were spaced between the windows on the opposite wall. Along the walls with windows were some glass vases with plants in them.
Glancing towards one end of the hall, Marcia saw a metal sculpture but it also looked to be different than she had seen. The decorative panels on the walls also looked different; they were metallic darker gray and rose gold as she expected, but were shaped differently. They were simpler curved panels but still gave a little bit of color and texture to the room aside from the paintings.
"That trip to the team's counterpart in another universe must've been successful then, unless there's remodeling I wasn't told about to make this look entirely Neo-futuristic. I think the Art Deco elements added warmth, but I presume these are differences between my team and our counterparts or between us and their management." She thought and shrugged.
She had a slight smile on her freckled face as she thought about this experiment being a success, but these differences also confirmed her worries about anyone spotting her and she kept up her guard again.
Glancing around in both directions, she checked again. No one was in sight nor were their footsteps within earshot. She continued walking down the hallway when she approached a large rectangular touchscreen seamlessly embedded in the wall.
Approximately the top quarter of the screen displayed the time and date in a format she recognized that was used in the human world and a few others. It displayed the time was 4:21 PM and the date was November 24 2017. Immediately below the date and time looked to be a widget bearing an insignia that had a small inverted triangle; the stylized fruit shape that made up the Chariots of Colors team insignia, but here the insignia was a monochrome dark gray and surrounded by a loop that had stripes in two shades of blue.
She found out this group, or organization as it called itself had a different name in a banner-style announcement below the insignia: "POMME organization patrol duty schedule 4:30 PM..." She glanced towards the top of the screen and looked worried when she noticed there was a camera, however just before she would’ve been detected by it, a device she brought with her automatically and remotely disabled it.
This was a relief to her because she suspected it was a security camera, but that relief but it lasted for only a few moments when she realized where there are security cameras in a building, there's a room where someone would notice if any of them weren't working.
She used a stylus she brought with her to scroll down on the screen. "Yes... This is exactly what I’m looking for". She thought. Her golden eyes widened with excitement as she touched a button on the screen with her stylus. A virtual map of the floor displayed on the screen. At a glance the layout was similar to her team's headquarters, but the map had a feature that the virtual maps in CC's headquarter's didn't; there were circular icons that indicated how many people were in each room.
"So did management expand the 'features' of everyone's security badges to keep track of this?" She pondered and looked uneasy, yet knowing which rooms had anyone in them was useful for her situation. She had no other intel about this place and no cover story she could've used to present herself as a guest.
There was no marker on the map showing where she was, which was in her favor to keep her from being detected, but she couldn't be sure where she was relative to the other rooms. She dashed towards the supply room so the camera she was in front of would work again, hoping to avoid any suspicion that the camera was disabled and wasn't just malfunctioning.
"All of this work just for quick research to see how our counterparts in this universe compared." She quietly sighed to herself. "Not that they'd know this. If they also militarized a lot due to a malware attack and one that might've been similar to what happened from cycles 711 to 713, they're going to assume the worst." She thought.
Suddenly, she peeked out the door just enough to check if anyone was there and her suspicions may have been confirmed. Nervously, she closed the door again but was careful to be silent, and she stayed completely silent as the footsteps sounded closer.
The person she saw for a few moments had long red-orange hair that fanned out, and was wearing a silver and black long coat with a blue vest, light blue skirt, red leggings, silver and brown boots with a red cowboy hat. Marcia recognized that hairstyle and outfit color scheme. "That looks to be Kiah's counterpart" Marcia thought.
"If some varmint is messin' with the security cameras, show yourself from the woodwork!" The person shouted. Marcia immediately covered her ears and suppressed her urge to hiss around loud noises. "That's definitely Kiah's voice." She thought and would've chuckled. The footsteps got louder; Kiah's counterpart was walking through the hall and walked just past the room Marcia was hiding.
"Is it workin' now?" Kiah's counterpart asked someone over a headset more calmly. "Very well then, but I'll still look out for varmints!" Marcia overheard.
She peeked out of the supply room again and glanced in each direction. No one was in sight. She looked back at the touchscreen on the wall and sighed with relief when she saw that the display was back to the time, date and announcements that displayed when she first saw it. Taking her stylus out of one of her jacket pockets again, she returned to the map to check which rooms on the floor were occupied and which ones would be clear for her to enter.
Looking at this map again with its details gave her an uneasy feeling and it was just one of her dilemmas with this project. She closed out of the map to look at another option on the screen; it was labeled "attendance". She selected it with her stylus and glanced around in each direction before she looked at the list that loaded on the screen. Her eyes widened in astonishment when she saw the attendance roster which listed the names and a photo of each of the team members.
The photos were portraits and each of the team members were wearing a uniform that had a high collar and had a futuristic edge to it. Along the collar were two parallel horizontal stripes; one was sky blue and the other was a lighter shade of blue that was nearly white. Their uniforms were silver with a hint of reflectivity, and had darker gray epaulettes and front trim.
Perhaps it was the lighting and the material the two shades of blue trim were made from were highly reflective of light, but they may have also been luminescent. On the left side of the uniforms was the same insignia that she saw on the touchscreen.
Even before the initial shock of seeing this list, this 'feature' that CC’s headquarters didn’t have, another feeling of shock hit her. Those uniforms looked familiar and she briefly thought over where she saw them before, but had to push those thoughts to the back of her mind. There just wasn’t enough time.
She focused her attention on the list itself. The list was split into sections which she noticed when she used her stylus to scroll down further on the screen; the top section listed who was in the building. The next section listed who was any away, the third listed the guests that were currently visiting.
There was one guest listed, whose appearance she quickly got a glimpse of but couldn't think about too much. Last but not least was a section of any known trespassers. "As long as I don't get caught, I'll stay off of there" Marcia thought in relief that no one was currently listed, but she worried again about the risks of staying in front of the same security camera she disabled again.
Two more OSes that had been listed as "away" were now listed as being present. Unsure of where they'd be heading, Marcia quickly she returned the touch screen to the main screen, and rushed back to the supply room she was staking out in earlier.
She pulled out a stack of sticky notes from one of the pockets on her jacket along with a pen, propped the stack against the wall and started jotting down as many observations that she could. For a supply room it was quite luxurious and even had its own lighting, but if it didn't, she had a pair of night vision goggles stashed in another of the pockets.
Quietly but quickly she wrote a lot down; she started to hear chattering and footsteps in the hall from at least two people but to check now seemed safe from how precisely she could hear their footsteps and how she could estimate their distance from where she was and whether they'd notice her...