An old tinted minivan quickly pulled into the underground parking garage. No one paid any attention to this. Not the sleepy security guards at the shopping center, long accustomed to catching only petty thieves and drunken hooligans from time to time. Not Anna and Mikhail, watching the work of the "Big Brother" system. Not even "Voland" himself, who was busy analyzing the emotions of couples in seclusion. Nevertheless, the minivan parked, froze in place, turned off its headlights, and something inside, completely unlike an engine, howled, momentarily drowning everything in a loud hiss and crackle, and a second later, everything froze.
The security monitors and visitors' phones went dark, the escalators and elevators stopped, the air conditioners and humidifiers fell silent, scattering ultrasonic mist over the green-covered galleries. The lights went out, the electronic locks on the doors became useless, and the numerous sensors and CCTV cameras went blind. Everything that happened next could only be seen by random witnesses, who, of course, were not on the lower level of the underground parking lot.
Four figures with hoods over their heads emerged from the minivan. In the darkness, broken only by the strangers' LED flashlights, only their hurried movements could be discerned. After a brief search along the walls, they found an inconspicuous door. The electronic lock on it was not locked and easily let the uninvited guests inside. Feeling their way with the beams of their flashlights, the figures began to descend the stairs.
The darkness in the underground server room did not last too long. Thirty seconds after the power was completely cut off, the backup generator kicked in. The lights came on, one after another, the server racks came to life with flashing indicators, and the monitors lit up. "Voland" was checking its systems.
"What happened?!" Anna asked, unable to hide the genuine fear in her voice.
"Who knows..." Mikhail replied confusedly, trying to bypass the verification procedure and log into the control console. "I had the same thing happen in my area recently... Such a surge that it knocked out my laptop. It never came back to life..."
Having finished with itself, the artificial intelligence began to "feel around" its peripheral systems. Sending out network requests, it encountered silence time and time again. It seemed that the failure had affected the nearby trunk communicators, and now, until all systems were rebooted, "Voland" was cut off from the world. The only thing it could reach now was a pair of cameras on the stairs and in the corridor in front of the door to the server room. It displayed the video from them on the screen.
In the dark corridor, Anna and Mikhail saw four people. Because of the hoods and scarves covering most of their faces, it was impossible to see who they were, but from their figures, it was clear that there were three guys and a girl. After jiggling the door to the server room and making sure it was locked, the unknown individuals began to fuss around, illuminating the space with flashlights. The girl took a sports backpack with a bright "Hello Kitty" logo off her shoulder and took a small box out of it. One of the guys started saying something to her, helping her untangle some connecting wires. A couple of minutes later, a card emulator connected to a laptop with wires was already taped to the electronic lock on the door. The girl sat down on the floor, cross-legged, watching rows of numbers and symbols run across the screen.
"They're trying to hack our lock!" Anna said excitedly, watching the intruders' actions with interest.
"I see..." replied Mikhail, watching the proceedings just as intently, "but it's a dead end. It would take a million years to crack... The electricity will come back on soon, and "Voland" will call security."
"What if it doesn't come back on?"
Fifteen minutes later, the strangers outside the door began to get noticeably agitated. One of the guys glanced at his watch several times and started saying something to the girl, gesturing animatedly. The other, as if to calm him down, took him by the shoulder, muttered something, and began rummaging through his backpack. The beam of a flashlight illuminated the round blade of a portable angle grinder.
"This will take them about forty minutes," said Mikhail, tapping his finger meaningfully on the screen.
There was a crackling and grinding sound behind the door. The blade of the tool began to bite into the metal with difficulty.
"What do we do now?!"
"Don't worry..." Mikhail began tapping on his phone. "The connection seems to be back. It's weak, but there's something... Let's call the boss, and he can decide whether to call the police. Damn it! He's out of range... Hero-lover, fuck... Well, let's call the cops...
"Wait! Look! What's going on there?" the girl drew the robotics engineer's attention to what was happening on the screen.
In the light of the LED flashlights, it became apparent that the corridor was filling with thick fog. Thick white smoke began to pour out of the ventilation grilles under the ceiling.
"The fire extinguishing system has been activated," Mikhail commented. "It's connected to the generator... Maybe they made so much smoke with the grinder that the sensors went off?"
The intruders behind the door also sensed something was wrong. One of the guys stopped his friend with the grinder. The other began to talk excitedly to the girl with the laptop again.
"Maybe it's not the sensors..." the robotics engineer continued to think aloud, looking at the monitor.
"What?"
"If it's "Voland" sensing a threat, then..." Mikhail began to hurriedly enter commands, making requests to the system.
"Then what? What is?"
"These guys are screwed..."
One of the guys in the hoodie shouted something to his friends and rushed up the stairs. The air was still fresh there, although there were also visible streams of gas. The guy ran to the outer door and started pulling on it, but it wouldn't budge. The electronic lock was closed. In a panic, the guy ran back downstairs, where everything was already filled with white smoke. Two of his friends were coughing, trying to walk along the wall. A dark figure of a girl was curled up on the floor.
The guy grabbed his friends and dragged them up the stairs, where thick smoke was quickly rising. In an attempt to escape, they started the grinder again, this time trying to cut through the lock on the outer door, but it was too late. The fire-retardant mixture had filled the entire room. One of the guys quietly slid down the wall and remained sitting on the stairs. His friend staggered, stumbled, and slid down. The third, clutching the grinder until the last moment, finally dropped it and froze, his head buried in the door.
"It's over..." Mikhail said resignedly, dropping the keyboard and leaning back in his chair.
"He just strangled them..." Anna said in horror, staring at the screen.
"Yeah," the robotics engineer replied with surprising indifference and calmness, "Voland felt threatened, both to himself and to us. He had no other choice but to use whatever means were at hand..."
"You said he didn't have much imagination."
"Well, it seems that now it's not so bad."
The light of old dim lamps came on behind the door. The ventilation system began to hum, removing gas from the room. It seemed that the power supply had been restored, and with it, life had returned to the shopping center building.
"Let's go!" Mikhail said decisively, getting up from his seat. "There's nothing for us to do here now."
He opened the server room door with his card and carefully stepped over the girl's body, lying face down on the floor next to her laptop and "Hello Kitt" backpack. The air in the corridor was cool and fresh again, but Anna felt a little nauseous. Trying not to look at the dead bodies, she climbed the stairs, holding onto the wall.
"Do you think they could have hurt us?"
"If they had come in and found us? Definitely," Mikhail replied confidently, locking the server room door behind him. "Who knows what's going on in the minds of these lunatics? Well, they definitely wanted to hurt Voland..."
"What now?" the girl asked the robotics engineer when they both found themselves in the parking lot.
"Voland will call security, they'll call the police... Attempted break-in, fire extinguishing system failure. It's all obvious."
"But they... They're dead."
"People die every day for all sorts of reasons," Mikhail replied calmly. "A few corpses won't spoil the statistics much."
"I meant... What are we going to do with this...?"
"Nothing. I think we just need to go home and get some rest. It's been an unexpectedly stressful day..."