For most people doing reconnaissance would have been the easy part, wandering around seemingly without aim, discovering what needed to be discovered before moving onto the next step in the plan. And then it would get harder. The planning, the doing, the follow through. Casing a place was one thing but the break in was another entirely. To most observation was straight forward and free of complication, it was when the need for action came around that difficulties arose.

All of that, though, depended wholly on the one who was doing the doing to fall into the category of most. That was something Remy LeBeau had never done.

Biding one’s time was tiresome and waiting for the right moment could be boring, but neither were hard and both were necessary. So he had done just that, bided and waited, until the moment was the one that it should be and the lighting was low to the point of being acceptable and then, then he did what he always did, what was as easy as breathing, something that came to him without pause. He stole. With the grace of a man who had done it a thousand times before (because, in truth, he had), Remy found his way around security systems and avoid the electronic gaze of cameras. Dressed in blue, the darkest of navy’s, he glided down corridors and across passageways, evading security guards as he did so, the fall of his feet not even a whisper as he descended into the belly of the giant beast.

Amateurs would wear black, thinking it would hide them best, but as anyone who knew, knew that black was cause for you to stand out more, throwing stark contrast against the hues which were indeed reality. Darkness was not inky or jet, just a concentration of blue that appeared to be so. The same went for destroying or disarming systems as you were to go by them. Why draw the attention if it was so unneeded? Why not just work with or around that which had been made your obstacle? The game was much more fun if skill was required rather than force.

And skill, at least in the venture at hand, that was something Remy had in spades.

Where the floors above had been drenched in shadowy darkness, the basement was all light. Why, Remy far from knew, but the reason behind such things held no weight. His only concern lay with getting the job done. He had seen the maps and done his research, and while he stood at the T section of a main corridor, he knew, too, that there was a lesser used maze of hallways in the back. They were remnants of a time before, but he guessed while fluorescence flooded the path he had hoped to take, that they would be much less illuminated than that which lay before him.

Turning on his heel he began to retrace his steps, moving to where he knew he next needed to go …

There were many different ways to infiltrate a facility and being a shapeshifter added a vast range of further options for Copycat to use. For this particular job she had done her research well; digging up old plans of the target building, carefully watching the routines of the people who worked inside to find who might be the person who could give her the most access, the choice had been obvious. Nobody ever really paid much attention to cleaners; it was their job to go into even the most secure areas at hours of the day when nobody was watching and clean cases containing items worth millions of dollars. Tonight all the security guards watching the monitors would see was Consuelo, the very overweight and bad tempered woman whose job it was to keep these under levels at least passably clean, every day of the year.

There was nothing different about her behaviour tonight; Consuelo waddled around the brightly lit tunnels on precisely the same route as she always did, sweeping with the same short sharp brushstrokes and muttering under her breath in a way which had led other cleaning staff to call her ‘Crazy Con’. It was a nickname which caused her to be left well alone by the other staff, something that suited both the real Consuelo and Copycat. The woman’s identity came with certain other benefits; notably access to the exact area of vaults where the storage catalogue stated the diamond Vanessa had been hired to obtain was being held. Pushing her trolley down a hallway, Consuelo moved over to a black door in the side of the tunnel and stepped inside, turning on the light, an out of place smile appearing on her face as she took in the huge server system in front of her.

Moving as quickly as her bulky form would allow, Vanessa moved over to a section marked ‘CCTV’ and pulled out what looked like a datacard from a pocket that appeared on her stomach. Taking a moment to look over all the different outlets and couplings, she picked one marked ‘Vault’ and connected up the data card, smiling in satisfaction as a light on the server turned red. Moving back to the door and turning out the light ‘Consuelo’ went back to her trolley and plodded on down the corridor, the security cameras at her destination now showing a looped recording to the men at the security desk upstairs. Muttering to herself in Spanish about cold tunnels and rheumatic joints, Copycat glanced at the looming vault door, pushing Consuelo’s thought patterns firmly to the back of her mind as she raised her hand towards the fingerprint scanner and abruptly froze.

The real Consuelo would almost certainly not have noticed it-a sound so soft it barely registered, but Copycat was much more attuned to her surroundings than some ageing cleaner. Whatever it was had been too faint and brief for her to identify, but she had definitely heard something. Cursing in Spanish she turned and started to rummage through the contents of the cleaning cart as if she had forgotten something, appearing completely distracted by her forgetfulness. In fact Copycat was paying close attention to the side tunnels nearby, her tympanic membrane enlarged to pick up on the slightest sound. Whatever the noise had been she would wait at least a minute before opening the vault, just in case one of the security personnel had decided to do a walk-through of the tunnels and needed to be told to keep off the newly brushed floors.