[2023 Wattys Shortlist, 2023 Amby Awards winner, Featured 3 times in Wattpad Picks lists]
Kaleth has worked as an agent of Luxarx for years. What the average person might see as an exciting, dangerous job has become the routine, and the only thing...
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"Oh, come on!" Nef yelled in frustration, waking up Nira, who was sitting next to him. She didn't remember falling asleep, but she wasn't surprised by it either. Nef had been trying to figure out the alarm system for hours now.
Nira yawned and checked her watch. 3 PM. Awesome. She must have been very tired from flying here overnight to be able to sleep in such an uncomfortable position for so long. She stretched her neck and back, wincing at how much it hurt. Great, now she was tired and sore.
"What's wrong?" she asked her boyfriend, mostly for his benefit because he clearly needed to complain to someone.
"I finally set everything up and the damned computer crashes." Right, Nef had been trying to set the alarm in a way that it wouldn't be set off by certain people and vehicles because apparently, that was possible. "Oh, thank the gods, that was supposed to happen."
Nira had no idea how Nef had figured that out, but she didn't ask. He would give her an explanation she wouldn't understand, anyway. Nef was now double-checking the settings, looking at the exceptions he had put into the system. Before she had fallen asleep, Nef had told her that there were cameras on the fence around the mansion that were able to recognize faces and license plates when approached. The keys were still necessary to open the gate if a person went here on foot, but if the system didn't recognize that person, the alarm would go off, regardless.
It sounded like something her mother would come up with. Maybe she and Ramien Garen weren't so different. Nira smirked. Her mother would just love hearing how similar she was to a Garen.
"Okay, let's see what else is in here," Nef declared with glee and cracked his knuckles. Nira sent his intertwined fingers a scowl. He might have explained to her about five times now that cracking joints did no damage to them, but it was still annoying as hell, and she suspected that he at least partly did it just to piss her off.
The user interface of the HDS, which stood for Home Defense System—and that had to be the least creative name for anything ever—was incredibly user-unfriendly, and Nira had no idea how Nef could even use it, much less as fast as he was doing it right now. Sure, he was working relatively slowly for his standards, but that was normal speed for regular people.
"Nothing, nothing." Nef kept repeating this as he scrolled through the settings and files, not seeing anything new or interesting. Nira saw a few things that she would deem worth looking into, but not enough to stop him until she noticed one file towards the end.
"Something," she said, making Nef look at her in surprise. She pointed at the file titled Turrets, and Nef double-clicked it with a raised eyebrow. Nira hadn't expected to see something like this as a part of such a defense system, but with all the security this house was protected with, why wouldn't there be turrets with machine guns as well?
The file contained a schematic of the mansion zoomed out and surrounded by four metal machines that looked quite close to the robotic arms Nef had shown her at the university. These came with huge machine guns attached to them, however. They didn't appear as tall as she had imagined, but maybe they had an adjustable height.
