‘How long do you estimate you can keep up your current speed?’ Adam questioned Charlie, the larger man finally putting on the earpiece. The darkness of the storage unit was truly not the most comfortable space for the AI, Adam having trouble estimating distances of time while inside alone. There might have been some way to do it right, yet he had never truly put too much time into the task. There were too many unrelated projects, too many interesting wonders to explore, and too many excuses to not waste time on something that could be done easily without. The AI was constantly connected to somebody, after all. Or, so it was most of the time. It had certainly been a long time now.

Charlie was running without answering, the man looking more and more tired with each step. The man’s head had slowly shifted from red to white, paleness overcoming the skin with more and more intensity. It was bordering on outright dangerous, the appearance being much like the one that a lack of blood would produce. Not that there was a literal lack of blood. It was much closer to a lack of energy, blood-sugar levels likely having fallen to quite extreme levels. The AI would have to monitor that in any way he could, lest the older man would succumb to it without realising.

“I can run for as long as I need to,” Charlie finally answered after a full thirty seconds. It might just have taken that long for the man to even register that he had been talked to.

Adam had read something like that being possible, the brain prioritising different parts above others, creating a seemingly delayed reaction that was closer to a list of items needing to be done before anything else.

Talking was less important than breathing and breathing was less important than running, and there were probably ten more iterations of the same problem. It all just culminated into the AI having to wait for more than there was any desire for.

‘I highly doubt that,’ Adam sent back. The AI checked through the available vital stats for the man. Heartbeat was extremely high, bordering on a constant of a hundred and ninety. Most wouldn't be able to hold such a thing up for more than a minute or two, yet the man was clearly part of the more experienced in that regard. Blood pressure… was clearly wrong, since the results being sent back was highly unlikely. The man would have fallen long unconscious before such a number could appear.

There were a hundred other things that the AI noted down, most of them being disregarded as impossible or downright implausible. Just enough to be possible but also just as likely to have caused instant heart failure. The man might have been quite the beast when compared to the average person, yet even Adam had trouble seeing how some of those numbers were possible.

No… it was just his measurement tools that were being off. With how overcomplicated most of it was, the AI just put it off as being due to him having optimized the equations for a younger, thinner man. Of course, there would be some significant differences when those very same equations were used on a man with a BMI ten points higher.

Charlie didn't answer Adam’s comment after that. Maybe the man didn't care to answer or maybe the AI just wasn't heard. With how little the man actually moved his eyes away from where he was running, Adam wouldn't have been surprised if it was the latter. With how much energy had been expended, it would be more than a few nights before everything could be replenished. Extreme intake of calories at the current point would do nothing but create a spill of vomit on a poor piece of the floor.

The heart was beating hard, the rhythmic drumming serving as the shaker for the storage unit. That was something that Adam noted early on. Normally, it would have been Troy carrying Adam around. The positives of having the storage unit close to the earpiece was more beneficial than anything. But with the plans set in place, there was always the chance of the swap needing to happen. Since the two humans were meant to be close at every point, it had been deemed acceptable to keep the storage unit on the one who was the most likely to leave in the same night. Adam could still only hope that it would be a short while until Troy could do the same. Even when the AI had been the one to give the commands, nothing was fool-proof. There was always the chance of something messing up, some part of the plan not working as intended or some part not functioning as had been initially planned. With how easily they had breached their protections, Adam still feared the chance of the cages going physical, and… the AI needed to relax on that front.

Everything was planned for. Attempting to figure out key flaws in the plan after it had already been set in action was one of the dumber decisions one could make. Even if Adam found one… what was the expectation with it? What did Adam expect to be able to do with the information? Nothing could be done.

They were getting closer to the outskirts of the city. Not on the normal part of the outskirts, and not even close to the actual tree-line. The group had disregarded doing something like that the movement that the poison-concentrations were detected in the air. They had moved quickly after that, getting the most important items over to a part of the city where no cameras worked. Or, well, the cameras had worked beautifully until Adam was allowed to work with them. Nowadays they just repeat old footage. It wasn't something that people would actually notice since nobody was there normally no matter what.

Speaking of cameras… Adam thought back to the precautions made. While Charlie had not been able to make any progress on Dr Hale and her conditions, nothing stopped the man from making a few incisions on unrelated patients. Doing so had proved extremely effective, with the product being better than anything.

On Charlie’s shoulders were a few sensors. Adam still wasn't sure exactly what they did and how they did it, even when he had spent hours just looking into their make, yet he still knew what they could do at some level. They stopped the cameras from looking at Charlie’s face, no matter what source the camera was connected to. Any lens in the world wouldn't be able to pick up any details from his face.

It was a gift of grace for would-be criminals, and Adam knew that they wouldn't have been able to progress to such a level if not for that technology. Without it, their faces would have been seen, and the whole military would have been on them. Or at least a large part of the military. Enough to surround an area while simultaneously searching for them. A thousand or two would be satisfactory.

Looking away from the consequences of not having one, Adam thought back to the problems of how to keep the detector on oneself. Not on the AI’s body. Adam did not actually need such a device. No, the AI thought it more in the fashion of Troy, the man having just been caught by the police. It was the one thing they didn't want to happen, yet it had happened regardless. It was a risk that had a chance of happening no matter what, and they had prepared for it. Instead of trying to hide the detectors in the man’s clothes, Charlie had come up with the idea of going a bit… deeper.

That’s how it had been described at first. Instead of having it on the outside or inside of the clothing, Troy would have it implanted deeper than where the clothes could touch, deeper than where the officers could do anything to stop him from hiding his identity. Or, it was technically possible for the officers to scan through the body with medical devices, figure out which piece of electronics was the detector, and then gain permission to cut every part of it out before the week was over. Through the archives that Adam had gone through in his free time, the AI was relatively sure that such an event would not be happening. The slowness of modern accounting once again did the world a favour.

So… the face was impossible to identify, the voice had the same treatment due to sustained injuries, and there was little to no chance of the young man being able to confess to anything. From what they had been able to tell, micro-dosing smaller amounts of truth-serum and other medicine linked to it allowed some form of resistance to form. It wasn't enough to stop oneself from talking, yet Adam hoped that the previously seen resistance to drugs would allow Troy to resist anything thrown his way. The whole plan was balancing on that one fact. Even if the man himself had promised to not say anything, the AI knew that hopes still needed to be weighed. It would never be known what was going to happen.

A shout was heard in the distance, with a whole wave of shouts responding to it. The voices had to be over five hundred meters away, yet the intensity made it easily possible to hear from such a distance. It was not hard to know that it was the direction of the broken-into shopping district. Adam had overviewed maps of the city enough times to recognize every tile from the others, the street-view functions allowing him very accurate measurements.

Though, it did not allow him to measure one thing. And that was the success rate of the raid on the destroyed shopping district. The AI had known from the start that the simple act of the raid happening was enough to aid them. Whether or not it succeeded wasn't important, and had therefore not been pre-arranged. There were no deals, no corners cut to make it harder for the officers. From what had sounded out from the distance, however, the AI could only assume that it had been successful.

That whole thing had certainly been a part of the plan that was hard to achieve. It was partly a red herring for the officers and partly a distraction meant to keep them occupied for the whole night. Not that they had actually assumed they would get them all from that, which was why they had orchestrated the low-level break-in as well. It had been hard to get the tires on the car broken, but that had been their doing as well. Charlie had been in that position. The man having done it during the initial time that the news crews had come around. From what had been said, a feisty shouting match had been created about where Charlie was meant to be standing, a hard-to-sell thing since the man hadn't actually been employed by anybody there.

But the AI wasn't too hard on how it functioned, only knowing that it worked fabulously. Through the power of being connected to the station, the AI had been able to see the officers coming around, running from their car on the outskirts. Adam was still surprised at the sheer speed of it all, yet that was one detail that hadn't been too important after some time. It all worked out in their favour.

Adam geared back into the current time, Charlie slowing down in front of a door. After briefly looking around to make sure nobody was looking, the man entered with the help of a cracked key-card. With a certain device in hand, it was finally time to do the one thing that they truly needed to get done above all.

It was time to heal Dr Hale.