A vertical shaft, milky-white lights, and an elevator lobby about ten square meters in size.
With a pit as massive as Tiberia, just imagine the sheer amount of stuff that needs to be dug up, shipped, and supplied. This dinky little elevator? No way it could handle all that. That’s why Tiberia actually has two more freight elevators just for hauling cargo.
But if you think you can sneak in through the freight elevators, you’re dead wrong. According to Donald Zade’s intel, those elevator shafts are packed top to bottom with layers of sensors and isolation tech. Forget spies—even if someone busted through the farm above, cracked open the shaft, and tried tossing a bunch of grenades down, those grenades wouldn’t even reach the bottom.
If you want to get underground, you have to use the passenger elevator. And that one? The security is even tighter.
Wait, didn’t Jill Caprio just swipe her palm and breeze right through? Seemed easy, huh? Nope, not so fast—who said she was using a palm print? These days, palm prints and iris scans are ancient news. What she actually used was a biochip hidden in her palm.
Tiberia’s smart system checks everything—your walk, your moves, your face, your features—to figure out if you’re legit. It even reviews surveillance footage from earlier, just to make sure. The AI’s logic and judgment are next-level.
But all that surveillance eats up way too much computing power, so usually, they use little tricks to make things easier for the system to spot trouble.
Those tricks? Super sneaky. So many hidden traps.
The farm manager’s hand bones have a biochip embedded in them, made from non-magnetic material—so a regular airport scanner wouldn’t pick it up. Jill had to cut a not-too-big, not-too-small hole in his palm just to dig the chip out. Outsiders think lab members just scan their hands to get in, but if you try to fake it with a palm print, the elevator’s stun guns will zap you from every angle.
And if you think just grabbing a hand chip means you’re all set, think again. Back in Donald Zade’s day, you could just swipe and go, but he’s a prisoner now, and the Zade House isn’t stupid—they’ve upgraded, so now there’s more than one biochip involved.
The farm manager had biochips implanted in both his skull sutures and sacrum. Although Jill Caprio only scanned her palm after entering the elevator, that little 'scan' was just for show. As the elevator descended, rings of white light swept over her body—those beams weren't just for lighting up the place.
If any one of those three chips fails to send a signal, you get flagged yellow. The moment the elevator doors open, you’ll find armed guards waiting to check your credentials—hey, accidents happen! But if two or more signals are missing, forget about it. What are the odds? Red alert blares instantly. The elevator won’t even reach the bottom; they’ve got a million ways to make an intruder regret ever trying.
Plus, these biochips run on bioenergy. If the power stops, the chip dies in half a second. So, if the carrier croaks or someone digs out the chip, unless you can perfectly restore power within half a second, those fragments are just worthless junk.
Which, let’s be honest, is basically impossible.
Even so, the folks running Tiberia still think this security isn’t airtight enough. Sure, it’ll stop a hundred wannabe 007s, but in this new era, when you’re up against all sorts of Chosen Ones, it’s a bit flimsy.
So, as the saying goes, ‘use a borrowed stone to polish your jade.’ Thanks to the manager who runs both labs, these two rival labs started sharing resources. The farm manager’s bloodstream got injected with nanobots as a pilot project, and soon, everyone’s getting the nano-ID system.
With this setup, sneaking into the lab unnoticed? Pure wishful thinking. Even if you could tunnel under all that dirt, the second you pop into the lab, the scanning system will catch you red-handed.
Too bad, though—the manager was just a step too late. Just one step!
If they’d rolled out the nano-ID system a few days earlier, even if Jill had two brains working overtime, she’d have to brute-force her way in. But now, those three chips are chilling in Jill Young’s pocket. Thanks to her inner power, they’re alive and kicking, giving every passing scan a big thumbs-up: 'All good here! No problem!'
With the help of those three thumbs-ups, the elevator zipped straight to the bottom. Ding—the doors opened, and waiting outside wasn’t a squad of armed guards, but a woman in a white coat.