Valerie watched the progress bars floating in front of her with half an eye while the camera footage with another. Of course both the progress bar and the footage were merely interpretations of digital data she project into neurospace. It wasn't really how much she eyed something but rather how much of her attention and resources was devoted to something. She was blind to the real world while dwelling in this virtual illusion enabled by the machinery connected to her brain, or was her brain simply enabling the implant to perform beyond it's factory limits? Valerie couldn't tell what was in control. She couldn't truly say with confidence that it was the biological component when she had far less chemical brain activity than a normal person.<br/><br/>It was Val's nerves that made her thoughts go down that road. The second layer of defense on the hatch was unforeseen but not a real obstacle as she patiently distracted the node defenses with false access attempts while she tried to crack it's security. The camera footage too showed her little, but at least it was something she could report on and maybe coax those two to talk back to her.<i>"Blue, Wombat, looks like the floor ahead is dark. No movement that I can see yet. Neurorunner on the fifth floor pinged the wireless port but he doesn't look interested in trying my defenses. Doesn't look like he has any clue about me being in the system either. In yur base hacking yur shit... as a twelve year old might say."</i><br/><br/>There was no mirth in her voice, not that the mental voice projected over their connection would be able to match the tone anyway. This weren't good so far. These gangbangers didn't have a fancy security system so they likely relied on guns and Valeria knew she was utterly useless in a gunfight.  Even if the system buckled easily to her, she could only offer so little support to Kal and she hated that.<br/><br/>Of course just dwelling on things was senseless so Valerie tried to simply move on with her thoughts as she cracked the hatch's second layer of defense. Able to access the node now, Valerie prepared a command for it to unlock and open as she activated the hatch node.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>