Infiltration Successful
Late at night, beneath the imposing cliff where Steve's sprawling luxury villa stood, Arthur Sterling remained hidden in the deep shadows.
He fought the intense, lingering urge to pull out a cigarette and light it, knowing perfectly well the briefest flash of fire could easily give away his position in the darkness.
He looked straight up at the towering cliff top. Steve's fortified villa was sitting right there, looming above him like an impenetrable, dark fortress.
But right now, whether because the paranoid owner was already fast asleep or simply due to the steep, obscure angle from the base of the rock, Arthur couldn't see a single light shining from the windows.
Everything above was completely, unnervingly pitch-black.
None of that eerie darkness affected what he absolutely had to do next.
He reached his calloused hand forward into the empty air, seamlessly accessing his invisible void.
From his dimensional private space, Arthur took out a sealed packet of professional-grade magnesium powder.
He carefully dusted his palms with the chalky white substance to ensure a flawless, slip-free grip, then pulled out a heavy-duty climbing rope and slung it securely across his broad chest.
After that, he produced several chemical glow-sticks: one clamped firmly between his teeth, another tucked safely in a front chest pocket.
Then, strictly following the precise vertical line of steel pitons he had painstakingly hammered into the stone the rainy night before, he began aggressively climbing the sheer cliff toward the villa above.
As he climbed with practiced, fluid motions, he expertly threaded the heavy rope through the pre-placed steel carabiners.
This tactical setup ensured he could seamlessly rappel back down the vertical drop in mere seconds once the massive heist was finally done.
Were it not for the undeniable fact that his physical constitution and raw strength were now well over twice that of an average adult man, executing all of this intense, vertical labor entirely alone would have been seriously, potentially lethally difficult.
He ascended cautiously, ensuring every single muscular move was calculated and perfectly secure against the cold rock.
He kept a highly wary, intense eye on the dark villa above, deeply afraid that heavily armed guards on night patrol might suddenly spot his silhouette against the stone.
Fortunately, the grueling climb remained completely uneventful.
It took Arthur a good, tense ten minutes to finally reach the absolute top, flawlessly following his own steel pitons.
Throughout the entire, perilous ascent, he miraculously never encountered any immediate danger.
"Whew," Arthur breathed out softly.
With a quiet, relieved exhalation, his hands gripped the wet ledge and he crested the sheer cliff.
Only then did the hammering heart lodged firmly in his throat finally slide back down into its rightful place in his chest.
After taking a crucial moment to fully catch his breath in the cool night air, he set to work at once.
He knew his operational window was incredibly short. He still couldn't be absolutely sure whether armed guards still actively roamed the perimeter of Steve's sprawling villa.
In the cinematic plot of The Italian Job, after the treacherous Steve violently betrayed Charlie Croker's elite crew, murdered the mentor John Bridger in cold blood, and made off with the staggering ton of pure gold bars they had meticulously lifted from the Italian Mafia, he had lived in constant, suffocating fear of violent retaliation.
He was constantly on the run across Europe until he finally, paranoidly hid himself right here in the sprawling hills of Los Angeles.
When Charlie's highly specialized team officially began plotting their explosive revenge, they thoroughly investigated Steve's massive mansion.
Yet, they discovered that the deeply paranoid and mistrustful Steve kept his luxury villa heavily, aggressively fortified from the outside but strictly lived there completely alone.
He allowed absolutely no other guards inside the main house to prevent any greedy betrayal or inside jobs.
Still, Arthur logically knew all of that cinematic knowledge was merely outdated reference material now.
Since miraculously arriving in this dangerous, parallel world, his aggressive actions had already seriously warped and shifted the original Fast & Furious timeline.
Though he had possessed very little direct, physical contact with the towering Dom recently, he had still found the calculated time to quietly check out the massive performance parts store where the federal agent Brian O'Conner had been working deep undercover.
The blonde FBI agent was absolutely no longer there.
More precisely, the entire retail shop had been violently, ruthlessly wrecked, completely gutted from the inside out exactly as if by a massive, organized smash-and-grab operation.
The destruction was so terrifyingly thorough that the business clearly wouldn't reopen anytime soon.
Arthur strongly suspected Dom's heavy, retaliatory hand in the absolute carnage.
Whatever the true, violent case was, Brian clearly would never smoothly become a trusted part of Dom's inner family now.
Therefore, Arthur absolutely no longer blindly trusted every single isolated plot point he perfectly remembered from his previous life.
After securely tying off the heavy rappelling rope and meticulously double-checking the anchor, he pulled a dark, tactical balaclava directly from his private space and pulled it tightly over his head.
Before his arrival tonight, he had already flawlessly applied some theatrical, disguising makeup to his features.
But to completely avoid any later, disastrous identification by the paranoid Steve or the local police, he logically figured extra, suffocating caution was the absolute wisest move.
Hunched incredibly low to the manicured grass, he crept silently toward Steve's dark villa situated not far ahead.
He had only advanced a few, stealthy steps when his muscular body suddenly froze in place.
At that exact, tense instant, the familiar, cold mechanical voice of the proficiency system sounded clearly in his enhanced mind once again.
It proudly informed him he had successfully unlocked a brand-new [Infiltration] skill.
He knew perfectly well, though, exactly how perilous and time-sensitive his current task was; his deep curiosity about the new skill would absolutely have to wait.
Steve's sprawling villa practically bristled with high-tech surveillance cameras, most of them aggressively clustered along the front facade, especially near the heavily guarded main entrance and atop the front perimeter wall.
Arthur didn't know the treacherous man personally well, but from The Italian Job, Steve undeniably appeared incredibly cunning, wealthy, and utterly ruthless.
So Arthur couldn't logically rule out the terrifying possibility of hidden, overlapping cameras actively covering the rear of the property, the supposedly safe, blind area he was currently operating in now.
Therefore, the absolute moment he had neared the clifftop earlier, he had smartly stowed every single glowing chemical stick safely back into his private space.
Now, he advanced through the manicured grounds completely without a single, revealing light source.
He crouched incredibly low, practically hugging the damp ground, inching his way toward the massive villa as inconspicuously and silently as humanly possible.
A tense moment later, Arthur abruptly stopped his forward momentum.
Less than four meters away from the rear wall of the luxury villa, his supernaturally enhanced hearing, far sharper than any ordinary man's, let him clearly catch the faint, rhythmic whir of sweeping machinery.
Arthur carefully traced the mechanical sound with his ears and soon spotted a sleek, motorized surveillance camera mounted not far away in the shadows.
It stared almost unwaveringly at the dark back of the villa.
Clearly, Steve was exactly the extremely cautious, paranoid type who absolutely didn't relax his electronic guard even in the relatively inaccessible, sheer cliff areas of his property.
Arthur swept the dark surroundings with his sharp eyes again and, sure enough, quickly found a second, overlapping camera perfectly covering the remaining blind spots.
"Whew, that was a close one," he muttered silently under his breath.
After patiently watching the glowing lenses for a tense while, he flawlessly worked out the exact, synchronized rotation rhythm of the two surveillance cameras.
Then, precisely using the split-second gap between their sweeping arcs, the half-crouched Arthur burst violently forward into a silent, explosive sprint.
In a single, held breath, he successfully reached the cold rear wall of the villa and slid seamlessly into the absolute dead zone right between the two motorized cameras.
"Good, there are only a few cameras back here," he thought.
Pressing his broad back completely against the solid brick wall, Arthur meticulously studied the immediate architectural area.
Soon, his dark eyes lit up with predatory opportunity.
A narrow, ground-level window set deeply into the thick foundation wall stood slightly open.
It clearly seemed to lead directly down into the villa's basement.
What exactly lay inside the dark void, he genuinely couldn't tell from this angle.
The structural gap was incredibly narrow, but after a quick, calculating visual check, he was absolutely sure he could squeeze his broad shoulders through the tight space.
He waited patiently against the brick, flawlessly timing the sweeping cameras once more.
At the exact same time, he counted the seconds steadily under his breath.
Finally, as both glowing lenses began their slow sweep away from his position, he shot aggressively from his cover, darted straight to the open window, and slipped silently inside the fortress.