Chapter 2
The blue hum of the intruder's device cut through the heavy air of the control room like a scalpel.
Marcus didn't blink. He kept his sights locked dead-center on the figure's chest. "Drop the device. Hands where I can see them. Now."
The figure let out a low, mechanized chuckle that grated against Marcus's nerves. Slowly, deliberately, the interloper raised their left hand—empty. But the right hand remained fused to the humming blue apparatus, which was now pulsing in sync with the countdown timer on the main terminal.
00:34
"You're pointing a kinetic weapon at a plasma core, Vance," the voice echoed, smooth and entirely devoid of human cadence. "If you pull that trigger, the blowback won't just vaporize this room. It'll flatten the upper district. Do you really want to wake up the whole city tonight?"
Marcus’s thumb tightened on the hammer. Every instinct screamed that this was a bluff, a psychological tactic to buy time. But the ambient heat radiating from the device was real enough, turning the damp basement air into a dry, scorching furnace.
"Who sent you?" Marcus demanded, his voice dropping into a harsh, controlled register. "And what's in the vault?"
The figure tilted its head. "The truth you’ve been digging for the last three years, Detective. The data the Syndicate buried deep beneath the harbor. But look—we’re running out of seconds."
On the terminal screen, the amber digits flashed furiously: 00:12.
Marcus had a choice. Trust the machine and lower his weapon, or pull the trigger and gamble everything on a messy, catastrophic end.
Before he could calculate the odds, the ceiling directly above them shuddered. The sharp, unmistakable crack of automatic gunfire erupted from the stairwell overhead, followed by the heavy, metallic clatter of boots storming down the steps.
Syndicate cleanup crew. They hadn't just tracked the signal; they had walked right into the kill zone.
The intruder with the visor snapped its head toward the shattered doorway, then back to Marcus. "Looks like your backup just arrived. Want to survive the night? Jump."
Before Marcus could process the command, the figure jammed the blue plasma device directly into the terminal's main power grid.
A blinding flash of white light swallowed the room, accompanied by a deafening roar that shook the very foundations of the earth beneath Oeth.
