Outside the inner sanctum, we met our guide. Square jaw. Shaved head. The sort of face that looked issued by committee. He spoke exactly three words on the journey: yes, no, and this way.
We followed him through the lower reaches of the cult's territory. Stone passages quickly gave way to older tunnels. The deeper we went, the darker the city’s bones became. Filth pooled underfoot, slick with chemical runoff. Every corner hosted its own stench: rot, machine oil, mold, and blood. Every step stirred soot, sludge, broken tech, and sheer desperation.
The hideout occupied the hollowed-out shell of an abandoned workshop. Our guide stopped beside another bald man. Then another. Then another.
They introduced themselves as Guy One, Guy Two, Guy Three, and Guy Four. Practical people. The owner was away. They’d given us the space.
Aedan gathered us in the main chamber. The ceiling hung low enough to make the room feel conspiratorial. A single work lamp cast hard shadows across stained concrete walls.
He began the briefing with quiet urgency, his fingers tapping a rhythmic, restless beat against the metal cuff on his wrist. "Fira's ping is the green light," he said, his blue eyes sweeping the room. "Watch the link. Once we move, we move fast."
The cultists nodded, eyes on the floor. When he mentioned weapons, they quietly checked their gear. Two heavy sniper rifles. Two high-voltage stunners. Knives. No heavy munitions. No tech crew, aside from me and my dear companion.
Aedan looked my way. "You know your part, prince?"
"Manage the locks. Break things. Watch your backs. Try not to get shot."
Vex snorted. "Just make sure you're watching the right backs."
The guys looked uncertain when Aedan called me prince. Guy Two glanced at me, his eyes dropping in deference. "Ashwarden," he murmured. Guy Three nodded solemnly, muttering: "As Duvainor paved the path, the Ashwarden walks it." As though that settled the matter entirely.
Aedan just sighed. "We breach. We isolate. We secure the officer. We extract Larek. No heroics."
Vex raised an eyebrow. "No promises."
Aedan closed his eyes for a moment. He looked like a man actively reconsidering several life choices. He sighed again, then linked everyone into an encrypted neural network. A moment later, he pinged Fira.
« Report. »
« In position. Looking sexy. »
« Keep comms sparse, » Aedan warned. « Avoid detection. »
« Ruining my best qualities. »
The waiting began.
The cultists split duties. Two sparred, running through hand-to-hand forms that flowed like water. The others meditated bare-chested, eyes closed, chanting in low, rhythmic hums. It looked prayerful. My presence drew reverent glances from them, expectant, patient. I pretended not to notice, focusing instead on the hum of the ancient machinery above us.
Vex toyed with her stunner, checking the charge battery for the fifth time. "You sure they can hold? If things go sideways…"
Aedan clipped it: "They know martial postures. Level three, maybe four."
Vex didn’t seem reassured.
Time dragged. Aedan walked everyone through the plan once more. Entry routes. Exit routes. Contingencies for the contingencies. Vex checked her stunner often enough to suggest she either deeply distrusted the weapon or just enjoyed threatening it. I spent the time reviewing silo schematics Arvie had stitched into my mental map.
"Good news," Arvie chimed in my cortex, her tone dripping with digital sarcasm.
“There's good news?”
“Most of the floor plans agree with each other.”
“Most?”
“The important parts. Probably.”
That wasn't reassuring either.
The waiting settled over the room again. The cultists returned to their tasks. The lamp buzzed overhead. Somewhere beyond the walls, a turbine was slowly dying for want of oil.
Then came a crackle in my mind.
« They just met. »
Everyone jumped to their feet. Another pulse followed, fragmented, unstable, then dead silence.
Aedan froze.
« Fira? »
Nothing. Five seconds passed. Ten.
Vex checked her stunner. "That feels reassuring."
Then Fira's voice returned.
« Sorry. Had to wait. One of them was staring at me funny. »
« I see. Now get lost before we arrive. »
« On it. »
Aedan headed for the rusted steel door. "Move."
Outside, the gutters stank of burning garbage and chemical runoff. Neon reflections bled into oily puddles. Sheets of corrugated tin patched the alley walls. This was Vult Rive territory, and you could feel the hostility baked into the stone. Doors stayed shut. Conversations died instantly when strangers passed. Scabbed beggars avoided eye contact, their eyes burning with a mix of hunger and hate.
Aedan led us through twisting alleys and collapsed market tunnels. Vex shadowed his flank, moving with liquid grace. I brought up the rear with the cult guys. No one spoke.
The closer we got, the quieter the district became. Finally, the silo emerged from the darkness, a decaying giant rising from the cavern floor. Barricades ringed its base. Halogen floodlights swept lazily across scrap-metal walls.
At the western gate stood two guards. The first dropped before he knew we were there. The second turned, opening his mouth to yell. Vex fired. The stun bolt caught him mid-shout, his jaw locking as he collapsed backward into the gate controls.
Somewhere inside the compound, a warning chirp sounded. One sharp, electronic bark. Then silence.
Nobody moved.
"Tell me that wasn't important," Vex muttered.
"It was important," Aedan said flatly.
"Excellent."
We slipped inside. The corridors smelled of rust, ozone, and wet concrete. Doors lined both sides, barracks, storage, workshop spaces.
Aedan signaled.
Neurostun grenades flew. Blue flashes erupted through the observation slits of the nearest doors. Muffled shouting followed, then the heavy thud of bodies dropping against metal.
“Arvie,” I thought. “Doors. Now.”
“Dammit.”
"What is it?"
"Interface is broken. Locks aren’t responding."
"Fantastic!"
Three armed goons spilled out of a barrack. Gunfire cracked the corridor open. A cultist dropped to the floor, rolled, and fired twice. One man collapsed. Aedan stepped into the second, smashing him into a wall hard enough to make the reinforced metal groan. The third goon panicked and ran down the hall.
Vex caught him with a stun bolt before he reached the alarm panel. She turned, blowing a stray lock of black hair out of her face, and smirked at me as the echoes faded. "Thought you said you’d lock them in."
"Locks are retired in this dump," I shot back.
“Excuses.”
Somewhere deeper in the silo, the real shouting began. The operation had just stopped being clean.
We stacked up and pushed to the central chamber. A wide observation window overlooked the lower production floor. Behind the smudged glass stood two figures: our Directorate rat and Jax.
Even from a distance, Jax looked utterly oversized, a walking slab of muscle wrapped in a bad attitude and worse garbs. He was screaming, veins popping in his neck. The officer stood rigid, terrified.
"Miracle of miracles," Arvie purred in my mind. "A meathead screaming, and for once, it’s not about our tactical incompetence. Looks like we aren't the only ones ruining his evening."
Aedan pointed to the sniper cultists, directing them to settle into overwatch positions. "Take the officer first."
Two suppressed stun bolts crossed the room. The officer folded instantly, like cut string.
Jax spun, his narrow eyes peering into the gloom beyond the glass. He turned and roared at someone out of sight behind him.
"That's not ideal," Vex said.
We opened fire, a volley of stunners lighting up the dark all at once. Jax roared, lunging at the window. The glass smashed outward, and he came through it like he'd forgotten gravity was supposed to negotiate first.
We kept hitting him with bolts, but the charging delay on the stun guns was suddenly a glaring problem. He kept moving, absorbing the voltage like it was a mild inconvenience. One cultist tried to fire again, but Jax closed the distance, ripped the stunner from the man's hands, and hurled it across the room. The cultist vanished over a railing with a shout.
Aedan stepped in, his face perfectly calm, and put a point-blank stun bolt directly into Jax's thick neck. The giant staggered, took two more heavy steps, then collapsed face-first, hitting the deck hard enough to rattle my teeth.
"Well, he certainly took his time," Arvie observed dryly. "If he had gotten his hands on you, your precious bone structure would have folded like cheap tin. Let's stick to breaking locks."
Chaos bloomed around us. Goon flurries poured from the side doors. The cultists flowed into the fray like a silent tide, their movements precise and brutal. Aedan and Vex carved paths with ruthless efficiency, a jab at the throat, a stun strike to the ribs. No wasted motion. I moved between them, my augmented senses dialed to maximum, catching the shifts in the air that signaled an ambush.
Gunfire and muffled yells filled the cavernous room as we swept the lower floor. Every corner held a tense micro-skirmish. Upstairs, the officer was secured. Two cultists were already dragging him toward the extraction point.
The rest of us pushed deeper into the compound. Toward the safehouse, the part of the plan currently on fire.
Out we went, breaching the east exit, and found the safehouse. Another corrugated shanty clinging to the silo's flank, secured by a rusted steel door and broken boards. Arvie slithered through the archaic lock code in a blink. It clicked open.
Inside, two guards reached for their weapons. They never got the chance and went down. Larek lay strapped to a steel slab in the center of the room. Barely breathing, but alive.
I signaled the remaining cultists to lift the slab and get him out.
We burst into the street, straight into an ambush. Muzzle flashes erupted from the shadows of three side alleys. The rest of Vult Rive had arrived.
We fell back into the silo. Aedan directed traffic like a battlefield conductor, entirely unfazed by the bolts scoring the walls beside his head.292Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡENOoTsXxYI
"Left."
Shots.
"Move."
More shots.
Vex hammered through a pair of goons blocking a doorway, using her momentum to stun them, as the cultists finished her work. The rest of us followed in her wake. The place became a blur of rusted corridors, deafening gunfire, and pure adrenaline. Twice they nearly cut us off. Twice the cultists broke the line with disciplined violence, clearing the path.
By the time we finally spilled out of the west entrance and lost ourselves in the maze of the undercity, the pursuit had died off.
Before long, we stood at the threshold of the cult's sanctum, the bald men closing ranks behind us like a shield wall.
My pulse still hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Larek was alive. The officer was unconscious and zip-tied. And we had enough bruises to remember the evening by. Far behind us, distant alarms continued to echo fruitlessly through the toxic gloom of the slums.
Arvie chirped cheerfully in my mind as we crossed into the inner sanctum, "Ten out of ten on the drama, boss. Solid two on the stealth. Classic extraction."
ns216.73.217.22da2
and then Add to home screen.