We walk toward the central terminal. The darkness of the room feels heavy, pressing against my skin. The air is too cold, the hum too loud.
We are inside. And for the first time, I feel like we aren’t the hunters.
We’re the bait.
EIGHTEEN
Jackson
THE ARCHITECT
“We can’t hold this,”I say. “If they send a squad down that corridor, we have no cover.”
“We need time,” Talia says, moving toward the central terminal. “The upload isn’t instant. The Root Seed needs to handshake with the kernel.”
I pull a block of C4 from my vest. “I can buy time.”
“You’re going to blow it?” She looks back, eyes wide.
“Contingencies.” I start jamming the putty into the locking mechanism and the heavy hinges. “I’m prepping it. If we get overrun, I fuse the door. Seal us in.”
“That traps us.”
“It keeps them out. It buys you the minutes you need.” I look at her. “Once this door is rigged, it’s your game. I defend. You hunt.”
She holds my gaze for a second, then nods. A sharp, decisive movement.
“Understood.”
I finish setting the charge and turn to watch her.
She drops her bag at the terminal. It’s a fortress of a computer—no USB ports, no external drives. Just a biometric scanner glowing red.
“Obstacle one,” she mutters. “Air-gapped. Halo,” she says into the comms. “I need a physical tap. I’m using your kit.”
“Roger that, Singh,”Halo says.“You need the bypass module. It looks like a black deck of cards with alligator clips. Hook it to the data bus behind the maintenance panel.”
I watch her work. She kneels under the console, popping the panel with a screwdriver from the kit. Wires spill out like colorful guts. She doesn’t hesitate. She strips the insulation, attaches the clips, and bridges the connection. Her hands are steady.
I feel a surge of something hot and bright in my chest. Pride. She’s not a tourist here. She’s an operator. She belongs.
The screens above her flicker. A command prompt appears.
SYSTEM LOCKOUT. BIOMETRIC REQUIRED.
“It’s asking for a print,”Talia says.“Standard encryption keeps shifting.”
“Feed it a loop,”Halo advises.“Use the loop script I loaded onto the module. It mimics the last authorized user.”
“Running it.” She types furiously.
The screen flashes red.ACCESS DENIED.
“It’s adaptive,” she says, frustration creeping into her voice. “It’s fighting the loop.”
“Breathe,” I say. “You got this.”
She takes a breath. “It wants a heartbeat. It’s checking for liveness.” She types a new command. “Simulating pulse variance—now.”
