Chapter 64 - Echoes of Sector 7
The lower floor was a nightmare of Cold War megalomania.
We sprinted through aisles framed by towering steel racks of magnetic data tapes that stretched into the ceiling like monuments in a concrete graveyard. The floor was wet with leaking Freon, making every turn a desperate slide. Behind us, the suppressed fire of the Praetorian team was methodical, relentless—the terrifying precision of professionals who didn't rush because they knew every avenue of escape was sealed.
"Evelyn, flank left!" I shouted as we reached a cross-junction between two massive climate-control manifolds.
A dark figure stepped out from behind a bank of vacuum tubes, his suppressed weapon already coming to bear on my face.
I didn't think. The adrenaline took over—the reflexes I never knew I possessed, the unnatural muscle memory that had kept me alive through the siege of Vance Ridge. I dropped low, sweeping my right leg across his boots.
The operator stumbled, but his recovery was impossibly fast. He drew a combat blade with his left hand, slashing downward toward my carotid artery with terrifying speed.
*BANG.*
Evelyn’s sidearm barked twice. The operator’s helmet jerked backward as two 9mm hollow points smashed through his reinforced visor. He collapsed hard against the server rack, his rifle clattering to the floor.
Evelyn stepped over the body, kicking his weapon away, but as she pivoted, a second operative fired from thirty yards down the corridor.
A heavy shock-dart caught Evelyn squarely in the left shoulder.
She gasped, her eyes widening in pure agony as thousands of volts of focused electrical discharge ripped through her nervous system. She slammed against the steel rack, her rifle falling from nerveless fingers, her teeth clattering violently as blue arcs of electricity danced across the buckles of her vest.
"Evelyn!" I screamed, lunging toward her.
"Julian, no! Get back!"
Arthur appeared behind me, his Benelli roaring in the tight confines of the corridor. The blast caught the second operative in the upper torso, shredding his ballistic plate and throwing him backward into a shattered glass display case.
Arthur dropped down beside Evelyn, his knife out, cleanly severing the barbed lead wires of the dart embedded in her shoulder. She collapsed into my arms, convulsing weakly, her skin burning hot, her breath coming in ragged, shallow wheezes.
"Neurotoxin carrier," Arthur growled, inspecting the shattered dart casing. "The charge is just the delivery vehicle. She has ten minutes before the compound shuts down her diaphragm."
"There's an antidote?" I demanded, holding her shivering frame against my chest, feeling her pulse race at an impossible speed.
"In the primary medical bay," Arthur said, looking down the long, dim corridor toward a pair of massive, vault-like doors guarded by red emergency beacons. "Inside the Sanctum. But it requires the biometric interface."
May you like
He looked at me, his eyes filled with a desperate, terrifying truth.
"It requires your hand on the scanner, Julian. The moment you place your palm on that plate, the Cradle will recognize its Architect. And there will be no walking back into the daylight."
