Chapter 9 - Into the Abyss.The immediate darkness was accompanied by the deafening silence of the massive server fans spinning to a sudden, catastrophic halt.
Night vision goggles hummed to life over my eyes, painting the pitch-black warehouse in a ghostly, luminescent shade of green.
Panic erupted among Kael’s mercenaries, their lack of tactical discipline glaringly obvious as they shouted confused orders at each other.
“Engage!” I whispered into my comms, and my team moved like phantoms through the aisles.
Muzzled flashes flickered like brief, violent fireflies as suppressed rounds found their marks with terrifying accuracy.
I dove behind a row of dead server racks, avoiding a wild spray of automatic fire that chewed through the expensive hardware above my head.
I was in my element now, drawing on the same cold, calculated survival instincts that had kept me alive in the sinking hull of the Artemis.
I flanked two mercenaries who were blindly firing down the main corridor, dispatching them with surgical, non-lethal strikes to their pressure points.
Above me, Kael was frantically trying to acquire a target, his sniper rifle useless in the chaos of the blackout.
I scaled the metal access ladder to the catwalk, my movements completely masked by the echoing gunfire below.
When I reached the grating of the upper level, Kael heard the scrape of my boots and spun around, pulling a combat knife from his chest rig.
He lunged at me with feral speed, the blade whistling through the air, aiming for the vulnerable gap in my tactical vest.
I sidestepped the thrust, grabbing his wrist and using his own momentum to slam him violently against the steel railing.
He grunted, dropping the knife, but quickly retaliated with a brutal backhand that rattled my jaw and tasted of copper.
We engaged in a vicious, close-quarters brawl on the narrow catwalk, every strike fueled by desperation and adrenaline.
He managed to get his hands around my throat, squeezing with crushing force as he forced me backward over the edge of the railing.
I gasped for air, the agonizing scars on my neck screaming in protest under his relentless grip.
Instead of fighting his hands, I reached down, pulled my backup sidearm from my ankle holster, and jammed the barrel directly into his kneecap.
I pulled the trigger, the suppressed shot breaking his stance instantly as he howled in agony and released my neck.
I dragged him back onto the solid grating and zip-tied his hands before he could even register the shock of the wound.
Down below, the skirmish was over; my team had efficiently neutralized the remaining hostiles without sustaining a single casualty.
Major Sterling approached the master server bank, plugging a hardened military decryptor directly into the mainframe’s physical port.
“The EMP fried the security protocols just like we planned, Commander,” Sterling reported, his fingers flying across the keyboard.
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“I’m downloading the core ledger to our encrypted drive now; we have everything.”
I looked down at Kael, who was writhing in pain on the catwalk, and knew that Arthur Vance was finally out of moves.
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