LIRA’S POV The internal maintenance shafts of Level 120 were less than two feet wide, slick with frozen condensation, and smelled intensely of ozone and liquid antibacterial soap.
To a human, it would have been a claustrophobic nightmare of blinding darkness and screeching fan blades.
To a pure-blood Arctic Fox shifter, it was a highway.
I slid through the horizontal junction with my elbows tucked tight against my ribs, the belly of my white tactical catsuit scraping against the corrugated iron.
My ears, long, pointed, and hypersensitive, were pinned flat against my skull, tracking the distant, rhythmic thud-thud-thud of the primary air-scrubbers.
Every breath I took was shallow, filtered through a carbon mask to prevent the biometric sensors in the main ducts from sniffing out my pheromones.
“Lira.
Report.” Alpha Vex’s voice crackled through my sub-dermal ear-comm, a burst of static that vibrated directly against my jawbone.
“I’m at the junction above the high-security cryogenic ward,” I whispered, my voice barely louder than the hum of the wiring harnesses beneath me.
I reached into my utility belt, pulling out a miniature optical lens and sliding it through a gap in the ventilation grille.
“Visual is established.
The room is crawling with medical droids appointed to guard her, and they seem to heavily armed.” “And the target?” I adjusted the focus on the lens.
In the center of the sterile, white-tiled lab below, surrounded by a forest of monitoring screens and pulsing blue data cables, sat a single, reinforced glass cylinder.
Nara Dew.
She was the Winter Wolf and an Omega, pure blood, unlike Koro.
Through the thick, frosted viewport of the pod, I could see the faint, ghostly silhouette of Koro’s younger sister.
Her long, white hair floated lazily in the dense, translucent blue cryogenic fluid.
Her eyes were closed, her pale features completely relaxed, frozen in a state of perpetual metabolic suspension.
She had been imprisoned out of fear of her powers and even more so to ensure that Koro behaved.
They did underestimate the Dew family’s powers, and that is why Vex had given me the mission to ensure that Nara remained unharmed.
The digital readout on her terminal was a steady, flatline blue: CORE TEMPERATURE: -45°C.
STATUS: EQUILIBRIUM MAINTAINED.
“I see her, Alpha,” I muttered, my fox-instincts flaring as I noted the thick power conduits running from her pod directly into the ceiling grid.
“She’s stable, but the guards have already placed a red routing flag on her terminal.
The moment the Apex tier issues a lockdown order, her life-support breaker is programmed to trip automatically.” “They’re going to starve her out to punish Koro,” Vex growled over the link.
“Get down there and splice the auxiliary line.
If that pod loses power for even ten seconds, the internal blizzard will collapse her organs.
We definitely do not want Koro to go insane if he loses her.
We need him stable, and hence she needs to be okay” “Understood.
Initiating physical entry and will ensure she is safe and sound” I didn’t use a torch on the grille.
The heat would have triggered the localized smoke sensors instantly.
Instead, I pulled a small vial of highly concentrated industrial acid from my kit, painting the hinges of the vent cover with a precise, steady hand.
The metal dissolved with a silent, spitting hiss, leaving the grille loose in its frame.
I waited for the primary air scrubbers to complete their thirty-second purge cycle.
The moment the heavy fans roared, drowning out all ambient noise in the lab, I pushed the grille outward and dropped down into the room.
I landed silently on my toes, rolling forward into the shadow of a massive diagnostic console.
The guards didn’t even turn; their optical sensors were programmed to scan the primary entry thresholds, not the ceiling space or anything above it.
The assumption was that intruders would come through the door.
I scurried across the white tiles, staying low, my white suit rendering me a blur against the sterile background.
In less than three seconds, I was behind Nara’s pod, my fingers already tearing open the mechanical access panel at the base of the cylinder.
The wiring inside was a chaotic maze of high-voltage cables and this was for sure the way they wanted to kill her” “Vex, I’m at the core box,” I whispered, pulling a heavy, black lithium-ion battery pack from my tactical vest and dropping it onto the floor.
“The Syndicate uses a proprietary triple-redundant lock on the secondary power bus.
If I cut the wrong line, the system will read it as a tamper attempt and trigger an automatic chemical flush of the fluid.” “Then don’t cut the wrong line,” Vex replied dryly.
“You built the survival grids for the Sector 9 bunkers, Lira.
A medical fuse box shouldn’t scare you.
I doubt you can make any mistakes, less talking and more action.
“It doesn’t scare me.
It just annoys me,” I muttered through gritted teeth knowing well that Alpha Vex was right.
I pulled my multi-tool from my belt, the laser-cutter humming a low, high-frequency note as I began to isolate the primary current line.
My fox-senses were on high alert, my whiskers twitching as I tracked the sound of the droids’ hydraulic joints clicking behind me.
One of the six-legged machines was pacing a routine pattern, its optical lens sweeping closer and closer to my position.
Ten feet.
Eight feet.
I ignored the machine, my hands remaining perfectly steady as I stripped the insulation off the heavy blue cable.
I clamped the auxiliary lead from our lithium pack onto the copper core, my heart hammering a tight, rhythmic cadence against my ribs.
“ACCESS PANEL EXTRACTION DETECTED,” a cold, synthesized voice suddenly echoed from the room’s central terminal.
“WARD 4 BIOMETRIC CALIBRATION REGISTERING ANOMALY.
DISPATCHING SANITATION DRIVES.” “Damn it,” I hissed.
The Model 7-G droid directly behind me whined, its hydraulic legs locking into a combat stance as its head rotated three hundred and sixty degrees, its red optical lens locking directly onto my back.
A bright, blue electrical charge began to crackle along the tips of its neural-shock prods.
“UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL IN CRYOGENIC SECTOR,” the droid droned, its heavy chassis lunging forward with a terrifying, mechanical speed.
“SUBMIT FOR COMPLIANCE EXTRACTION.” I didn’t draw a gun.
A gunshot would have brought the entire Level 120 garrison down on my head.
Instead, as the droid swung its massive, electrified front pincer at my skull, I dropped flat onto my stomach, letting the heavy metal limb smash directly into the reinforced glass of the diagnostic console behind me.
Sparks exploded into the air, the terminal screen shattering into a million pixelated fragments.
Before the droid could retract its limb, I flipped onto my back, my legs wrapping around its central hydraulic joint.
I used its own kinetic momentum to heave my body upward, slamming my multi-tool directly into the soft, unshielded ventilation port at the base of its optical head.
The laser-cutter tore through the logic board with a satisfying, screeching crunch.
The red light in its eye flickered, died, and the entire two-ton machine collapsed onto the white tiles with a heavy, dead clang.
I scrambled back to my feet, my chest heaving as the room’s primary emergency lights flipped to a blinking, violent amber.
“WARNING: SECURITY BREACH IN PROGRESS.
FACILITY RE-ROUTING TO HOSTILE PARAMETERS.” “Lira!
What’s happening?” Vex’s voice exploded in my ear.
“The droids are waking up, Alpha!” I yelled, my fingers flying across the remaining wires inside Nara’s pod.
I jammed the secondary bypass switch into the slot, forcing the lithium battery to take the load.
On the terminal screen, the primary power indicator flipped from the Spire’s grid to an independent, green icon: AUXILIARY CELL ACTIVE.
RESERVE LIFETIME: 72 HOURS.
“The splice is secure!” I shouted over the blaring klaxons, jumping back as a second Model 7-G droid burst through the lab’s primary pneumatic doors, its prods humming with a lethal blue voltage.
“Nara’s pod is completely off the grid!
They can cut the sector power all they want; she’s not going to freeze!” “Excellent work, fox,” Vex barked, the sound of a heavy rifle bolt chambering a round echoing through her end of the line.
“Now get the hell out of there before they seal the vertical shafts.
The pack is moving to the staging gates now.” “Way ahead of you, Alpha,” I said, a feral, sharp-toothed smile breaking across my face as I launched myself back toward the open ventilation grille above.
” I need you back safe and to take on another mission,” Vex responded.
I chuckled, knowing well that none of the missions that Vex assigned were ever easy, but I always aimed to please the Alpha.
I was worried that the mission would lead me to where Koro was now that his sister was safe.
I caught the edge of the iron frame with both hands, hoisting my body back into the dark, narrow safety of the ducts just as a blast of suppressive neural energy scorched the tiles beneath my feet.
I slid the repaired grille back into place, locked it with a manual latch, and began sprinting through the horizontal shafts on all fours, my white fur a ghost in the dark.