They'd followed the tunnels here, to this factory designed for breaking children. Kasper stood in emergency lighting that painted everything red, his nanobots still screaming warnings from the operatives they'd encountered in the flooded passages. Those warnings hadn't prepared him for what waited in the laboratory proper.
The space reeked of antiseptic struggling to mask decades of blood and ozone from overworked circuits. A different kind of rot than the tunnels. More intentional.
The first cyberlitch operative lunged before his eyes adjusted.
Kasper twisted. Clawed fingers missed his throat by centimeters. He drove his elbow into circuits that sparked and hissed, felt synthetic flesh give way beneath the strike.
The operative didn't fall. Didn't stumble. Just recalibrated and attacked again with mechanical precision.
Three more emerged from the shadows. Then six. Then twelve.
"They're sharing consciousness!" Rui shouted, his own cyberlitch systems interfacing with the facility's network. "I can feel them in the datastream. Cut one down, the others adapt. Kill the signal or we're dead."
Valerian fired three shots at exposed circuitry where synthetic flesh met metal joints. The operatives shifted formation instantly, protecting the vulnerable points. "Learning from every hit."
Kasper watched them move. Not individual fighters. Fingers of the same hand.
That kind of coordination required something broadcasting orders.
"Rui, can you trace the command frequency?"
"Trying, but my integration is crude compared to theirs." Rui's circuits pulsed faster, brighter. Pushing beyond safe limits. "Hacking a supercomputer with a calculator. I need more processing power or more time."
They had neither.
Kasper dodged another strike. The nanobots fed him attack trajectories faster than he could process. Too many angles. Not enough room. He grabbed an operative by the throat, used its momentum to throw it into two others. They went down in a tangle of sparking limbs.
Three seconds later, they were back on their feet.
Lydia stood frozen near Table Seventeen. Her eyes flickered between brown and black as residual programming fought against her choice. The scalpel she'd dropped earlier lay at her feet.
"Lydia." Kasper threw another operative into the wall. Its skull cracked against concrete but it kept moving. "I need you functional. Can you access their network? Find the command frequency?"
Her voice came out small. Afraid. "If I connect to their network, the programming might take over again."
The facility shook. Concrete dust rained from the ceiling, coating everything in fine powder that tasted of chemicals and decay. Association breaching charges on the surface levels. Right on schedule for al-Zawahiri's demonstration.
Through the reinforced windows, Buenos Aires sprawled beneath them. A circuit board of lights flickering in evacuation patterns across the city. Distant sirens wailed, the sound filtering through reinforced glass. How many of those sites were real threats? How many were decoys designed to spread their forces too thin?
Kasper caught another operative's wrist, twisted until circuits snapped. "I know what I'm asking. But I'm asking anyway."
Lydia's knees hit the floor beside the scalpel. Her palms found the interface ports, warm metal embedded in concrete where al-Zawahiri had built his network into the facility's infrastructure.
"Lydia, wait..."
Too late. Her eyes went black.
Her body went rigid as decades of programming slammed into her consciousness.
Kasper's stomach dropped but there was no time to pull her back. An operative's clawed hand raked across his shoulder, tearing through fabric and skin. Blood welled hot against his collarbone, the copper smell mixing with ozone and antiseptic.
He spun, drove his knee into the operative's chest cavity. Circuits sparked. The operative stumbled back three steps, recalibrated, came at him again.
Rui was already moving, interfacing directly with a terminal while his consciousness split between human thought and machine processing. "Reading their network architecture. Kasper, it's... god, it's elegant. Every operative's a node. Cut one, the others compensate. But if I overload the whole system..."
The facility shook again. Closer this time. Heat from the upper levels filtered down, carrying the smell of burning plastic and copper.
"Valerian, we need evacuation routes. Now."
Valerian's tactical analysis processed dozens of variables simultaneously while he put three rounds into an operative's knee joint. "Already on it. But boss, problem. Association forces are using aggressive entry protocols. If they breach while we're still engaged with hostiles..."
"The optics are exactly what al-Zawahiri wants."
They were going to win the battle and lose the war.
Buenos Aires emergency services were responding across the city. Fifteen points of light where civilian lives hung in the balance. Al-Zawahiri had turned the entire city into his demonstration, and they were playing their parts exactly as choreographed.
They'd already lost. They just hadn't realize it yet.
Three kilometers north, Aurelio led his team through utility tunnels that reeked of decades-old sewage and something that might have been bodies if bodies could rust. The ventilation shaft from Hayes's basement had deposited them into Buenos Aires's underground infrastructure. A maze of passages connecting every government building in the district.
The air grew warmer as they moved deeper. Stale. Pressing against them with the weight of earth and concrete overhead.
"Eight minutes out." Douglas checked his tactical display, his other hand white-knuckled on his sidearm. "Association sweep teams are already engaging at the laboratory facility."
"Then we're too late to stop the demonstration." García's enhanced strength had torn through three locked gates, metal groaning and breaking under her hands, but it couldn't tear through the certainty that they were playing into al-Zawahiri's hands.
Sean chambered a round, the metallic click echoing off tunnel walls. "So we improvise. Wouldn't be the first time a plan went to shit."
"Your improvisation usually involves excessive violence," Estela muttered, technical equipment strapped to her back. The relay systems hummed against her spine, a constant reminder of what she'd built. What he'd stolen. "Which is exactly what al-Zawahiri wants on camera."
"Then I'll be fucking gentle. Happy?"
Aurelio stopped moving. His enhanced hearing picked up something in the tunnel ahead.
Footsteps. Too many to be civilian maintenance workers.
"Contact." He raised his weapon. "Multiple hostiles, armed, moving to intercept."
Gunfire erupted from ahead and behind simultaneously.
They'd walked into a kill box.
Douglas dove behind a concrete pillar as bullets sparked off metal pipes. The sharp crack of rounds hitting stone echoed in the confined space, too loud, disorienting. "It's a trap! He knew we'd use the utility tunnels!"
Of course he did. Al-Zawahiri had forty years to map every escape route, every back entrance, every tactical consideration. They weren't fighting a man. They were fighting a ghost who'd spent four decades learning to predict their every move.
García returned fire. Three hostiles went down but more poured in from side passages. European operatives, judging by their equipment and tactics. The observation teams weren't just observers.
They were combatants.
Estela clawed at her relay equipment, fingers fumbling with connections. If she could just physically disconnect... but al-Zawahiri had bypassed her hardware entirely. The systems hummed cheerfully, broadcasting her failure to every intelligence agency that mattered. "Boss, my equipment! The signal relay I set up at Hayes's facility. He's using it to broadcast the laboratory feed. My own systems. He turned them against me."
Every piece of surveillance equipment she'd deployed. Every relay point she'd established. All of it amplifying al-Zawahiri's demonstration to intelligence agencies worldwide.
"Can you shut it down?" Aurelio demanded, putting three rounds into a European operative who'd gotten too close.
"Not from here. I'd need direct access to the relay systems, but they're back at the basement facility."
Sean grabbed her shoulder hard enough to leave bruises. "Save the guilt trip for later. Right now, we need to get out of this fucking kill box."
Douglas's tactical display erupted in warning signals. Heat signatures blooming across Buenos Aires. Fifteen points. All at once. Schools. Hospitals. Shopping centers.
All activating simultaneously.
"Boss, problem." Douglas's voice carried the weight of a man watching his worst nightmare unfold. "Multiple civilian sites showing hostile activity. Not just the laboratory. The demonstration is citywide."
Ice settled in Aurelio's chest. "How many sites?"
"Fifteen confirmed. Association forces are responding, but they're spread too thin."
Douglas zoomed in on one location. His face went chalk-white.
"Boss, one of those sites is my son's school. Marcus's school."
The methodical detective who never let emotion compromise his judgment was suddenly a father watching his child walk into danger. He tried to pull up more information but his fingers wouldn't work right. He jabbed at the screen. Once. Twice. Three times. The map stuttered, zoomed too far, reset.
São Paulo Elementary. Marcus's classroom. Third floor, east wing.
"We split up." Aurelio made the call he'd been dreading. "Douglas, take García and get to your son. Sean, Estela, with me to the laboratory."
"Boss, that's exactly what he wants," García protested. "Divide our forces, make us act emotionally instead of tactically."
"I know." Aurelio reloaded his weapon while European operatives closed in from three directions. The tunnel walls seemed to contract around them. "But we're already doing what he wants. At least this way we save some lives."
Douglas was already moving toward the tunnel that would take him to the school district. García grabbed his arm, her face torn between duty and compassion.
"Go," she said. "I'm with you."
Before they could separate, Aurelio's communication equipment crackled to life. Al-Zawahiri's voice filled the tunnel.
"Manager Torrealba. I trust you've discovered the full scope of tonight's demonstration."
Sean fired at the speakers but the voice continued from other sources.
"Fifteen sites. Sufficient explosives. Your Association is responding exactly as calculated."
Douglas's hands shook so badly he dropped his tactical display. The screen cracked against concrete, spiderwebbing from the impact point.
"Detective Berston. Your son attends São Paulo Elementary School. Three of my operatives are in position. Aggressive entry protocols will destroy the school and everyone inside."
The transmission cut out, leaving them in a tunnel filling with gunfire and the weight of impossible choices.
García looked at Aurelio. Douglas looked at García. Sean kept firing at European operatives who seemed to multiply in the darkness.
"Boss," Douglas said quietly. "I have to..."
"I know." Aurelio grabbed Douglas's shoulder. "Go. Save your son. We'll handle the laboratory."
Douglas and García disappeared into the tunnels heading north. Their footsteps echoed for three seconds, then faded into gunfire and chaos.
Sean reloaded, his movements sharp with barely controlled violence. "So now what? We're down two people and walking into a demonstration designed to make us look like monsters."
"Now we stop him anyway." Aurelio checked his ammunition. The metallic click of the magazine seating felt too small against the scope of what they faced. "Even if it costs us everything."
Estela was already moving, technical equipment bouncing against her back as she ran. The relay systems continued their cheerful hum, broadcasting her failure with mechanical indifference. "The relay systems are still broadcasting. Even if we reach the laboratory, the footage is already going out to every intelligence agency that matters."
"Then we make sure the footage shows something different than what he planned."
But even as Aurelio said it, he knew they were too late. Al-Zawahiri had spent forty years preparing for this moment. They'd been preparing for eight minutes.
The math didn't favor them.
European operatives closed in from three directions. Muzzle flashes lit the tunnel in strobing bursts. Aurelio, Sean, and Estela fought their way forward, each step bought with bullets and blood.
Above them, Buenos Aires tore itself apart as fifteen civilian sites activated simultaneously. Association forces responded with their characteristic aggression, exactly as al-Zawahiri had calculated.
And somewhere in the city, cameras rolled, capturing everything.
Back at the laboratory, Lydia's consciousness swam through networks that felt like drowning in someone else's memories.
She could feel the other cyberlitch operatives. Their minds reduced to weapons following programmed commands. Subject L-019. Subject L-007. Subject L-023. Twelve children stolen and broken and rebuilt into perfect tools.
Eight were dead. Four remained, counting her.
The command frequency pulsed through the network. A heartbeat. She could feel al-Zawahiri's control, forty years of refinement creating something almost elegant in its cruelty. Every operative responded to his commands with mechanical precision because they'd been stripped of everything that made responses unpredictable.
But she'd been away from the network for years. Her neural pathways had healed in ways al-Zawahiri couldn't account for. She'd formed connections, built memories, chosen to be more than a number.
Whether that would be enough, she didn't know.
She found the command frequency buried deep in the network architecture. It pulsed on multiple bands, redundant systems ensuring that severing one connection would just activate backups. Al-Zawahiri had learned from his earlier failures.
But he'd never accounted for someone inside the network who wanted it to fail.
Lydia dove deeper. Her consciousness fragmented across multiple connection points. She could feel herself spreading too thin, individual identity dissolving into networked consciousness.
Just a little further.
She found Subject L-007 first. A girl who'd stopped being a girl in 1998. Then L-023, whose last human thought had been his mother's name. She touched each consciousness and felt them pull her apart.
How many pieces could she scatter before there was nothing left to gather?
The command frequency was broadcasting from al-Zawahiri's location. Not the laboratory. Somewhere else in the facility, a secondary control center she could sense but not quite reach.
She pushed deeper. Her identity fragmented further.
Subject L-019 reasserted itself. Programmed responses overwriting human choices. The scalpel had felt right in her hand. Kasper's throat had been perfectly exposed. Why had she dropped it?
No.
Her name was Lydia. Not a number. Not a weapon.
Her name was Lydia and she chose to remember.
The network convulsed as she forced commands that shouldn't be possible. The cyberlitch operatives hesitated, their perfect coordination fracturing as conflicting orders flooded their systems.
In the laboratory, Kasper saw his opening.
The operatives had frozen mid-attack, circuits pulsing erratically as their network destabilized. He moved fast, his enhanced reflexes letting him disable three before they could reboot.
"Rui, now! While the network's compromised!"
Rui interfaced directly with the facility's systems, his cyberlitch consciousness finally finding purchase in destabilized networks. "I'm in. Command architecture is... every operative's a node. But if I overload the whole system..."
The facility shook again. Association forces breaching the upper levels, exactly as al-Zawahiri had planned. In minutes, they'd have footage of American enhanced soldiers fighting in a facility that Buenos Aires authorities didn't know existed.
Kasper could see it playing out. They'd stop the operatives. They'd save the facility. And al-Zawahiri would win anyway because the cameras would show exactly what he wanted them to show.
American enhanced soldiers treating Buenos Aires as a battlefield.
His mind raced through alternatives. Rui couldn't hack it alone. Valerian couldn't shoot what he couldn't see. The Association breach would arrive in seconds, giving al-Zawahiri his footage either way.
No other options.
No other time.
"Valerian, we need..."
Lydia's voice echoed through the facility's speakers, distorted by the strain of maintaining her presence across the network.
"Kasper. The command frequency. I can disrupt it, but it'll take everything I have. I won't come back from this."
"Don't." The word came out harder than he intended. "We'll find another way."
"There is no other way. If I don't shut down the network, those other operatives will keep killing. And al-Zawahiri will escape with his demonstration."
"Lydia..."
"My name is not a number." Her voice carried a certainty that forty years of programming couldn't break. "And I choose what happens next."
The network convulsed one final time as she forced a cascade failure through every connected system. The cyberlitch operatives collapsed simultaneously, their circuits overloading as the command frequency shattered into white noise.
Somewhere in the facility, in his secondary control center, al-Zawahiri watched alarms scream as his perfect network tore itself apart. Forty years of work destroyed by the subject he'd been most proud of.
But he was already moving. Already adapting.
The demonstration had succeeded regardless.
European observers had footage of American enhanced forces fighting in Buenos Aires. The civilian sites would provide additional evidence once Association forces responded with their characteristic aggression.
He'd lost his network, but he'd gained something more valuable.
Proof that America's enhanced soldiers were exactly the monsters he'd claimed they were.
In the laboratory, Kasper caught Lydia as her body collapsed. Her eyes had returned to brown, but they were distant. Unfocused. She'd spread herself too thin across the network and now she couldn't quite remember how to gather the pieces back together.
"Stay with me." Kasper's enhanced reflexes were useless against an injury he couldn't fight. "Lydia, stay with me."
She smiled. The expression carried a serenity that shouldn't be possible given what she'd just done.
"My name," she whispered, "is not a number."
Her eyes closed.
Kasper didn't know if she'd ever open them again.
The facility's speakers crackled with al-Zawahiri's voice one final time.
"Congratulations, Mr. de la Fuente. You've saved the city and destroyed my network."
Pause.
"Check the news feeds. One hour."
The transmission cut out.
Association forces breached the laboratory level thirty seconds later. They found Kasper holding an unconscious woman, surrounded by disabled cyberlitch operatives and enough evidence of illegal American military research to fill a warehouse.
The cameras were rolling.
The demonstration was complete.
Somewhere in Buenos Aires, al-Zawahiri erased his presence from the facility's systems and smiled. Act one finished exactly as planned.
Time to prepare for act two.