They killed the van lights and slid into the dark. Rain pounded the roof in even beats. Max led them down to the canal edge, moving like he always moved: steady, deliberate, with Eidolon feeding him the blind spots and patrol patterns. No wasted words, no last-minute jokes.
The submerged access tunnel was a rusted hatch half under water. Lucy checked the seals, then clipped a hardline battery to her deck. "No wireless," she said. "Hardline only. If Root hears us talk, it'll throw a hundred ghosts at our heads."
V nodded, hands tight on her pistol. Jackie flexed his new Kerenzikov limbs, the servos clicking soft and precise. "I go first if you want muscle," he said. "Keep their bots off your back while you work."
Max listened, took the point, and slipped the hatch open. The tunnel smelled of river rot and metal. Water ran along the lip, cold on their boots. They moved in single file, Max at the front, V at the rear, Jackie beside Lucy in the middle. Mary's quiet voice picked up the slack—sensor overlays, heat ghosts, a running tally of hostiles.
The tunnel followed old utility lines. Patches of corrosion flaked off under their hands. Every few meters a maintenance alcove held defunct pumps and dead cameras. Lucy fed the line a steady wash of masks and false manifests while she crawled. She watched the deck and whispered countermeasures into the hardline as they went.
At the node chamber the corridor opened into a low room. It smelled hot and wet, coolant and old wiring. A heavy console sat in the center: NODE 1 — HINGE: LOCKED. Seals and thermal plates ringed the floor. Flood control relays and power distribution blocks glowed faint red.
Max checked the doors and set Eidolon to ghost the room signature. He gave them a small, calm order. "V covers the entry. Jackie keeps the main floor clear. Lucy, you have the console. I hold perimeter."
Lucy climbed onto a maintenance catwalk and hooked her deck into a service port. The node answered at once—silent alarms flared across her HUD. BLACKSHADE was gone; this one ran deeper routines, multiple watchdogs and a thermal trip that would flip the floodgates if it detected a hard breach.
She worked methodically. No bluffing, no guessing. She built a small sandbox and fed it a loop of maintenance pings. The node probed the bait. Lucy let it chew. While it did, she threaded the rot she'd prepared: a quiet kernel that would corrupt the hinge index without triggering the hardware failsafe. The trick was to make the corruption look like a valid hardware read, not a tamper. One wrong signature and the pumps would flip.
"It's watching for thermals," Lucy said. "If the heat profile changes it trips a hardware interlock. Keep everything cool."
Jackie moved as advised. He walked the floor with precise steps, blocking drones and maintenance bots before they closed in. When a patrol drone rounded the corner, he reached out, shut its servos, and folded it like a broken limb. He did it without noise. V's pistol barked once when a second drone came too close; the shot was careful and contained.
Max stayed calm, scanning the room and listening to Eidolon's whispers. When a silent sweep bot slid under the catwalk toward Lucy, Max stepped out and intercepted it with a single movement. He didn't shout. He didn't overreact. He disabled its sensors, rerouted its task queue, and pushed it back toward the tunnel. Machines obeyed whatever pointed root held; Max pointed it the other way.
Lucy's hands moved fast and clean. When the node tried a counterhandshake, she swallowed the probe into the sandbox and let the fake handshake feed it a slow loop of aging telemetry. The node tried to escalate—mirror instances spun up, trying to move authority to a secondary controller. Lucy folded each mirror into a quarantine thread, then salted the quarantine with the rot.
Her deck flashed once with a single, ugly alarm: HARDWARE INTERLOCK — THERMAL ANOMALY DETECTED. The floor hummed. Somewhere below the exchange, pumps started to whir with new power. Water pressure spikes rolled through the pipes as the system tested valves.
"Thermal isn't us," Lucy said. "It's checking pressure. It tries to flip valves when it loses a control thread."
"Keep it blind," Max replied. "Block the status stream."
Lucy injected a narrow splice that presented the same pressure values the node expected. It fooled the watchdog long enough. The rot slipped under the hinge tag and began to rewrite the index pointers. The hinge checksum began to corrupt in place, replaced by noise that looked legitimate.
Then Root reacted.
On Lucy's HUD a new process blinked alive: ROOT WATCH — LINKED. A cascade of distant pings hit the tunnel—maintenance bots re-tasked, drone swarms redirected, an external mesh of sensors converging on their location. Mary's voice reported new channels lighting up across the sector.
"Root's seen the disturbance," Lucy said, keeping her voice steady. "It's pinging from the exchange grid. We've got a window but it's closing."
Max's response was the same even tone he used for everything. "Finish fast. I hold."
He shifted Eidolon's control to hard defensive overlays. His constructs tightened formation, creating a ring of blue optics that moved with him. Drones rose and formed a ceiling of suppression. Jackie took point on the floor and met the first wave of re-tasked bots with precise force. V pushed outward, laying smoke and short jammers to break up the signal mesh routing back to the exchange.
Lucy triggered the final sequence. The hinge index unraveled the last checksum, folded into the rot, and the hinge flag flipped state.
NODE 1 — HINGE: CORRUPTED
NODE 1 — ISOLATION: PENDING
The room breathed out a long mechanical sigh and then a sudden, angry sound rolled through the tunnel: the floodgates downriver had begun a controlled reroute. Pipes hissed, valves clicked, and the building's environmental controls flicked power as Root tried to isolate the node from external commands.
"Root's trying to cut it loose," Lucy said. "It's dumping power and routing to manual override."
Max moved like he always did—calm, controlled. "Then we take the connector down before it finishes the handoff."
He ordered a coordinated pull. Jackie and V pushed the bootlegged comm lines; Lucy severed the hardline splice. Eidolon fed a final kill to the hinge, a shutter that would force the node into a soft panic without flipping the hardware failsafe.
The node staggered. LEDs went dark. The console flashed its last:
NODE 1 — ISOLATION: SUCCESS
ROOT WATCH — LINK LOST (PARTIAL)
A second note appeared, smaller, but Lucy saw it and felt the weight: ROOT ALERT — AWARE: PARTIAL. The system had noticed the attempt and logged it. Root had not been cut. It had been provoked.
They pulled out the same way they came—fast, practiced, and quiet. Max covered the retreat, every movement measured. Jackie dragged the last drone carcass to block the maintenance hatch. V set one small EMP at the exit to blind close pursuers. Lucy yanked the deck free and shoved it under her jacket.
Outside, rain had picked up. The city drew mist across the lights. The van swallowed them and moved before the first reinforcements hit the yard.
Lucy watched the log as it scrolled back to life.
NODE 1 — ISOLATION: SUCCESS
REMAINING HOSTS: 3
ROOT ALERT — AWARE: PARTIAL
She told them without drama. "We did it. But Root woke to us."
Max's voice was even. "Then it knows who touched the hinge. It will move. We move faster."
V spat into the rain and laughed short. "Okay then. Let it come."
Jackie flexed his fingers. "Bring it."
***
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