It was midnight when the plan came to life.
The city above churned in chaos—fires strategically ignited, streets flooded with false resistance movements, every siren and signal pulling the government's forces away from what truly mattered. Just beneath the surface, in the labyrinthine sewer systems of Sector 7, Kirion's strike team advanced in silence.
Each footfall echoed off the damp concrete. Every breath was calculated. The air was thick with rot and tension.
Kirion led from the front, dressed in matte-black armor woven with kinetic fiber, his face obscured behind a visor that fed him tactical data. He wasn't just a leader now—he was the blade. His daughter, cloaked in digital silence, moved beside him with calculated ease. She wore a wrist console wired directly into her nervous system, her eyes flicking across streams of raw data like it was a second language.
Behind them, the infiltration unit fanned out—Ayo, now armed with a suppressed railgun and a sarcastic calm; Nadia, an ex-government engineer who defected months ago, now guiding them through the subterranean maze with eerie precision; and Toma, their stealth explosives expert, who hadn't spoken more than five words since they'd left the warehouse.
They reached the breach point: a rusted steel door buried behind a false utility junction. Nadia knelt and peeled off a corroded panel, revealing the fiber-optic security threads beneath.
"Two minutes," she whispered.
Kirion crouched beside his daughter. "You ready?"
She smirked. "I was born ready."
Her fingers moved across her console like a pianist at war. Lines of code flowed, matched, bent to her will. Within seconds, the AI's external sensors were tricked—fed a loop of empty tunnels.
The door hissed open.
They slipped into the Citadel's outer corridor. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting sterile blue hues on polished metal walls. There was no guard presence—exactly as predicted. The facility was designed for concealment, not defense. No one ever expected an intruder to make it this far.
They reached the control hub—eight feet of reinforced glass enclosing the brain of the Citadel. Servers hummed behind titanium mesh, lights blinking in calculated rhythm. This was the core.
Kirion gave the nod.
Toma placed the charges while his daughter jacked into the primary terminal, her eyes dilating as she synchronized with the system. "It's... massive," she whispered. "They've mapped everyone. Predictive behaviors. Voiceprints. Even emotional modeling."
She paused. "They know us better than we know ourselves."
Kirion stared at the servers like they were the heart of a beast. "Then let's give them a heart attack."
She launched the virus.
Lights strobed. Sirens flared. Somewhere, a backup system detected the breach and sounded an alarm—but it was too late. The data began corrupting, unraveling decades of surveillance architecture.
They had done it.
Then—movement.
"Contact, 3 o'clock!" Ayo shouted.
Elite guards burst from hidden panels. A firefight ignited. Toma detonated the first explosive, collapsing the hallway. Kirion pushed his daughter behind cover, shielding her as bullets screamed through steel.
"This is your moment," he told her. "Run the upload. I'll buy you the time."
He charged forward—into the lion's den, not with fear, but with fire.