A crimson haze veiled Abuja's Old Quarter, the radioactive fallout from last night's reactor breach still smoldering on every surface. Thiana pressed herself against a crumbling sandstone column, breath catching as she scanned the shattered rooftops. Somewhere up there, Thaziel—their half-legendary hacker, half-ghost—was perched like a specter, ready to strike or disappear in an instant.
Zade tucked his Cabello-issue pistol into his belt, fingers brushing the grip as if greeting an old friend. Ravien adjusted her wrist console, rerouting comm signals through a stolen drone that hovered at the alley's mouth. The trio formed a tensioned triangle of resolve, knowing how high the stakes had climbed.
"It's a fortress," Zade murmured, voice low. "Built on the ruins of an old colonial vault. They retrofitted it into a holy site for the Sanctuary cult."
Ravien's eyes gleamed. "Which means every idol, every relic, is wired to their grid. We flip one node—and we burn their entire power network."
Thiana exhaled slowly, hand brushing the obsidian pendant at her throat. "Then let's get that node."
They slipped through a half-collapsed archway, the air thick with dust and distant chanting. Broken statues of saints and pseudoscientific gods lay strewn across pillared halls. Ancient fluorescent murals glowed in spots, their pigments fused with uranium ore. Here, faith had fused with tech—and now it bound the Sanctuary's grip.
Ravien led, silent as a cat, mapping schematics on her console. "Our target is the sub-basement. Node Gamma. It's two levels down, behind the altar chamber."
Zade cracked his knuckles. "So let's carve a path."
Torches flared down the hallway as cultists in hooded cerise robes rounded the corner. They carried curved blades that shimmered with a nanotech sheen. Thiana caught Ravien's eye. No words needed.
With a sharp whistle, Zade vaulted forward, bars flashing in the low light. He struck the first blade aside, then feinted a cross that sent the second cultist sprawling. Ravien pressed a button, and the overhead drone released a flash-bang that turned the corridor into a pyrotechnic haze.
Thiana slipped past the daze, steel-toed boots thudding against marble. She dove at the altar, wrenching loose a gold-plated panel. Sparks flew. Wires arced like it was lightning itself.
"Node Gamma in three… two…"
"Shut it down!" Ravien yelled.
Thiana yanked a cable free. The pulsing light in the broken urn overhead flickered and died. Silence swallowed the place.
Then alarms.
Up on the roof of the Sanctuary, Thaziel crouched at the lip of a centuries-old parapet, eyes fixed on the same node link that Thiana had just severed. He felt it—a cold lock click open, a surge of code unlocked. His fingertips danced over a holo-screen with ghostly blue text.
This was bigger than the Sanctuary's little reactor. This cord threaded through the city's grid, through powerful back channels that fed into government vaults and corporate kiosks. Whoever built this chain had planned to blackmail every power broker in Abuja.
Thaziel let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He tapped into the feed and streamed it to his encrypted lattice back at their safehouse. Then he sent a pulse back: an exploit that would keep the nodal link down for minutes—enough time for Thiana's team to evacuate.
Below, he heard the drone's shriek and the muffled boom of the flash-bang. Satisfied, he rose, skirting the edge. One misstep—one slip—and he'd fall into the ruins. But his feet were sure. He was part spirit here, unbound by fear, sustained by the code that pulsed through his veins.
A shape stepped from the shadows. HoloZero's personal enforcer: the One-Eyed Wraith, a cyber-phage rumored to dissolve flesh with a single touch. The air turned viscous around them.
"You shouldn't have cut the node," the Wraith rasped, voice cracking like broken glass. "Orders are in place. You're to be delivered—alive."
Thaziel smirked. "I'm nobody's package."
He tapped a sequence. His wrist shard glowed, and he vanished—becoming not Thaziel, but the ghost he'd always been.
Back in the Sanctuary's undercroft, Thiana and Zade sprinted toward the service stairwell. Ravien covered their six, fingers flying over an interface that wirelessly triggered collapsing supports. The ground trembled.
Behind them, cultists howled as pillars began to buckle. Stone cracked. A torch fell and set a tapestry ablaze.
They reached the stairwell just as the floor split. Thick plumes of dust swirled, the ruin gave an ominous groan, and they plunged down the steps two at a time.
At the bottom, a steel door barred the final corridor to the node core. Ravien slapped her palm against the keypad, code whirring. Zade planted his back against the door, ready to shove if it jammed. Thiana scanned the vents above, looking for an escape if things went sideways.
She felt a prickle at her neck—Ravien's signal to hurry. The keypad flashed green. The door slid open.
They piled into a chamber humming with raw energy. Blue coils coiled around a central capsule the size of a shipping container—and inside it, something alive, something hidden. The vault welcomed them with a blinding pulse.
She caught a glimpse of… a richly embroidered robe, draped over an unseen form. A face concealed behind crystal filaments. The heiress's artifact—her lost sister, trapped in stasis?
Thiana's heart stuttered. This was the core of everything.
Above, Thaziel guided the Wraith's hunt through shuttered corridors and vent shafts. He'd hacked the surveillance labyrinth—knew the Wraith's path better than the guard himself. But the enforcer adapted faster than code.
A door hissed open. Drifting white noise faded. Thaziel realized he'd led the Wraith into a quiet crawlspace under the Sanctuary's mothballed holocells. Ancient machinery moaned in the dark.
He crouched, nerves tapping at his skin. Seconds stretched. Finally, he launched himself through the shadow, lashing out with a stun baton he'd swiped from a guard.
The Wraith's eye glowed red. It grinned, a skeleton's snarl.
"You can't kill me," the Wraith said, and fire licked around its fingertips. "I am what pulls the ghosts back."
The baton slammed into synthetic flesh. Sparks flew. Thaziel's breath sang in his ears. He tapped his shard to freeze the grid, and every light died. Darkness swallowed them both.
When it cleared, the Wraith lay smoking, face scarred down one side. Thaziel pressed closer, bolt pistol at the ready.
"I warned you," it whispered, reaching for him—
Thaziel fired. Two shots. One to the arm, one to the chest. The Wraith's body convulsed, energy seeped into the stone floor. It groaned one final time and went still.
Thaziel knelt, pressing his palm to the wound. The enforcer's eye cracked, and it turned to glass. Then dust.
He closed his shard and let it snap off. Heart pounding, he sprinted for the domed roof, where Thiana had left coded raids on his channel. He needed to warn her about the sleeper inside the node core.
In the depths of the Sanctuary vault, the coil's blue heart pulsed with unholy light. Thiana stepped toward it, Zade at her side, guns drawn. Ravien hovered at the console, panting, sweat streaking her face.
On the holo-screen, a log scrolled: "Subject: Angelica Oruwari. Heiress, age 2. Genetic blueprint: sovereign fusion. Status: pre-sentinel. Awaiting activation."
Thiana's breath caught in her throat. The heiress had been here all along—her little sister, stolen from their cradle by corporations that coveted her bloodline. They'd bound Angelica in stasis, planned to awaken her as a weapon, or worse, a living engine.
Zade's palm pressed against her arm. "We can't leave her. But if we free her—"
"The Sanctuary will go nuclear," Ravien finished.
Thiana's gaze flicked between the dimly glowing capsule and the central override panel. Sweat beaded at her hairline. She could feel Angelica's pulse, faint but determined.
A voice crackled in her ear. It was Thaziel, ragged but alive: "Thiana—get out now. It's rigged to detonate if you tamper."
Her heart lurched. She swallowed. "Angel," she whispered. "I'm sorry."
Ravien slapped a hand on Thiana's shoulder. "We have to pull her cryo-link. It's our only chance to stop the blast. I can stabilize the bio-net."
Zade nodded. "Then let's do it."
Thiana knelt by the capsule, fingers sliding across the glass. The heiress's tiny face was upturned, eyes closed as if dreaming. She reminded Thiana of star-lit nights by the river, long before any of this. Sisterhood unbroken by steel doors or corporate edicts.
With trembling precision, Thiana opened the panel. Viscous coolant hissed, spilling across the floor in neon-violet droplets. Ravien's hands flew over the controls, overriding failsafes one by one.
"Almost there—" Ravien panted, baring her teeth against a spasm of panic.
An explosion rocked the Sanctuary. Pillars cracked. Dust roared in from the collapsed upper chapel.
Thaziel's voice: "Get out! She's a beacon now—security's coming!"
Thiana slammed her palm down on the final switch. The coils dimmed. The capsule unlocked with a hydraulic sigh. She lifted the hatch—steam billowed like prayer smoke.
Angelica's eyelids fluttered. Tiny hands curled at her chest.
Thiana clutched her as the world tilted. Zade grabbed both of them, sprinting for the door. Ravien stayed behind, punching in the last of her override codes.
A fresh blast! The ground beneath Ravien buckled. She pitched backward, arms flailing.
"Ravien!" Thiana screamed, but doors slammed shut between them.
Outside, the Sanctuary's outer walls shuddered. Shadows raced in from all sides—cultists, mercenaries in exosuits, and HoloZero's holographic assassins coalescing into deadly avatars.
Zade threw Thiana and the heiress over his shoulder and crouched low. Small arms encircled them like predator's claws.
At the roof's edge, Thaziel dropped down through a busted skylight, rolling to land beside them. His shard glowed faintly—Ravien's final override code embedded in it.
"She's alive," Thaziel panted, reaching for Angelica. "We have to go now!"
Thiana blinked through tears. "What about Ravien?"
Thaziel's lips thinned. "She's safe… for now. The collapse sealed her in the service tunnels. She'll find another way out."
Thiana bit back grief. She tucked Angelica closer. "Then we move."
A whip of light shot past them—holo-lances carving chasms in the walls. Zade roared, shouldered a makeshift barrier of steel beams, and barreled straight into the fray.
They fought their way to the perimeter compound, wounds blooming, blood slick on bones. Thaziel's code held just long enough to keep security turrets offline. Each step felt borrowed time.
At the boundary fence, Ravien's emergency beacon blinked. She'd found a vent shaft, crawling through the dirt to the service yard. They converged in a blur of relief and sobs.
"It's coming down," Ravien gasped. She pointed to the Sanctuary's silhouette behind them—its dome collapsing, annihilating every stubborn relic within.
Thiana rocked Angelica, who had drifted back to sleep with a soft sigh. The heiress was free. Their family's legacy would breathe again.
Thaziel pulled Ravien close, wrapping an arm around her. Their foreheads touched in a rare moment of peace. Zade sheathed his pistol, watching the dawn's first rays glint on scorched walls.
Silence spread, broken only by distant sirens. They were alive. They were whole. And in their arms, the future waited ..... tiny, fragile, radiant.