Chapter 11: Fifteen Minutes
**[Industrial Park, Outskirts of Aethelburg - 10:58 PM]**
The industrial park at night was a city of sleeping metal giants.
The air was still and cold, tasting of diesel and rust.
Overhead, thick clouds blotted out the stars, leaving only the distant glow of the city to paint the sky in shades of amber and deep purple.
Alex moved through the deep shadows cast by silent, hulking warehouses, their corrugated sides stretching up into the darkness like the ribs of beached leviathans.
He was a ghost in a graveyard of commerce.
Every step was calculated, every breath controlled.
The weight of the backpack on his shoulders felt heavier than it should, loaded not just with tools but with the crushing pressure of what he was about to attempt.
Breaking and entering. Theft of classified technology. Violation of federal statutes that could put him away for decades.
But those consequences felt abstract compared to the very real threat that Elias Deckard represented.
A man who could manipulate time itself was beyond the reach of conventional law enforcement.
Sometimes justice required breaking the law to serve a higher purpose.
He stopped two hundred yards from the perimeter of Secure Storage Solutions.
The facility was a blocky, dark silhouette against the bruised purple of the night sky, its utilitarian architecture designed for function over form.
A single string of harsh, sodium-orange lights illuminated the ten-foot chain-link fence, making the razor wire at the top glint like a row of vicious teeth.
This was the first hurdle.
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He unzipped his backpack, his movements slow and deliberate, each motion rehearsed in his mind dozens of times over the past forty-eight hours.
He pulled out a small, modified Wi-Fi antenna connected by a reinforced cable to his phone.
The device was his own creation, built from components salvaged from police surveillance equipment and enhanced with CrimeSync-guided modifications.
He crouched behind a derelict dumpster, the stench of stale garbage and industrial solvents filling his nostrils.
The smell was almost overpowering, but it provided perfect cover, masking his scent from any patrol dogs or automated detection systems.
He pointed the antenna at the main gate's control panel, a small, blinking red light in the distance that marked the nerve center of the facility's security network.
His phone screen showed the network signal, weak but stable.
Three bars. Enough to establish a connection.
Enough to deploy his digital weapon.
This was it. The point of no return.
Once he activated the virus, there would be no turning back, no plausible deniability, no way to pretend this was just another detective following leads.
He took a single, deep breath, his heartbeat a slow, heavy drum in the silence.
The countdown to fifteen minutes of borrowed time was about to begin.
He tapped the screen.
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*[CrimeSync: 'Ghost' protocol deployed. Injecting into SSS-ISS network...]*
The progress bar on his phone filled with agonizing slowness, each percentage point representing milliseconds of vulnerability where the virus could be detected and stopped.
*[Handshake established... Bypassing security certificate... Uploading payload...]*
*[Establishing backdoor access... Mapping system architecture... Planting dormant subroutines...]*
*[Success. Virus is dormant within the target network. Awaiting activation command.]*
*[Warning: Deployment window is narrow. Maximum operational time: 15 minutes, 23 seconds before system anomalies become detectable.]*
The key was in the lock.
Now he had to get to the door.
Alex packed away the antenna and shouldered his backpack, feeling the familiar cold tingle that meant CrimeSync was fully engaged, processing environmental data and calculating optimal approach vectors.
The hard part was just beginning.
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**[Secure Storage Solutions, Perimeter Fence - 11:13 PM]**
He moved along the fence line like a predator stalking prey, sticking to the deepest shadows, his footsteps silent on the damp asphalt.
Years of police training had taught him how to move without sound, but CrimeSync enhanced those skills, analyzing the acoustic properties of each surface and adjusting his gait to minimize noise.
He found the blind spot he had identified from the blueprints, a vulnerability created by an oversight in the camera placement design.
A small, ten-foot section of fence between two overlapping camera feeds, invisible to electronic eyes but perfectly accessible to someone who knew where to look.
He could see the cameras, mounted high on steel poles like mechanical sentinels, their lenses sweeping back and forth in a tireless, mechanical rhythm.
Red LED indicators blinked steadily, recording everything within their field of vision.
To them, this small patch of fence did not exist.
It was a ghost zone, a gap in their perception that Alex intended to exploit.
He pulled the bolt cutters from his backpack, the tool heavy and cold in his hands.
The weight was reassuring, solid and real in a mission that felt increasingly surreal.
------
He positioned the jaws around a link of the thick chain-link, choosing a point low enough to create a man-sized opening.
The metal was newer than he'd expected, the galvanized coating still intact, which meant it would be harder to cut than the weathered fencing he'd practiced on.
He squeezed the handles together, putting his entire body weight into it, feeling the resistance of high-tensile steel against the cutting edges.
The metal groaned in protest, a sound that seemed deafeningly loud in the night silence.
Then it snapped with a sharp, shockingly loud CRACK that echoed off the nearby warehouse walls.
Alex froze, every muscle tensed, his eyes locked on the sweeping cameras, waiting for the telltale change in their movement pattern that would indicate detection.
His heart hammered against his ribs, but the cameras continued their impassive, robotic patrol.
He was invisible.
A ghost in the machine.
He worked quickly now, methodically, cutting a small, man-sized opening at the bottom of the fence.
Each cut was precise, calculated to create the minimum opening necessary while maintaining structural integrity to avoid detection during routine patrols.
Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold air, the physical exertion and psychological pressure combining to push his body to its limits.
Finally, he had enough space. He set the bolt cutters aside and prepared to breach the perimeter.
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He slipped through the opening, the cut ends of the wire snagging at his dark hoodie like grasping fingers trying to hold him back.
The fabric tore slightly, but he was through.
He was inside the compound.
The air inside the facility felt different. Charged with electromagnetic energy from the security systems, thick with the promise of consequences.
He was a fox in a high-tech henhouse, and every instinct screamed at him to run.
But he pressed forward, guided by the mental map he'd memorized from the stolen blueprints.
He could see them now with CrimeSync's enhanced perception—the faint, shimmering lines of the infrared beams crisscrossing the ground in a complex geometric pattern.
The motion detection grid was exactly as the schematics had shown, a invisible maze designed to catch intruders.
But Alex could see it all, each beam rendered visible by his enhanced neural processing.
He navigated the grid like a dancer moving through laser light, his path precise, his movements economical and flowing.
One wrong step would trigger alarms that would bring the cavalry down on his head.
But CrimeSync guided him through the gaps, showing him the safe passages between the electronic tripwires.
He was a ghost, walking through a field of digital landmines that were sleeping soundly under the influence of his virus.
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**[Secure Storage Solutions, Row C - 11:21 PM]**
He moved down the long, cavernous row of identical metal doors, each one a sealed mystery containing the stored possessions of Aethelburg's citizens.
The silence here was absolute, broken only by the low hum of the electrical conduits overhead and the sound of his own, controlled breathing.
Fluorescent fixtures lined the ceiling, but most were dark to save power during off-hours, creating pools of deep shadow between islands of sickly yellow light.
Unit 1130... 1132... 1134...
Each door he passed was a potential witness, a sealed box that might contain security cameras or motion detectors unknown to him.
But his research had been thorough, his preparation complete.
The facility's own records showed these units as simple storage spaces with no additional security features.
Only Unit 1138 was different.
Only Unit 1138 had secrets worth protecting.
Then he saw it, standing at the end of the row like the final destination of a pilgrimage.
Unit 1138.
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It looked no different from the rest at first glance—just another slab of corrugated metal with a heavy-duty lock and a small placard bearing the unit number.
But Alex could feel it the moment he came within fifty feet.
A low, almost subliminal thrum of energy emanating from within, like the purr of a sleeping giant.
The air itself seemed to vibrate with potential energy, charged with possibilities that made his enhanced senses tingle with anticipation and dread.
*[CrimeSync: High-energy signature detected. Electromagnetic field strength: 47.3 Tesla. Consistent with a powered-down, high-capacitance device containing exotic matter.]*
*[Warning: Energy signature suggests technology beyond current scientific understanding. Extreme caution advised.]*
This was the place.
The epicenter of Deckard's temporal experiments, hidden in plain sight among hundreds of mundane storage units.
Alex pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over the activation icon that would begin the final phase of his infiltration.
This was the moment of truth.
Either his ghost virus worked as designed, or the entire Aethelburg police force would be here in under three minutes, and his career—and his life—would be over.
He thought of Captain Rostova's warnings about chasing ghosts.
He thought of Miller's dismissive contempt for his theories.
He thought of all the victims who would die if Deckard's technology fell into the wrong hands.
The choice was already made. It had been made the moment he'd seen Julian Croft's workshop.
Some monsters couldn't be stopped by following the rules.
He tapped the screen.
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A single word appeared: **[ACTIVE]**.
In his mind, CrimeSync's alert was sharp and clear, cutting through his consciousness like a knife.
*[CrimeSync: Activation signal sent. 'Ghost' protocol is now live.]*
*[Fifteen-minute countdown initiated: 15:00... 14:59... 14:58...]*
*[EMP subroutine executed. Unauthorized hardware disabled.]*
*[Warning: This is a point of no return. Mission parameters are now fixed.]*
The countdown had begun.
A clock was ticking in his head, a silent, relentless deadline that would either see him walking away with proof of Deckard's crimes or lying dead in a storage unit with a dozen bullet holes in his chest.
Fifteen minutes to change everything.
Fifteen minutes to save the future.
He shoved the phone back in his pocket and pulled out the miniature crowbar, its weight familiar and reassuring in his grip.
The tool was designed for precisely this kind of work—breaking locks without leaving obvious tool marks that would immediately scream "burglary" to investigators.
He jammed the sharpened, flattened end into the seam of the door, right next to the lock mechanism, finding the weak point he'd identified in the technical specifications.
He put his shoulder into it and heaved with controlled force.
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The metal groaned, a deep, protesting shriek that seemed to tear the silence to shreds and echo off the concrete walls of the facility.
Under normal circumstances, that sound would have triggered motion detectors, alerted guards, and brought security running.
But his virus was working perfectly, creating a bubble of digital blindness around Unit 1138.
He ignored the noise and heaved again, feeling the lock mechanism beginning to give way under the leverage.
There was a loud POP as the locking mechanism bent and shattered internally, the sound of precisely machined steel surrendering to brute force and superior positioning.
The physical lock was broken.
Phase one complete.
He dropped the crowbar, the tool clattering on the concrete floor, and gripped the bottom of the heavy metal door with both hands.
Storage unit doors were designed to roll up on tracks, but this one felt heavier than it should, as if it had been reinforced or weighted with additional security measures.
With a grunt of effort, he lifted it just high enough to squeeze his body underneath, the rough concrete scraping his knees as he slid into the darkness beyond.
He pulled the door down behind him with a low, rumbling thud that sealed him inside the belly of the beast.
He was in.
*[Time Remaining: 13:42... 13:41... 13:40...]*
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**[Unit 1138 - 11:24 PM]**
Total darkness enveloped him like a living thing.
The air was cool and smelled of ozone and sterile plastic, with an underlying metallic tang that reminded him of blood and electricity.
It was the smell of a laboratory, of experiments and science pushed beyond safe boundaries.
He pulled a small, tactical flashlight from his backpack, military-grade LED technology that would provide maximum illumination with minimum power drain.
The beam cut a sharp, white cone through the blackness, revealing the impossible.
He swept the light across the space, and his breath caught in his throat.
This was no storage unit.
It was a mobile, state-of-the-art laboratory that would have been at home in any university research facility or government black site.
One wall was lined with gleaming, stainless-steel workbenches covered in equipment that belonged in a physics laboratory—soldering equipment, oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, and complex-looking circuit boards that hummed with residual energy.
Another wall was dominated by a bank of computer servers, their small, green indicator lights blinking softly in the dark like the eyes of sleeping predators.
Cable management was perfect, everything organized with obsessive precision.
This wasn't the workshop of a madman—this was the laboratory of a genius who had gone beyond the boundaries of conventional science.
This was Deckard's black site.
His private kingdom of secrets and science, hidden in the most mundane location imaginable.
*[Time Remaining: 12:17... 12:16... 12:15...]*
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The countdown was a whip at his back, driving him forward through the maze of equipment.
Every second spent gawking at the setup was a second closer to exposure, capture, and failure.
He moved deeper into the unit, his flashlight beam probing the darkness, searching for the centerpiece of Deckard's operation.
And then he saw it, positioned in the center of the room like an altar to forbidden knowledge.
Sitting on a heavy-duty metal table was a large object covered by a grey canvas tarp.
Cables and wires snaked out from underneath it like the tentacles of some electronic octopus, connected to a sophisticated power regulator that hummed with barely contained energy.
The air around it seemed to shimmer with heat distortion, despite the cool temperature of the unit.
It was the source of the energy he had felt from outside.
It was the Chronos Device.
The weapon that could reshape time itself.
His heart pounded against his ribs, a frantic, wild rhythm that seemed to echo in the confined space.
He approached the table slowly, as if it were a sleeping beast that might wake at any sudden movement.
Every instinct screamed at him to run, to get away from whatever lay beneath that tarp.
But he had come too far to turn back now.
He reached out a gloved hand, the fabric of the tarp feeling rough and cool under his fingertips.
He needed proof. He needed the prototype.
He needed to understand what Deckard had created in this hidden laboratory.
He took a firm grip on the canvas.
*[Time Remaining: 11:48... 11:47... 11:46...]*
He pulled the tarp away.
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The object beneath was not what he expected.
It defied every assumption he'd made about temporal manipulation technology.
It was a nightmarish fusion of art and science, beauty and terror combined in a single, impossible construction.
A spherical cage of polished, concentric brass rings, all interlocking in a complex, gyroscopic design that seemed to move and shift even when perfectly still.
The craftsmanship was extraordinary—each ring was covered in intricate engravings that looked almost like circuit patterns or mystical symbols, depending on how the light hit them.
In the very center of the cage, suspended in a network of wires and what looked like magnetic coils, was a core of shimmering, crystalline material that seemed to drink the light from his flashlight and transform it into something else entirely.
The crystal—if that's what it was—pulsed with its own internal rhythm, a slow, hypnotic beat that seemed to synchronize with his heartbeat.
It was beautiful in the way that dangerous things are beautiful.
It was alien in its perfection, as if it had been designed by a intelligence that understood physics on a level that human science had never reached.
And as he stared at it, Alex felt an overwhelming, instinctual sense of absolute dread wash over him like ice water.
This device was not just a weapon.
It was something fundamentally wrong with reality itself.
Something that should never have been built.
*[Time Remaining: 10:33... 10:32... 10:31...]*
*[CrimeSync Warning: Temporal distortion field detected. Chronometer synchronization failing. Reality matrix unstable.]*
The countdown was becoming irregular, the numbers jumping and skipping as if time itself was being affected by the device's mere presence.
Alex realized with growing horror that he wasn't just looking at a weapon.
He was looking at a crack in the foundation of existence itself.
And Elias Deckard had learned how to widen that crack at will.
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**DETECTIVE'S LOG: ALEX STONE**
**CASE FILE: 002 - The Clockmaker (Unofficial)**
**STATUS:** Infiltration of Unit 1138 successful. 'Ghost' protocol is active and the countdown is running.
**KEY EVIDENCE (CRIMESYNC DATA):**
- Confirmation: The target unit is a fully equipped, mobile laboratory containing technology beyond current scientific understanding.
- Objective Located: The "Chronos Device" prototype has been found. Its design is more complex and disturbing than anticipated.
- Critical Discovery: Device appears to manipulate fundamental aspects of spacetime itself. Poses existential threat to reality.
- Time Remaining: Approximately 10 minutes (temporal distortion affecting accurate measurement).
**CURRENT OBJECTIVE:** Analyze, document, and secure the prototype—or a key component of it—and exfiltrate the location before the security blind spot collapses.
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**End of Chapter 11**
*"Some doors, once opened, can never be closed again. Some knowledge, once gained, changes everything forever."*
**To be continued...**