### **Arc 9: The Devil at the Door**
#### **Chapter 36: The Echoes of War**
The first explosion rocked the mountain. It wasn't a direct hit—it was a missile striking the road a half-mile below them, a calculated strike designed to cut off their only escape route. The Director wasn't just coming to capture them; she was coming to bury them.
Renji stood at a reinforced viewport, a narrow slit of armored glass looking down the pass. Through a pair of high-powered binoculars, he saw them: a convoy of sleek, black armored vehicles and VTOL gunships descending like vultures through the twilight. They weren't soldiers. They were hunters.
"They're deploying Alpha Teams," Renji's voice was a low, steady report over their internal comms, a stark contrast to the blaring alarms. "Top-tier spec ops. Better than the grunts in Siberia. They'll scale the rock face. Expect a multi-front assault."
Inside the control room, the countdown glowed on the main screen, an unforgiving clock against the backdrop of their impending doom.
**45 SECONDS.**
Kuro's hands were a blur across the consoles. He wasn't just a hacker anymore; he was a fortress commander. "I'm sealing the primary blast doors. Rerouting all non-essential power to the perimeter defense grid. The old system is crude, but it's functional. Microwave emitters, electrified plating… a few surprises the Soviets left behind." He paused, his eyes flicking to a schematic. "The main weakness is the ventilation shaft on the northern face. It's shielded, but a dedicated breach team could get through it."
"I'll take the vent shaft," Renji said without hesitation. It was the most vulnerable point, and therefore, it was his.
Hikari's role in this battle wasn't with a gun or a keyboard. She had plugged herself into the bunker's external audio sensors, filtering the chaotic noise of the battle into pure information. "I can hear them," she whispered, her eyes closed in concentration. "Their comms are on a closed-loop quantum network. I can't break it, but I can feel the vibrations. The discipline is… perfect. There's no fear. No anger. Just focus." She opened her eyes, a look of chilling realization on her face. "They're not like the soldiers from the facility. These are different. They feel… hollow."
The countdown continued its relentless march.
**30 SECONDS.**
A new voice, cold and precise, cut through their comms. It wasn't W.A.O.'s channel. The Director had bypassed it, punching through Kuro's firewalls with a brute-force signal of her own. She was speaking directly to them.
"Can you feel it, prototypes?" The Director's voice was a silken poison in their ears. "The beautiful, elegant simplicity of a closing trap. You have a choice. Surrender the research, and I will allow you to live out your days in a comfortable, well-funded laboratory, continuing your parents' brilliant work under my supervision. Resist… and this mountain will become your tomb. You have twenty seconds to decide."
Renji raised his rifle and looked towards the dark, narrow tunnel of the ventilation shaft. His decision was made in the cold, hard set of his jaw. "Kuro," he said. "Get ready to blow the access tunnel the second I'm through."