Chapter 83 Ethan Cross
Ethan Cross
Location: Inside Kade’s Facility
Time: Same
Two guards.
No conversation.
No wasted motion.
They’re positioned for coverage, not comfort—angles overlapping, blind spots minimized.
Good.
That means they were trained.
It also means they trust the system behind them.
That’s their mistake.
I step into the gap between camera sweeps.
Timing it to the half-second.
Close enough to feel their awareness shift—
Too late.
One breath.
Two movements.
Precise.
Final.
They don’t hit the ground at the same time.
But they never make a sound.
I’m already past them before gravity finishes the job.
The corridor stretches ahead—sterile, controlled, almost clinical.
No clutter.
No human imprint.
Just design.
Kade’s mind is everywhere in this place.
Clean.
Efficient.
Disconnected.
Everything automated.
Doors. Surveillance. Environmental control.
No guards where machines will do.
No redundancy where certainty is assumed.
I move deeper, senses adjusting to the rhythm of the building.
Because that’s what this is—
A system pretending to be a fortress.
And systems have one fatal flaw.
They don’t improvise.
My hand brushes the wall as I pass.
Feeling the vibration beneath it.
The flow.
The structure.
Mapping it in real time.
Because when something this controlled breaks—
It doesn’t crack.
It cascades.
Everywhere.