Chapter 31 Kimberly
KIMBERLY
It starts with pressure. Not a sound, not even a tremor—just this awful, inescapable pressure building in the walls, behind my teeth, down in the soles of my boots like the planet itself just inhaled and doesn’t know how to exhale.
The lights overhead flicker red, then white, then red again.
Systems scream warnings in languages nobody speaks anymore.
And then all hell comes for us.
The first blast hits a tunnel entrance northeast of the old prep kitchen.
It tears through the corridor like it’s made of paper, shoving shockwaves down the line, rattling the Reaper-metal bones of the chamber and sending centuries-old dust down in sheets.
I don’t flinch. I can’t afford to. My hand slams down on the command board, switching feeds, scanning for entry breaches.
“North three compromised,” I bark into the comm. “Mara, reroute evac to west two—seal the spillway behind them.”
“On it!” her voice crackles back. “Ishaan’s got the corridor fallback. We’ll move the second group now.”
Screams—distant, fragmented—bleed through from secondary channels. Static churns behind them like a storm made of ghosts.
I pivot to Tur’s last feed location—south catacombs, three levels below.
He’s already mid-combat. Gunfire, hand-to-hand, claws out and red, his body moving like the gravity here bends different for him.
He doesn’t see the third attacker on his six.
I slam the override for a wall mine. The corridor lights flash once.
Boom. The body disappears in a blur of dust and viscera.
“Saved your ass,” I mutter.
Tur grunts through his channel. “You’re watching my six now?”
“Always.”
He doesn’t say thank you.
Doesn’t have to.
The second wave hits harder. Bigger ordinance. Two synchronized breaches—east access hatch and lower vault stairs. I hear the explosion before the report comes in. The floor under my boots shivers. The air chokes with the stink of burning plascrete and something wet and coppery. I know that smell.
Syndicate chatter clogs our hacked comm lines, all overlapping panic and betrayal. One of the Nine lieutenants is screaming about route permissions. Another accuses someone of selling them out to the Alliance. A third calls for extraction—and gets silence.
I press a button on my secondary console. “Patch all syndicate channels to broadcast loop Theta-Seven. Scramble team IDs. Feed them the old NovaTech encryption bluff.”
“On your mark,” Ishaan confirms.
“Do it.”
The effect is immediate.
Comms burst into chaos. Syndicate units start turning on each other mid-assault—thinking their rivals leaked their positions, that they’re being hunted from both sides. Gunfire echoes louder, closer, less organized. The system eats itself from the inside, just like I planned.
Mara chimes in again. “Evac route three is clear. First wave civilians are out. Working on the next group.”
“Good,” I say, shifting maps. “Tur—report.”
“I’m fine,” he pants. “South corridor sealed. Got about five minutes before they breach again.”
“Use that time.”
“Copy.”
I don’t ask what he means. He won’t waste it.
The ground shudders under another blast. This one closer. Maybe twenty meters off. The lights blink once—then go out entirely.
Emergency backup kicks in after a beat too long. Red, skeletal lighting floods the command alcove, turning every surface into bone and shadow. I don’t stop moving.
My fingers fly over the controls, redirecting power to the central passage grid.
The node pulses under the floor like a heartbeat on too much adrenaline.
I glance at its readings—spiking. Surging.
Inputs are colliding. Too many hands trying to access its core all at once.
The interface panel bleeds static and heat.
“Node is destabilizing,” I say, loud and clear. “Full access attempts from multiple syndicate uplinks. They’re trying to pull data while breaching. Idiots.”
Tur’s voice cuts in, darker. “They’ll crack it apart. They don’t know what they’re interfacing with.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “Welcome to my nightmare.”
Aboveground, entire districts go dark. My secondary map flashes red.
Power grids collapsing like dominoes. Panic sweeps social net feeds in real time—rumors of terrorist attacks, of planetary collapse, of Alliance betrayal.
One feed says the node’s a weapon. Another says it’s a cure.
A third claims it’s an ancient AI that will grant divinity to whoever wins control.
Idiots, the lot of them.
I adjust heat dispersion from the core to delay another surge. It buys us minutes. Maybe less.
Another tunnel collapses behind evac route five. I hear the screaming before the audio feed cuts. I do not cry. I do not flinch. I reroute the survivors and shut the dead end.
“Casualty report incoming,” Ishaan says softly.
“Later,” I answer. “We finish this first.”
More syndicate transmissions pour in. I parse them for leverage—then twist the knife.
I send anonymous alerts through cracked channels that the Nine has sold out to the Alliance. I redirect blame to the wealthiest bosses. I make sure every thug with a gun and a grudge has a name to blame before they die. Let them eat each other.
Mara’s voice again. “Last group is through. Civilians accounted for.”
“Confirm with node signature scans.”
“Already did,” she snaps. “I’m not new.”
“No, you’re not,” I say, and mean it.
She’s more than earned her war stripes tonight.
The node screams.
It’s not sound. Not really. It’s pressure and light and something psychic, like a rage you feel in your bones. Every Reaper-etched line across the floor pulses hot and white, searing for seconds before dimming again.
“Time’s up,” I whisper.
The command alcove shakes.
Support pillars groan.
Tur’s voice cuts through the red noise. “We have to fall back.”
I stare at the node. It’s tearing itself apart.
“No,” I say. “If this place ends, I end with it.”
“Kim,” Tur growls, raw now. “That wasn’t the deal.”
“I am the deal,” I say. “They want it because of me. Letting this thing eat itself is the only clean ending left.”
“You promised—”
“I lied.”
A pause.
Then: “Then I’m lying with you.”