LOGINChapter 83 – SurfaceThe sirens weren’t subtle.They didn’t wail in panic. They didn’t race past.They surrounded.Layered. Approaching from multiple directions. Not responding to an incident—closing a perimeter.Reeves stood still in the hollowed chamber, listening like he could triangulate jurisdiction by sound alone.“That’s not local,” he said.“No,” the tailored man replied quietly. “It isn’t.”My phone buzzed again.Unknown sender.You have six minutes before the building is classified.Reeves looked at me.“Classified how?”“Doesn’t say.”The tailored man exhaled slowly, almost impressed.“They’re cleaning the narrative before the scene.”We moved.Not running. Not yet.The corridors that once hummed with infrastructure now felt like the shell of something molted. Empty concrete. Dead glass. No echo of machinery.Like the system had pulled its nervous system out and left bone.The exit corridor upward remained intact.For now.As we stepped into the lift shaft, the tailored man
Chapter 82 – RedRed doesn’t mean danger.Not in facilities like this.Red means protocol.Red means automation.Red means the system has decided something before the people inside it have.The map on the screen pulsed once.Every corridor branching from our holding room lit up in synchronized crimson.Not spreading.Not searching.Locking.The tailored man didn’t shout.Didn’t panic.He just said one word.“Override.”The navy-suited woman’s fingers moved fast over her tablet.“No response.”“Manual?”“Not accepting.”Reeves stepped toward the sealed door and hit the release panel.Nothing.“No external breach detected,” the woman added.“That’s because it isn’t a breach,” I said quietly.They both looked at me.“It’s compliance.”The replica on the split screen tilted its head slightly, as if hearing me.The courtroom feed continued running in the background—judge conferring with clerks, phones lighting up in the gallery.But the other half of the screen held steady.The underground
Chapter 81 – SecondaryThe word hung in the air long after the intercom went dead.Secondary.Not backup.Not contingency.Catalyst.Activated.Every screen in the holding room remained white for three full seconds.Then they shifted.Not back to the system dashboards.Not to security feeds.To a single live camera view.Courtroom 4B.Empty.But not dark.The overhead lights were on.The seal on the door—broken.Reeves stared at the screen like it might blink first.“That room was cleared,” he said.“It was sealed,” the woman in navy corrected from the doorway. She’d returned, breath controlled but tight. “Federal marshals logged it secured an hour ago.”The man beside me stepped forward.“Pull external audio.”“Already trying.”The screen flickered.Then stabilized.A figure stepped into frame.Not rushing.Not hiding.Walking to the prosecution table.He set a slim folder down and adjusted the microphone.I knew that posture.Knew the rhythm of those movements.The man on the screen
Chapter 80 – Below the CityThe drop wasn’t fast.That’s what made it worse.If the floor had given way and sent us plummeting, my body would’ve reacted. Braced. Fought gravity. Chosen panic.Instead, the descent was smooth. Controlled. Engineered.The kind of movement designed by people who never rush.The corridor walls remained white and seamless. No visible seams. No exposed wiring. No security cameras in sight.Which meant they were there.Just not for me to see.The man stood three feet ahead of me, hands folded loosely behind his back, like we were walking into a board meeting instead of beneath a city that just tried to erase me.“How deep?” I asked.“Deep enough,” he replied.“That’s not a number.”“It’s not meant to be.”The floor slowed.Stopped.A quiet click.Then the wall in front of us dissolved into transparency, revealing a wide subterranean platform.Tracks ran through the center.Not old rail.Magnetic.A transport system built for silence.A train waited.Sleek. Da
Chapter 79 – TransferThe darkness wasn’t natural.Cities don’t go dark like that.Even during outages, there’s bleed—backup grids, emergency strips, distant traffic glow. There’s always something.This was surgical.The kind of blackout that has intent.My ears were still ringing when the first sound returned—a faint mechanical hum somewhere deep in the warehouse.Not above.Not outside.Below.The woman grabbed my collar and dragged me behind an overturned steel desk as emergency strips flickered back to life along the far wall.Dim. Red.Backup system.But not ours.The armored figures were still standing where they’d been when the pulse hit.Frozen.Mid-motion.Like statues.The man near the SUV lowered his hand slowly, staring at them.“That wasn’t scheduled,” he said quietly.His voice had changed.Not controlled anymore.Tight.“You lost control,” the woman muttered.He ignored her.One of the armored figures twitched.Just slightly.Then collapsed.No dramatic fall. Just power
Chapter 78 – When the Door LiftsThe warehouse door didn’t just open.It rose slowly — deliberate, mechanical, unapologetic.The grinding metal echoed through the concrete space like a countdown.No one in the room moved at first.The woman in the driver’s seat didn’t reach for a weapon.She didn’t curse.She didn’t even look surprised.She just watched.Which meant this wasn’t unexpected.It was inevitable.Cold night air poured in under the widening gap. The outside streetlights cut thin bars of orange across the warehouse floor.I turned slightly, positioning myself behind the car door without making it obvious.“If this is part of the plan,” I said quietly, “you should probably tell me.”“It’s not,” she replied.That was honest.The door rose high enough to reveal tires first.Black.Large.Government issue? Hard to tell from rubber alone.Then the grill.Then the windshield.No sirens.No lights.Just quiet authority.The vehicle stopped halfway inside the threshold.Didn’t advan







