The Asset

Two soldiers stepped off the platform steps, their combat boots clanging against the metal grate as they approached the skiff. One of them reached out, grabbing Garrison’s shoulder to spin him around.

Garrison didn’t wait for the second man to move.

He caught the first soldier by the wrist, twisting the arm completely until the bone popped out of the socket. The soldier shrieked, dropping his rifle. Garrison snatched the falling weapon before it hit the deck, spinning in a fluid, deadly circle and firing a three-round burst directly into the second soldier’s ballistic visor.

"Fire!" Ryker screamed from above.

The cavern erupted into chaos. High-caliber rounds chewed through the floor of the skiff, sending a hail of white-hot sparks across my face.

Garrison grabbed the back of my jacket, hurling me over the side of the platform into the narrow utility trench running beneath the tracks. "Keep crawling toward the exhaust shaft, Valerie! Don’t stop until you hit the lower grid!"

"Garrison, your arm!" I yelled, looking back through the grate. A stray round had grazed his forearm, tearing through the fabric of his uniform and leaving a deep, dark red gash.

"Go!" he roared, turning back toward the catwalk steps as he emptied the captured rifle into the nearest bunker nest.

I dropped onto my hands and knees in the cold, greasy mud of the trench. The smell of oil, sulfur, and raw electricity was overwhelming down here, the massive power lines of the geothermal cell vibrating less than a foot above my hair. Behind me, the roar of the gun battle continued, the concrete walls shaking with every grenade blast.

I crawled frantically through the dark, my fingers scraping against rusted iron bolts and jagged wire mesh. Up ahead, a faint red glow emerged from a circular opening marked Core Ventilation Area 4.

The air coming out of the hole was hot, smelling faintly of wild berries and burnt sugar.

The core was already leaking.

I burst through the ventilation opening, tumbling onto a narrow, circular steel walkway suspended directly over the main geothermal cell of Depot One.

The view below was terrifying. The entire subterranean chamber was filled with a massive, pulsing lake of iridescent red liquid—the raw, unrefined pathogen base. It looked like molten glass, bubbling and spitting thick plumes of crimson smoke up into the giant extraction funnels. The heat was immense, baking my skin through my jacket in seconds.

"Valerie!"

I looked up. Garrison was standing at the far end of the circular walkway, his face covered in soot and blood, his uniform completely shredded. He had managed to clear the catwalks, but he didn’t have a weapon left. He was holding his bleeding forearm, his eyes wild as he ran toward me.

"The secondary bulkheads are locking down, Garrison!" I shouted, pointing toward the steel doors across the room. "The automated countdown just hit twenty minutes!"

A loud mechanical voice echoed through the iron beams overhead: Atmospheric release sequence initialized. Primary release valves opening in twenty minutes. Ensure all personnel have evacuated the chamber.

"Where is the manual pressure wheel?" I panted, running to meet him in the center of the walkway.

"Below the central platform," Garrison said, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward a steep iron ladder that dropped straight down into the red mist rising from the boiling lake. "The primary coolant lines run right beneath the main distribution node. We have to override the hydraulic locks before the electronic servos hit the final state."

Suddenly, a loud metallic clonk shook the bridge.

Captain Ryker stood at the top of the walkway stairs. His armor was dented, his helmet gone, and his face was twisted in pure, desperate malice. He held a high-caliber sidearm, his hand completely steady as he aimed it directly at Garrison’s chest.

"This is as far as you go, Vance," Ryker spat, his thumb clicking the safety off. "The General’s plan will finish. The elite tier will survive."

Garrison didn’t move. He kept his body firmly between Ryker and me, his fingers tightening around the cold metal of the safety rail. "Look down, Ryker. Look at the liquid. You think your sanctuary walls are going to keep that out? Thorne built this to purge the world. You are just the delivery boy he hired to pull the trigger."

"I am the winner!" Ryker screamed, his finger tightening on the trigger.

Before he could fire, I reached into my backpack, pulled out the digital map module, and hurled it with all my strength straight at his face. The heavy metallic block caught him right across the eyes, shattering his nose with a loud crack.

Ryker let out a muffled grunt, his gun hand wavering as he fired a single, blind shot into the ceiling.

Garrison moved before the echo died. He closed the distance in two strides, his large hands clamping around Ryker’s throat and slamming him hard against the thin safety rail. The iron bars groaned under the force, bending outward over the boiling red lake below.

"You want to see the future, Ryker?" Garrison whispered, his voice dark and entirely devoid of human mercy. "Go take a look."

With one massive heave, Garrison lifted the captain over the rail, throwing him down into the iridescent red fluid thirty feet below.

Ryker didn’t even have time to scream before the thick, bubbling fluid swallowed him completely. The surface of the red lake flared with a brief, violent flash of white smoke, then returned to its slow, rhythmic pulsing.

Garrison turned back to me, his chest heaving as he wiped the blood from his cheek. He walked to the edge of the iron ladder, looking down into the deep fog of the lower platform.

"The countdown is at fifteen minutes, Valerie," he said, his voice flat. "Get to the ladder. We are running out of time.”