The air in the dropship was thick with the smell of ozone, sweat, and grim determination. Kael sat between Garrick and a hulking senior student named Roric, whose ability to solidify his skin into rock-like armor had earned him the nickname "The Crag." Across from them, Mira and Lira performed their final equipment checks, their faces illuminated by the dim, red cabin lighting. The rest of the team was a handpicked group of Genesis's best—a telekinetic, a close-combat specialist with enhanced reflexes, and a quiet woman who could manipulate sound.
No one spoke. The only sound was the low thrum of the engines and the occasional crackle of the comms as the pilot navigated the blacked-out approach vector.
Garrick's voice, low and steady, broke the silence. "Remember the primary objective: intelligence. We get in, plant the data spikes on their central servers, and get out. Secondary objective: disruption. If you see a chance to blow something important sky-high, you take it. But do not engage unless necessary. Korvath's people are not dumb brutes. They're scientists and tacticians. They will have countermeasures we haven't even conceived of."
His eyes lingered on Kael. "That includes you, Ardent. This isn't a training sim. No heroics. Your job is to adapt to whatever they throw at us and keep this team alive. Understood?"
Kael nodded, his throat dry. "Understood."
The dropship shuddered as it descended, its anti-grav systems whining in protest as they navigated the treacherous, collapsed skyline of the Old Quarter. Through a porthole, Kael saw a landscape of skeletal buildings, shrouded in a perpetual, sickly green mist from the chemical leaks that had poisoned this part of the city decades ago. Their target, a repurposed waste processing plant, loomed ahead, its silhouette a jagged scar against the hazy night sky.
"Thirty seconds!" the pilot's voice called back. "No signs of perimeter patrols. It's quiet. Too quiet."
The dropship settled with a soft jolt in the shadow of a collapsed overpass. The rear ramp hissed open, revealing the oppressive atmosphere of the ruins. The air was acrid, burning Kael's nostrils.
"Move out," Garrick commanded, his voice a whisper in their helmet comms.
They moved like ghosts through the rubble, their dark tactical suits making them one with the shadows. Lira took point, her light manipulation bending the faint ambient glow around them, rendering the team nearly invisible. They reached a rusted service entrance that, according to Valerius's intel, was the least monitored point of entry.
Roric made short work of the locked door, his stone-encased fingers prying it open with a metallic shriek that sounded deafening in the silence. They slipped inside.
The interior was a stark contrast to the decay outside. The corridors were clean, lit by sterile white light, the walls humming with hidden power conduits. This was no makeshift outpost; it was a fully operational, high-tech facility.
"Server room is two levels down, east wing," Garrick murmured, consulting the holographic map projected from his gauntlet. "Lira, keep us shrouded. Mira, you're on point with me. Kael, you're with Roric in the rear. Watch our backs."
They moved with practiced precision, descending a grated staircase. The silence was unnerving. Where were the guards? The patrols?
They reached the server room door—a heavy, reinforced slab of metal. The telekinetic, a slender woman named Anya, closed her eyes, her brow furrowed in concentration. With a soft groan of protesting metal, the door's internal locking mechanisms twisted and snapped. She pushed it open.
The room beyond was vast, a cathedral of technology. Towering racks of servers formed silent, humming canyons, their indicator lights blinking like a constellation of cold, blue stars.
"Plant the spikes," Garrick ordered. "We have five minutes."
The team fanned out, moving to key junction points and slamming the thumb-sized data spikes into ports on the servers. The devices immediately began their work, siphoning terabytes of information.
Kael stood guard by the door, his senses stretched to their limit. The hum of the Primordial Core was a steady pulse within him, a comforting presence in the unnerving stillness. But then, the hum shifted. A dissonant frequency, a wrongness, grated against his awareness.
"Garrick," Kael whispered into his comm. "Something's wrong. I can feel it."
Before Garrick could respond, the entire facility shuddered. A deafening alarm blared, and red emergency lights replaced the sterile white, casting the server room in a bloody glow.
"Intruders detected," a smooth, synthetic voice announced over the intercom. "Containment Protocol Alpha initiated."
The reinforced door to the server room slammed shut with a final, thunderous boom, the mechanisms Anya had broken now overridden. At the same time, vents in the ceiling hissed open, releasing a cloud of shimmering, silver nanites.
"Bio-disruptor swarm!" Lira shouted. "They'll try to shut down our nervous systems!"
Panic threatened to seize Kael. This was the countermeasure. Not guards, but a systemic defense designed to incapacitate or kill without risking a direct fight.
"Roric, seal the vents!" Garrick barked.
Roric roared, slamming his stone fists into the metal grating of a nearby vent, crushing it shut. But there were too many. The shimmering cloud descended, a metallic fog that sought out living flesh.
Kael acted on instinct. He didn't think, he reacted. He remembered the energy of the facility, the power conduits in the walls, the frantic, hostile signals of the nanites themselves. He reached out with the Core's power, not to strike, but to command.
A golden, electrostatic field erupted from his body, enveloping the entire team. The nanites hitting the field sparked and fizzled, falling to the floor as inert dust. He was adapting, creating a localized EMP tailored to the swarm's specific energy signature.
The drain was immediate and massive. Kael gasped, his knees buckling. Roric caught him, holding him upright.
"The spikes are at eighty percent!" Anya called out. "We need more time!"
"We don't have it!" Mira yelled. On the other side of the main door, they could hear the heavy, synchronized footsteps of automated security drones approaching.
"New plan," Garrick said, his voice cutting through the chaos. "We blow the primary power conduit. It runs directly beneath this room. It'll cause a cascade failure, fry their systems and cover our escape. Roric, can you punch through the floor?"
Roric grunted, slamming a fist into the reinforced concrete. A web of cracks appeared, but it held. "It's too thick! It'll take time we don't have!"
The door began to glow orange as the drones outside started cutting through.
Kael, still leaning on Roric, looked at the floor. He could feel the massive river of energy flowing beneath it, a torrent of raw power. He couldn't create a shield strong enough to stop the drones. He couldn't punch through the floor. But maybe he didn't have to.
"Get back!" he croaked, pushing himself upright. He focused everything he had, not on defense, not on offense, but on resonance. He tapped into the hum of the Core, matching its frequency to the specific energy signature of the conduit below. He became a living tuning fork.
He slammed his open palms onto the cracked floor.
A wave of invisible force pulsed downward. There was no explosion, no flash of light. Instead, a deep, subsonic thrum vibrated through the entire facility. The lights flickered and died, plunging them into darkness lit only by the red emergency strips and the sparks from the ruined door. The humming of the servers ceased abruptly. The cutting torch on the door sputtered and went out.
He had overloaded the conduit not with brute force, but with a perfectly calibrated energy surge, inducing a system-wide burnout.
In the sudden, eerie quiet, the only sound was Kael's ragged breathing.
"Spikes are at one hundred percent! Data secured!" Anya reported.
"Good," Garrick said, his voice tight. "Now, let's get the hell out of here before their backups come online. Roric, the door."
With the power dead, Roric made short work of the weakened door, shoving it aside. The corridor outside was dark, filled with the confused clanking of deactivated drones.
Their escape was a frantic blur. They fought their way back through the darkened corridors, now facing disoriented human guards who were easily subdued by the elite Genesis team. They burst out of the service entrance and sprinted for the waiting dropship, its engines already whining to life.
As the ship lifted off, climbing away from the now-chaotic facility, Kael collapsed into a seat, utterly spent. He was drenched in sweat, his body trembling with exhaustion.
Mira sat beside him, handing him a canteen. "You did it, Kael. You saved us."
He looked at his hands. They had not thrown a single punch. They had not crumpled a single suit of armor. Yet, he had faced a threat more insidious than any Reaver and, by understanding its nature, had found a way to defeat it.
He had evolved.
Garrick clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Not bad, kid. Not bad at all." There was a new respect in the instructor's eyes. "Valerius gave us a target, but you gave us a victory."
Kael looked out the viewport as the diseased landscape of the Old Quarter fell away. He had passed the test of his first real mission. But as the adrenaline faded, a cold realization settled in his gut. Korvath now knew they could hit him. He knew they had his data. And he knew, without a doubt, that the Primordial Core was no longer dormant.
The first move was over. The real game was about to begin.