Mercer hadn't said a word.
He flicked his comms back on, masking the click.
"Yes, Grey here. No sign of Subject Theta on external perimeter."
There was a pause.
Then Mercer continued while pointing his finger at Jessy.
"Copy. Stand by. If you see movement, eliminate on sight. You are authorized."
Jessy stared at the comm unit.
Authorized? He wasn't even supposed to carry a sidearm.
They wanted him to kill now?
He looked at the pistol on his hip.
Then, at the greenhouse's faint reflection in the glass.
No no no. They want me to shoot something that doesn't exist, Then say I panicked, fired at the target, then I failed. Then...
His pulse steadied.
He wasn't going to play by the rules anymore.
Instead of returning to post, Jessy slipped around the northern curve of the greenhouse, keeping low in the ivy. His clothes clung to him still too tightly, too damp, too secondhand, but he moved in silence, remembering what Goro told him.
"You're not here to think hard. Just deep."
He didn't have a plan yet.
But two things were clear:
Mercer had killed the target already.
Now, Mercer was erasing the witnesses.
Jessy found a maintenance panel near the corner of the dome, behind a cluster of thorned vines. A panel wired into the heating system.
He reached into his coat. Still had a small toolkit from earlier a screwdriver, a mini pry bar, and a roll of surgical tape.
"Let's make Mercer think he's being hunted."
He started unscrewing the panel, heart pounding, breath shallow, planting the first part of a trap.
Inside the greenhouse, something shifted again. Another shadow. This time is too big to be Theta. Too fluid to be Mercer.
Jessy paused.
Something was watching.
Not Mercer.
Something… else
Jessy crouched beneath the curve of the northern dome, the glass arch overhead slick with condensation. It dripped in slow, deliberate taps onto the back of his neck, each droplet a cold stab that cut through the heat rising from the building's internal systems.
The plants around him hissed softly.
Not a sound from the wind or an animal.
The greenery itself made noise.
It was like being buried beneath a living lung.
Glass above. Roots below. Metal inside.
But Jessy wasn't looking at the plants. He was looking at the seams. The vents. The drainage paths. The soft, vulnerable infrastructure is hidden behind the lush distraction.
He popped open the metal utility panel with the pry bar, and immediately a gust of hot air brushed his face, thick, humid, tinged with the sharp musk of overripe chlorophyll and chemical rot.
His fingers trembled slightly as he worked, not from fear. From adrenaline poisoning. His body had been trained to push through pain, not this kind of tension.
"Focus," he whispered. "This is math. Just… math with higher stakes."
Inside the panel, wires curled like multicolored veins. Yellow, red, green, grey — all tagged with codes he didn't fully recognize, but he remembered enough from the supply closet schematics back at HQ. These weren't just temperature regulators. They were contamination cycle controls!
Heating, chemical gas, and moisture injections… automatic responses to intrusions or biohazard leaks.
Jessy reached into his toolkit and pulled out a small wire snare. Too thin to choke someone. Perfect to trigger an internal short.
He looped it across a yellow filament, spliced it to the copper mount.
Click.
The system hummed.
That would trigger a moisture dump into Quadrant 3 by flooding the humidity levels.
Not enough to harm Mercer. But enough to blind him.
Jessy smiled.
Then turned and began setting more.
[Trap #1: "Ghostglass"]
[Location: Inner northwest dome arch]
[Tool: Vent humidity hack]
[Effect: Fog the interior glass from the inside, hiding Jessy's movements while making Mercer think the greenhouse is venting.]
He set the sequence, then moved toward the control junction behind an orchid bed.
His hands brushed past thorns.
One sliced his palm.
Thin and surgical.
He winced, then paused.
Looked down.
The thorn tips were lined with a thin glisten of black sap.
Toxin?
He brought it near his nose, took the faintest breath.
Sweet, almost sickeningly so. Like jasmine left in the sun too long.
He touched the sap to the edge of his knife.
The metal hissed. Just a whisper. Corrosive.
Jessy blinked.
They're growing weaponized flora in here. Shaped for... security.
A thought struck him. A real trap idea.
[Trap #2: "Throat Thorn"]
[Location: Vined corridor intersection]
[Tool: Sap-dipped blade, laid under ivy]
[Effect: Jessy lays a few long, hair-thin thorns across a blind corner where Mercer might sweep. One slice = exposure to the toxin. A clean cut to the boot or ankle could slow reflexes or distort vision if absorbed through the skin.]
He wrapped a few thorns in cloth strips, tied them to a bootlace, and strung it across ankle height in a crescent.
One wrong step and Mercer's whole balance would be compromised.
"No power. Just placement," he whispered.
His next target was the irrigation lines.
He traced the tubes, thick, flexible pipes wrapped around the glass scaffolding like intestines. They pulsed every few minutes. When he leaned closer, he heard the slosh of fluid pesticides, humidifiers, and liquid nutrients.
But more importantly, pressure-based valves.
He smiled.
[Trap #3: "Jetline"]
[Location: Directly behind a wall of high-density orchids]
[Tool: Over-pressured irrigation line]
[Effect: Jessy splices a valve and ties it off with surgical tape. When someone brushes the wall too hard, it'll trigger a sudden burst of high-pressure mist, chemicals, or nutrient fluid. Disorienting, loud, and bright.]
He placed it along a curved corridor Mercer was likely to sweep through next.
He'll think it's a breach. Fire toward it. Waste time. Maybe even reload.
And Jessy would be elsewhere by then.
Time passed strangely.
The dome's internal lighting adjusted every ten minutes warm yellow glow, then green hue, then a clinical white.
Somewhere above, the glass shifted. Internal louvers whined. The breathing of the structure continued, now faster. More agitated.
'It knows I'm not supposed to be here, ' Jessy thought.
And maybe… neither is Mercer anymore.
Jessy moved lower, into the planting troughs, crawling beneath overgrown slabs of moss-covered steel. His hands sank into warm, wet soil, clinging to his wrists like grave mud.
He placed one last item.
His old field recorder, tucked into a plastic bag, set to play a recorded whisper on loop:
"North gate breached. Repeat. North gate…"
A simple, distorted voice, set to repeat every 4 minutes, just quiet enough to catch on someone's peripheral hearing.
[Trap #4: "Ghost Command"]
[Location: Hidden in soil near east quadrant vents]
[Tool: Audio loop on an old recorder]
[Effect: Makes Mercer believe there's another team inside. Might push him into reckless movement, force him to circle toward the trap-filled corridor.]
"Make him think he's not alone," Jessy murmured. "Make him paranoid."
Because that's what Jessy understood more than anything:
Paranoia was louder than bullets.
As he crawled back toward the center, Jessy caught sight of Nyra's body again.
Still unmoved.
Her eyes stared through the canopy above like she was watching a sky Jessy couldn't see.
He crouched by her — carefully, quietly.
Something tugged at his conscience. Something low and cold.
She didn't die in a struggle.
Her hands weren't defensive. Her posture wasn't collapsed.
She'd been surprised.
Maybe… hypnotized. Mercer had gotten close.
Close enough to..
Jessy didn't finish the thought. He couldn't.
Not now.
He took the small communicator from her belt and slipped it into his pocket. The light blinked red. Still active.
Two channels now.
He whispered into it.
"Mercer. Target trail moved east. Engaging now."
He clicked it off before Mercer could respond.
Let him chase ghosts.
Jessy's hands were filthy now, blackened with sap, mud, and blood. His breath came in shallow bursts. His eyes stung from the chemicals in the air.
But his mind was sharp.
Focused.
Mercer was stronger. Faster. Armed.
But Jessy had the entire greenhouse in his hands now.
Its shadows, its rot, its poisons.
And it would obey him better than any gun.