They rowed like ghosts, oars whispering through black water, the moon a dull coin above the pipe's maw. The gated culvert swallowed sound; cold, damp air breathed over their faces as the boat nosed into the tunnel and the vertigo of enclosed space closed around them. ISAC's faint chitter fed through Sarah's earpiece—thermal pings, hard geometry, one live signature at the far end—but the feed was thin in the pipe. They moved by feel, by the glow of HK416's optic and G11's lazy torchlight.
The pipe eventually opened into a squat service alcove and a rust-rimmed hatch. Beyond it, muffled human voices and the regular throb of a turret motor told them they weren't alone.
Sarah slid out first, boots on wet concrete. The others flowed after her: HK416 silent and precise; UMP9 tight-shouldered and watchful; UMP45 wearing that grin that never reached her eyes. They shifted into formation at the hatch, breathing measured, weapons ready.
Through a thin slot in the door Sarah could just make out the compound's inner courtyard—three guards idling with crude rifles, one of them fiddling with a maintenance terminal beside a tripod turret. They were blasé, comfortable. Dangerous for the same reason.
"…Manny, we lost contact with Covenant," one guard muttered, voice crackling. "You think they'll come right at us? If they'll breach our compound—"
Manny's laugh was low, practised. "Our mission still stands. Expose synths. Kill them. That's peace for this community." His tone had the calm of men who'd turned terror into doctrine.
Sarah's stomach went cold. Curie's face, the faint French lilt still in her voice, flashed behind her eyes. There was no room for words now.
She gave the smallest sign—two quick taps on her wrist—and HK416 swallowed the light in her optic, feeding a thermal overlay. UMP9 and 45 melted to the flank, already feeling for seams in the courtyard's routine. G11 shrugged on her harness and hissed, "Wake me when it's loud," then settled like a cat ready to spring.
Sarah dug a seeker mine from her pack—an ugly, compact thing with a tracer set to a noise signature—and fitted the timer to a half-second delay. She threaded it through the hatch and nudged it along the concrete lip, sighting the trio of guards and the tripod turret. The mine would seek heat and motion; the courtyard's lull guaranteed a nasty surprise.
She let it go.
The mine skittered, found it's mark, and then screamed. Concrete spat, boots flew, and a turbine of flame and shrapnel chewed the turret into a screaming ruin. Two guards folded where they stood; the third spun, face blown open, a raw sound tearing out of him.
Manny's head snapped up as the world detonated. He saw his men go, heard the collapse. He did one honest thing then—he ran for the inner hatch to warn the rest.
Sarah didn't give him the chance. She led the charge like a blade. HK416 cut left, a cold series of shots to the exposed creases of the remaining sentries. UMP9 slipped between shadows and slipped a silenced sidearm into a throat; UMP45 bounded forward in a blur, SMG barking back-to-back rounds that took out a man mid-prayer. G11, who had been half lounging, rolled into position and opened up with a measured, brutal efficiency—her bursts shredding a guard who still clutched a cross and chanted some dumb litany about purity.
"Down!" Sarah barked. Her voice was a weapon as much as her rifle. The courtyard became a map of smoke and copper. Bodies crumpled, and prayers broke into curses. The remaining cultists—wild-eyed, some with blood smeared on their faces—slammed doors shut and fled into the compound, banging alarms that clattered uselessly against the ductwork.
They fought like zealots, hurling themselves against steel and compacted tactics. But Team 404 moved like an answering force—surgical, relentless. HK416's headshot took a run-and-gun fanatic trying to wheel the turret's control box; UMP9 and 45 paired in close, a practiced dance that collapsed an attempted flank. Sarah pushed forward, firing controlled bursts, stepping over a fallen guard, and saw a glimpse of Manny ducking into a stairwell. The man's face was blown and determined; the look in his eyes was not of a fanatic but a frightened leader clinging to mission.
"Stop! Stop!" Manny howled from the stair. "You don't understand—this is for our safety!"
Sarah holstered the rhetoric and sent a single round into the stairwell above his boots—the bullet thudded into concrete as a warning. "No more kidnapping," she said, voice flat. "Tell your people that. Tell them Curie is a person, not some test subject of yours."
Someone in the compound shouted and the sound swelled—footsteps, steel clanging, the hostage lines shifting. Through the smoke Sarah heard muffled movement: someone running, chains, a door locked and bolted.
"Search," she ordered. "Sweep top to bottom. Eliminate those resist, No mercy for the ones who took her."
HK416 set up a breach point to the administration block. UMP45 moved to snag access cards from downed bodies; UMP9 rigged a soft splice on the terminal to pull any manifests. G11, breathing in the copper tang of the fight, found time to pop a soda and toss the empty to one side like punctuation.
They cleared rooms in a hard, efficient choreography—firing, silencing, checking, moving. Every chest cavity, every locker, every stack of crates was a possibility for Curie's chains.
And when Sarah reached the inner holding cells, the world tightened—Latched doors, muffled sobs. She forced the lock with a pry bar, swung the door, and slammed the light into the small, stale room.
Empty bunks. One overturned chair. A child's toy boat in the corner.
Silence screamed.
Outside, a distant engine began to whine. Someone had mobilized—more guards, or an outside force responding to explosions. Sarah swore under her breath and tightened her jaw. Curie wasn't there. But neither was the quiet truth Manny claimed: the compound had a network, and they'd moved their prize.
She stamped her boot against the concrete and felt the island shake with distant boots. Time had thinned to a single, sharp edge.
"Find Curie," she said to her team. "And find stockholm's girl, too. Split—HK, sweep left tunnels. 9 and 45, sweep the east wing. I'll hit the admin core eith G11. ISAC, keep the feeds hot. If they try to move her, we'll cut them off."
ISAC's neutral hum replied: "Priority: locate captive. Thermal sweep initiated. Movement detected in eastern subcorridor."
They moved like a two-person shadow—Sarah low and methodical, G11 a lazy blade at her shoulder, optics chewing the gloom. The compound's innards smelled of damp concrete and oil; far off, the engine note rolled and shivered like a heartbeat. ISAC's whisper in her ear kept the grid alive: thermal pings, geometry updates, movement blips that she filtered without thinking.
A tripod turret on a mezzanine tried to greet them with lead and a short, metallic bark. Someone in the corridor answered with a lobbed grenade; metal sang. The blast sent concrete dust falling like ash, but it didn't slow them. G11 shouldered into a suppressive arc, her bursts measured and surgical—each round a punctuation mark that carved safe lanes through the chaos.
They rounded the corner into a service corridor and found a stout wooden door bolted tight across the way. Sarah's wrist pulsed: ISAC had mapped a viable alternative route beyond that door—an access shaft into the inner compound—but their window was closing. Lockpicks would cost them time they didn't have.
She looked at G11. The doll's gaze was half-awake already, expression blank save for the spark of amusement the Daughters called "anticipation."
"No time for finesse," Sarah said. She slotted the chem launcher on her shoulder, thumbed the selector to a short-burst breaching charge, and exhaled.
The round sang down the corridor and detonated against the wood with a wet, thunderous pop. Splinters exploded outward. The bolt screamed free. The force knocked back the nearest guard into the stairwell and fried the tripod's feed. Someone howled in the dark; the engine's note hiccupped as a protective cover collapsed.
They flowed through the breach: room-by-room clearing, low, fast, and merciless. G11's bursts cut down a pair trying to deploy a secondary emplacement; Sarah stepped over one body to rip a terminal offline. The compound was less a refugee settlement than a processing center: cages, clipped restraints, and—worse—evidence that whatever passed for law here had teeth.
In a glassed meeting room they found the ledger.
Holo-terminals still blinked with cached files. Sarah eased the feed open. Holotapes, logs, and audio clips populated the air—snapped faces on playback, interrogations looped like nightmares. Voices read protocols on the "SAFE" test: scripted questions, suggested pain thresholds, calibration notes on stimulants to trigger synthetic responses. There were clips labeled with names—travelers and traders—followed by brief reports: "non-compliant," "subject terminated," "transfer to Lab A." The words made the room tilt.
G11 stood in the doorway with one boot propped on a chewed chair, watching Sarah swallow the feed. "Well," she said, the tone creamy, "they sure take civic cleanliness seriously."
Sarah didn't smile. Her hands shook only enough for her to feel it. The files weren't just paranoid paperwork; they were a manual for cruelty. Someone here had been building a bureaucracy of fear.
They pushed deeper. The facility's corridors grew tighter, pipes leaking a thin steam that smelled of salt and machine oil. ISAC ticked movement in the southern wing — heavy boots, closer now. Sarah keyed the comm, a whisper: "G11, light and fast. We go quiet until the core."
They rounded the last metal door into a small lab: stainless counters, clamps, vials lined in neat rows. Dr. Chambers stood behind the main bench, palms up as if to show he meant no harm. Her lab coat was too clean, his hair too neat for a place that traded in ambushes. Manny stood beside him with a shotgun cradled across his chest, eyes flat and dangerous.
"You shouldn't be here," Manny said before he saw them fully—an accusation wrapped in disbelief. The shotgun was aimed low but deliberate. "You shouldn't be anywhere near this place."
Dr. Chambers' voice was thin, pleading with a practiced civility. "We had to do things. The tests—this is about safety. You don't understand the danger synths present—"
Sarah cut her off, stepping fully into the lab. "Oh, we've seen your so called 'safe' files. We saw the holotapes. You're not protecting anyone. You're killing them."
Manny's jaw worked. "She…" he gestured toward a shadowed corridor. "She's somewhere safe. She helped the wrong people. We did what we had to do."
G11 cocked her head, bored and impossibly bright. "That's a real candidate for the 'weirdest bedtime story' list," she said. Then, quieter: "Where is she?"
Manny's shotgun hand trembled. The lab's fluorescents hummed. Dr. Chambers swallowed, gaze flitting to Manny and back to Sarah, as if measuring which lie landed truer.
"She's moved," Chambers said finally, the word a hard exhale. "We took measures—security protocols. She's been transferred below. You weren't supposed to be able to get in."
Sarah's eyes narrowed. "Tell us where. Now."
Manny's finger tightened on the trigger. "No," he spat. "You don't get to just—"
A distant clatter echoed down the shaft. The compound's engine note changed—someone was mobilizing to move what they had. Sarah had seconds.
"Tell us now," she repeated. "Or I start pulling names off your little friend list until you talk."
Manny's face lost a layer of bravado. For a heartbeat the room hung on a knife-edge: a man with a shotgun, a mad doctor, a silent Doll, and a female commander who had carved an empire of lost world into the Commonwealth.
Then Manny barked a laugh that was too raw. "You don't know what you're doing. This is beyond you." He dove for the shotgun's breach handle.
Sarah didn't hesitate. She slammed the chem-launcher stock into his shoulder, a sharp, bone-shuddering blow that knocked the breath out of him. G11 slid in, a flash—two precise motions, a wrist twist and a jackknife that left Manny coughing on the floor with the shotgun skittering out of reach.
"Now," Sarah said, voice flat as an incision. "Where is she."
The gunpowder sting still lingered when Sarah's comm clicked. HK416's voice came through, brisk and triumphant:
HK416: "Commander, we've secured the pen. UMP9 and 45 found the staging boats—packed with prisoners. Stockholm's daughter is here… and Curie too. Both alive."
Sarah exhaled slowly, the steel in her shoulders easing for the first time since the breach began. "Copy that. Extract them to the surface. Preston's men will secure the evac point."
Across the lab, G11 nudged Manny's shotgun further out of reach with the heel of her boot, her soda-can casualness a sharp contrast to the blood trickling from Manny's split lip. Dr. Chambers stood rigid, a man clinging to the last threads of authority.
Sarah didn't indulge him. "G11, restrain both of them."
The Doll moved without complaint, snapping flex cuffs on Chambers' wrists, then dragging Manny upright with the same care someone might use on a sack of meal. The doctor sputtered objections—words about "missions," "community safety," "the compound must endure"—but Sarah's silence drowned them all.
She keyed her mic again, voice clipped. "Bravo team, secure the exit tunnel. We're bringing detainees out. These two are yours."
Manny spat at the floor, blood speckling the concrete. "You can't just hand us over. You don't even understand what we were doing."
Sarah finally looked at him, eyes cold and unyielding. "I understand more than enough. You kidnapped my teammate. You tortured travelers and innocent bystanders. Whatever justification you hide behind, it ends here."
Dr. Chambers struggled in G11's grip. "If you give us to the Minutemen, they'll never know what to do with the synth threat. You'll be condemning the Commonwealth."
Sarah's voice carried no heat, only finality. "Your paranoia already condemned it."
She turned to G11 and gestured to the stairwell. "Take them up. Their fate belongs to the Minutemen, not to me. I've seen enough to know I want no part in their brand of justice—or their obsession with who's human and who isn't."
The chem launcher clicked back onto its harness at her side as she strode to follow. Somewhere above, the rumble of feet and shouted orders told her the compound was already falling into Minutemen hands. The only question left was what Preston would decide to do with Chambers, Manny, and the ruin of their twisted "mission."
Sarah didn't intend to stay for the verdict.
The settlement of Covenant stood hushed, its painted fences and tidy homes no longer carrying the illusion of peace. Minutemen rifles rested across shoulders, eyes sharp on the kneeling settlers. Dr. Chambers and Manny were bound at the front, flanked by Bravo team, their silence more damning than any confession.
Preston stood before them, service rifle slung, jaw set tight. The rescued captives had been escorted out first—Curie leaning on UMP45 for balance, Stockholm's daughter wrapped in a spare coat, the other freed travelers shivering in disbelief at their survival. Behind them, Piper's pencil scratched furiously across her notepad, her eyes never leaving the scene.
"Sarah told me what she found down there," Preston finally spoke, his voice carrying over the gathered crowd. "Records of torture. Experiments. People disappeared from traveling, stolen from our families, all so you could feed some paranoid obsession."
Jacob, Covenant's mayor, trembled as he tried to interject. "We—we didn't know what the Compound would do with them! We were told it was for safety, for the good of—"
Preston cut him off with a sharp gesture. "For safety? You even kidnapped a healer. You broke faith with every travelers who put their trust in you. That makes you no different than raiders hiding behind white picket fences."
Murmurs rippled through the Minutemen ranks. Some shouted agreement, others spat at the ground.
Preston drew a long breath, his decision clear in his eyes before the words left his mouth. "All Covenant settlers are under arrest. This place is no longer a sanctuary. It's an internment site until further judgment can be passed."
Orders followed swiftly. Teams tore down turrets until only four remained—facing outward, not inward. The concrete wall, once proud and defiant, was reduced to half its height. The gaps were filled with barbed wire fencing, a grim reminder that the place no longer kept travelers out, but settlers in. The surplus concrete was hauled onto Brahmin wagons, earmarked to fortify real communities that had earned protection.
Sarah watched from the sidelines, arms crossed, visor hiding her eyes. She said nothing, only nodded when Preston glanced her way. The burden was his, as it should be.
By nightfall, Piper's article was already forming in her hands: "The Minutemen Deliver Swift Justice: Covenant Exposed as a Trap for Innocents." She would pen the disturbing truths uncovered in the compound, but she'd also carry the praise—sharp, unmissable—for Preston Garvey and the Minutemen's decisive action.
Covenant's fate was sealed not just in walls and barbed wire, but in words that would spread across the Commonwealth by morning.
And Sarah, quietly watching the flames of Covenant's "safe" illusion die out, was content to let that spotlight fall anywhere but on her.