The academy loomed against the night sky like a fortress carved from shadow, its towers jutting upward like black spears. Floodlights swept the outer walls, and patrol drones drifted silently overhead, their red sensors scanning the ground below.
Leo crouched in the undergrowth with Ava, Jack, and Eleanor. The air smelled of wet earth and ozone from an earlier storm.
"This is the last chance to back out," Eleanor said quietly.
Jack smirked. "If I was going to back out, I'd have done it before we crawled through half a mile of mud to get here."
Ava's voice was flat. "We're in."
Leo didn't say anything. He just tightened his grip on his suppressed rifle.
---
They moved like shadows, scaling the outer perimeter wall with grappling hooks. The moment they dropped inside, Eleanor gave hand signals: two guards ahead, motion sensors to the right.
Ava disabled the first set of sensors while Leo and Jack silently took down the guards with quick chokeholds. No alarms. Yet.
Inside the compound, the corridors were narrow and cold, the walls lined with security panels that hummed softly. Every twenty feet, cameras swiveled, scanning. They timed their movements to avoid the arcs, ducking into alcoves when necessary.
---
They reached the base of the north tower. A reinforced security door blocked their path — steel thick enough to stop an RPG. Eleanor approached the keypad and swiped a clearance card. The light stayed red.
"Try mine," Ava said, handing her a second card. Still red.
Leo frowned. "What now?"
Eleanor pulled out a third card, this one black with no markings. "Stolen from the commandant's desk two years ago. Never thought I'd use it."
The light turned green.
They stepped inside.
---
The command center was three floors up, past a spiral staircase that opened into a glass-walled control room. Dozens of operators sat at consoles, monitoring feeds from all over the world. Above them, massive screens displayed live satellite imagery and data streams.
Ava whispered, "It's like the nerve center of the planet."
Eleanor pointed to a secured server vault in the far corner. "The mainframe is there. We get the core, plant the virus, and get out."
---
They moved fast. Ava and Jack covered the floor while Leo followed Eleanor to the vault. She connected a hacking device to the access port. The lock clicked open with a hiss of pressurized air.
Leo stepped inside — and froze.
Standing in the center of the vault was a man in a tailored black coat, his face pale and sharp, eyes cold as ice.
"Asset 17-B," he said, his voice like steel scraping stone. "I was wondering when you'd come home."
Leo's chest tightened. "You're the one who bought me."
The man smiled faintly. "Bought? No. I invested."
---
Gunfire erupted outside the vault — Jack and Ava engaging a sudden wave of guards. Eleanor tossed Leo the data core. "Go! Get it to Ava!"
Leo ran, the weight of the core heavy in his pack. He slid across the floor behind a console as bullets chewed into the metal. Jack was down on one knee, firing in controlled bursts. Ava tossed a smoke grenade, filling the room with thick gray clouds.
Through the haze, Leo saw the red light of the main alarm begin to flash. The sound was deafening.
"We're out of time!" Eleanor shouted.
---
They fought their way to the staircase. Guards swarmed from every direction, their boots pounding like war drums. Leo dropped two with precise headshots, Jack slammed another into the wall with brutal force, and Ava cleared a path with rapid bursts from her rifle.
By the time they reached the roof extraction point, the entire compound was awake. Drones circled above, and spotlights swept across them.
"Where's the evac?" Jack demanded.
Eleanor pointed to the far end of the roof. "We jump!"
Leo's eyes widened. "That's a hundred feet down!"
"Onto the transport!" Eleanor yelled.
Sure enough, a black VTOL aircraft rose from the darkness below.
They leapt.