The fire alarms screamed in dissonance with the crackling of exposed wires and burning circuitry. Nam and his team dashed through the smoke-filled corridor, ducking falling debris as the facility continued to destabilize. Behind them, Kaas's decoy security forces were already moving in—cyber-enhanced enforcers with neural targeting and zero hesitation.
"We don't have time!" Hana shouted, leading them down a maintenance shaft she'd located moments before. "The virus has started breaching Geneva's central infrastructure. If we don't sever this relay, Kaas will have global access."
Nam glanced at his wristpad—calculations streamed across the holographic interface. "We're less than four minutes from total system override. Alina, how fast can you breach the secondary encryption?"
"Two minutes, if you keep the bots off me," she said, already setting up her rig by a junction terminal. Sparks flew as she cut into the firewall manually. "But this isn't just code. It's predictive AI—it's learning from every move I make."
Nam turned to Hana. "We need a temporary EMP. Give us 45 seconds of blind time."
She hesitated. "That will disable our own trackers too."
"Do it anyway."
Hana nodded and sprinted ahead, pulling a pulse grenade from her belt. With swift precision, she affixed it to the relay's side panel and activated a countdown. "EMP in ten seconds!"
Nam readied his weapon, his breath steady. "Team, brace!"
The electromagnetic pulse exploded in a silent blue wave. Lights flickered and died. The corridors fell into momentary darkness, only lit by the soft flicker of Hana's holo-watch.
"Now, Alina!" Nam shouted.
She was already moving. With her goggles scanning in thermal mode, her fingers danced across the makeshift keyboard. "Bypassing sequence... injecting code… almost—done!"
The moment power returned, so did the defense bots. Red-eyed and heavily armored, they swarmed from side shafts and ceiling ports. Nam didn't wait. With sharp precision, he and Hana opened fire, covering Alina as she slammed a final command key.
"Relay decoupled!" she yelled.
"Fall back!" Nam ordered.
They bolted, racing toward the emergency shaft. Kaas's voice echoed through the broken PA system. Cold. Controlled.
"You're faster than I expected, Nam. But all you've done is delay the inevitable."
Nam stopped and stared at the speaker as if he could see Kaas through it. "We just proved one thing, Kaas: you can be touched."
"No," Kaas replied. "You've proved that you're predictable. And I'm always three moves ahead."
The speaker sparked and exploded. The building rumbled.
Alina turned to Nam. "We're not done, are we?"
Nam shook his head, eyes hard. "No. This was only the second relay. One left."
They emerged onto the rooftop, where the extraction chopper hovered in the air, its blades cutting the night. As they rose into the sky, watching the facility erupt in flames below, Nam knew the next battle wouldn't be just digital.
Kaas had begun something darker.
And they had to end it—before the world burned.