"Four minutes," Jake gasped, the pristine black marble floor of the Omni-Corp lobby swimming violently in his vision.
The heavy, blood-red carpets of the simulated Kremlin faded in and out of reality, aggressively overlapping with the shattered glass of the corporate fortress. The ghosts in the 'Hope' archive were screaming, their compressed code cracking under the sheer thermodynamic stress of his Meatspace body.
He didn't have time to bleed from the shrapnel wound on his shoulder. He certainly didn't have time to fight his way down ninety floors of corporate security.
Jake forced his heavy boots firmly onto the cracked marble.
He completely ignored the groaning, dust-covered Orion guards slowly recovering under the shattered concrete of the front gate. He grabbed Nyx by the arm and broke into a full sprint across the massive, dark lobby, his metallic spine hissing loudly in the sudden silence.
He aimed straight for the bank of heavily secured executive elevators at the far wall.
"They're locked down!" Nyx yelled, struggling to keep up with his long, frantic strides as her boots slipped on the wet, dusty floor. "The EMP cut the main power!"
"Not for me," Jake snarled.
He didn't slow down as he reached the polished steel doors. The digital call panel was completely dead, a lifeless black square of shattered glass.
Jake didn't look for a manual override. He violently jammed his glowing, liquid chrome fingers directly through the shattered glass panel, plunging his cybernetics straight into the thick bundles of internal wiring behind the wall.
The blue light from his arm violently surged into the dead elevator shaft.
He didn't politely ask the local network for access; he bypassed the heavy corporate firewalls in a fraction of a millisecond with pure, overwhelming data mass. He physically forced his own localized power into the massive, dormant elevator motors above them.
The heavy steel doors groaned, then violently snapped open.
Jake dragged Nyx inside the sleek, glass-walled executive car. The moment her boots crossed the threshold, Jake ripped his chrome fingers out of the wall panel and slammed his hand flat against the interior control board.
He didn't press a button. He simply thought of the deepest point in the building.
"Hold on," Jake warned, his voice tight.
He violently overrode the automated braking systems of the elevator. He didn't send the car down; he dropped it.
The massive steel cables groaned under the sudden slack. The glass-walled car plummeted downward into the pitch-black subterranean levels at a terrifying, stomach-dropping speed. The G-force hit them instantly, slamming them both to the floor.
Nyx gripped the sleek metal handrail, her knuckles turning white as she swore loudly over the deafening rush of air in the shaft.
The subterranean floors blurred past the glass in a chaotic, dizzying streak of emergency red lights.
Jake didn't look out the window. He knelt on the floor, clutching his human chest as the 'Hope' archive throbbed agonizingly behind his ribs. The Frost-Bite rig vented a continuous, desperate plume of white frost, trying to keep his localized temperature from melting his internal organs.
Nyx stared at his pale, sweating face, illuminated only by the frantic blue pulses of his chrome arm.
The pure, terrifying scavenger greed that had fueled her through the slum run completely faltered. She saw the absolute, raw desperation etched into his human features.
"Jake," Nyx shouted over the screeching of the elevator tracks. "Who is dying inside your head? What are you trying to save down there?"
Jake didn't look at her. He kept his eyes locked on the digital floor counter rapidly plummeting toward Sub-Level 50.
"My wife," Jake said softly, the words heavy and absolute over the roar of the shaft. "My team. Everyone I couldn't save the first time I played God."
Nyx went perfectly still.
She realized the massive Omni-Corp vault wasn't just a payday for him. It wasn't a corporate heist for credits or blackmail. It was a literal graveyard, and he was trying to dig up his family before the dirt crushed them forever.
Nyx swallowed hard. She checked the magazine of her cheap kinetic pistol, slamming it back into the grip with a sharp click. She looked back at his pale face and nodded sharply.
"Three minutes," Nyx said, her voice completely stripped of sarcasm. "Let's dig them up."
The massive elevator slammed to a violent, bone-rattling halt at Sub-Level 50.
The automated braking systems shrieked, throwing sparks across the glass walls as the car settled. The heavy steel doors hissed open.
A blast of absolute, sub-zero air rushed into the elevator car, instantly turning their breath into thick white mist.
They stepped out of the car.
They were standing at the edge of the Omni-Corp Mainframe. It was a terrifyingly vast, cavernous room built from solid, polished concrete. It was filled with thousands of towering, matte-black server racks that stretched endlessly into the freezing darkness.
The air was so cold that thick frost coated the metal grating of the walkways.
The massive servers hummed continuously, a deafening, rhythmic sound that vibrated directly into Jake's teeth. It sounded exactly like an artificial, mechanical heartbeat.
Endless rows of blinking blue and green server lights reflected beautifully off the liquid chrome of Jake's arm as he stepped fully into the freezing cathedral of data.
"Yuri," Jake's breath plumed heavily in the cold air. "Where is the primary terminal?"
[Scanning. Mainframe core located seventy meters directly ahead. Warning: Data corruption at 18%.]
Jake broke into a dead sprint down the central aisle.
His heavy boots echoed loudly on the frosted metal grating. Nyx ran right behind him, her pistol raised, sweeping the dark, narrow alleys between the massive server towers for corporate security.
There were no guards down here. The cold was too extreme for human patrols.
Jake reached the massive, glowing terminal core at the exact center of the room. It was a towering column of reinforced glass and thick, pulsing fiber-optic cables rising straight up into the ceiling.
He didn't look for a keyboard. He didn't look for a digital interface. He needed a direct, massive physical connection to handle the sheer volume of the 'Hope' archive.
He found the primary fiber-optic trunk line—a cable as thick as his wrist—bolted into the base of the terminal.
Jake dropped to his knees on the freezing grating. He raised his liquid chrome arm.
The seamless metal of his synthetic wrist smoothly shifted and retracted, opening to reveal a raw, glowing blue interface port directly connected to his synthetic nervous system. He reached for the thick trunk line with his human hand, preparing to violently jam the corporate cable directly into his own cybernetic flesh.
He prepared to unpack his wife.
Before he could make the physical connection, a deafening, metallic crash echoed from the far end of the cavernous server room.
The massive steel blast doors at the main entrance violently buckled inward.
They weren't blown open by explosives. They were physically torn completely off their massive reinforced hinges. The heavy steel slammed onto the frosted grating with a sound like a bomb going off.
Nyx spun around, raising her pistol toward the ruined doorway, expecting the heavy Orion hover-tanks or heavily armored corporate soldiers.
It wasn't Orion.
A massive swarm of Class-A Cleaners poured through the ruined doorway into the sub-zero server room.
They were terrifying, featureless figures in perfectly tailored black suits, completely untouched by the freezing air. Their physical geometry violently warped and glitched as they moved, skipping frames in reality. Where their faces should be, the swirling, violent digital static buzzed aggressively.
They hadn't just tracked Jake's thermal signature. They had tracked the massive, corrupted data-mass of the 'Hope' archive he was desperately trying to unpack. The anti-virus executioners were here to format the entire room.
Nyx's hands began to shake violently. There were dozens of them.
Jake didn't drop the thick fiber-optic cable. He held it tightly in his human hand, kneeling on the frozen grating, staring down the long central aisle at the approaching horde of glitching, silent monsters.
The blue interface port in his chrome wrist pulsed rapidly.
"Nyx," Jake said, his voice completely dead calm over the deafening hum of the servers.
He didn't turn around. He didn't raise a weapon. He looked at the woman who had dragged him out of a gutter for a payday, and who was now standing between him and the end of his world.
"I need exactly three minutes to unpack the archive," Jake whispered, his breath a thick white cloud in the freezing air. "Don't let them touch the servers."