The night swallowed everything except the distant pulse of red alarms and the hum of the perimeter drones. Rain slicked the ruins outside the EGI Hub—an angular fortress of steel and obsidian glass rising from the ash-gray wasteland. To anyone else, it was impenetrable.
To 24, it was just another locked door.
He crouched in the shadows of a collapsed transport bay, his black jacket soaked through, the brand "24" on his neck faintly catching the flicker of lightning. His steel-gray eyes reflected the distant security lights as he studied the patrol patterns through a cracked visor display. Three sentries. One turret sweep. Thirty-five seconds between rotations.
He moved.
His boots made no sound on the broken concrete. He dashed forward, rolled under the rotating spotlight, and slid behind a rusted vehicle husk. When the nearest sentry rounded the corner, 24 sprang like a predator—one arm wrapping around the soldier's throat, the other clamping his wrist to silence the comms. A short, brutal twist—crack—and the body sagged lifeless.
He dragged it behind cover, stripping the pulse baton and keycard from the corpse. Two left.
The next guard's visor flared as his motion sensors pinged. "Sector C anomaly, confirm—" The sentence never finished. 24 hurled the pulse baton end-over-end—thunk!—it struck the visor dead center. Sparks burst, the soldier's body convulsed as electricity surged through his neural implant, collapsing in a smoking heap.
Then the alarm screamed.
"Shit," 24 hissed. The third guard must've tripped the deadman's link.
Turrets whirred to life. He dove into the maintenance tunnel as a hail of plasma bolts chewed through the concrete behind him, molten dust spraying across his back. The tunnel smelled of ozone and rust, lit by pulsing red lights. He kept low, moving fast, every sense sharpened by adrenaline.
Inside the inner corridor, the hub's heart throbbed with power—conduits pulsing blue, data streams crawling like veins through the walls. He could feel the electromagnetic field vibrating in his teeth. The EGI Core was close.
Then came the whine of mechanical limbs.
Three EGI combat drones emerged from the ceiling grid—sleek, wasp-like frames with bladed appendages. 24 drew his blade, a carbon-edged combat knife salvaged from the Old City. The first drone lunged. He sidestepped, slashed upward—metal shrieked as the blade tore through its optics. It spasmed and crashed.
The second dropped low, spinning its rotors like buzzsaws. 24 kicked off the wall, flipped over it, and jammed the knife straight into its power core. A flash of blue light exploded down the hall.
The third came from behind. He turned just in time to see it launch a plasma spike. The shot clipped his shoulder—pain burned through him, but he didn't slow. He tore a stun grenade from his belt, yanked the pin with his teeth, and threw.
BOOM.
The shockwave rippled through the corridor. The drone's frame buckled, sensors fried. It collapsed in twitching sparks.
Smoke filled the hall. 24 coughed, clutching his bleeding shoulder as he pushed forward. The core chamber's reinforced door loomed ahead—its biometric scanner glowing cold blue. He pressed the stolen keycard. Nothing. The lock denied access.
"Of course," he muttered.
He crouched, pried open the access panel, and wired his data spike into the port. The screen flickered—hacked EGI code scrolled across it. Behind him, the distant clatter of boots echoed closer. Reinforcements. Heavy ones.
"Come on, come on—"
The panel beeped green.
Door open.
He slipped inside as a squad of armored EGI troopers rounded the corner, plasma rifles raised. The door sealed behind him.
Inside, the EGI Core glowed like a miniature sun suspended in glass. Thousands of cables pulsed with data, feeding into the AI's brain. For a moment, 24 stood still, rain dripping from his hair, the hum of the core vibrating in his chest.
He'd made it.
Now all that was left—was to destroy it.