Kai and Sarah concealed the guards in a maintenance alcove. Despite her gear’s failure to hide her in the shadows, Ava deftly avoided checkpoint security logs, weaving false patrols into the data stream. With guards taken out so fast, there were no witnesses, no evidence, no traces. Just the way they'd planned it.

The transition from old maintenance tunnels to Meridian's financial sector was like crossing through a century of technology. Concrete shifted into polished surfaces, replacing rust with marble. Emergency lighting cast an odd glow. Sarah's shielding from her ghost protocol gear gently changed surface reflections engineered to repel dust. Unsettling shadow duplicates of their movements filled the corridors.

The air changed, almost antiseptic, and processed to perfection.

Viktor’s military sensors detected unpowered pressure plates beneath the floors and biometric scanners masked as architectural features. Each defense cataloged, analyzed, and factored into threat assessment shared with the team, constantly updating through his enhanced military-grade sensors.

Ava moved differently now as she pressed well ahead of the group. Even with her augment failure, it wouldn’t have helped: the shadows were precise, too engineered. She adapted, using reflections and careful timing instead of darkness. Her fingers twitched occasionally, interfacing with hidden backup systems that shouldn't have worked. Each security layer yielded impossible to her codes. Still, her expression grew increasingly troubled.

Now, three levels up from the maintenance access at the top of the Neural Substrate, they were coming to the first real challenge. An unmanned security desk, running fully automated security high reliability, and resilient protocols. Behind it, the server’s core access - the target. Viktor's gear painted threat indicators across multiple layers of defense. Motion sensors. Heat detection. Pattern recognition tracking AI.

As they reached the coordination point, Kai gave the signal. The team moved with practiced coordination, each attacking a different security layer. Sarah's ghost protocol created sensor ghosts, and false readings to confuse automated systems that advanced well ahead of the team as they ran in empty spoked channels. Viktor positioned himself in the middle to handle any physical response. Ava jamming signals. The security checkpoint opened fire against the ghosts before falling idle.

With more cajoling, Ava opened the massive door on the floor in front of the desk, revealing the server's sterile heart. Quantum processors lined the walls, status lights painting patterns on the walls. This was what they'd come for - the nexus of Meridian's financial network. The heart they intended to break.

“Somethings wrong,” Ava’s baseline of the core showed dramatically changing rhythms. “It must be the power outage.” Ava hesitated, hand poised above her wristband, observing. The system was already primed for shutdown. Their planned infiltration getting blocked.

She caught Kai's eye, a silent question in her gaze. His slight nod carried weight: proceed anyway. Whatever happened next, they'd already passed the point of no return.

Inside the server core, crystalline structures captured and redirected light. Patterns are indetectable to standard surveillance. For Ava, each processor column appeared as a digital fortress. She moved among them like a priest in a temple, tracing paths, tracking elastic clusters hidden deep within the hardware.

Viktor stayed at the entrance, easily dismantling the security weapon piece by piece, occasionally bashing, releasing pent-up turmoil, and drawing energy through wires sparking in the destruction, recharging his systems. His sensors continued scanning, tracking movement through walls designed to block surveillance.

Small dead zones began appearing in the server room's power grid - invisible holes in its otherwise perfect digital tapestry. Ava accessed the primary console, her movements precise despite growing uncertainty. Security algorithms were fragmenting. Her backdoor protocols encountered gaps where there should have been walls, and weaknesses that felt like traps. She continued, introducing careful imperfections into the system's mathematical precision.

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A subtle change rippled through the processors, like a discordant note in an otherwise perfect symphony. Sarah's gear registered a shift, “That isn’t expected is it?” Frequencies they'd encountered during the abacus incident still amplified.

They'd known the risks.

Kai observed. Every security response, every system anomaly, became part of their cover story if they were caught. ‘We better not get caught,” he thought to himself. He traced the air, starting diagnostics he'd run a thousand times. The system wasn't just accepting their intrusion - it was incorporating it, using it to accelerate a lockout while shutting down.

Through a haze, Ava confirmed. The backdoor is in place. Invisible but profound, her expression not triumphant - only recognition of other patterns she didn’t expect beginning to spin out of control. The market's digital foundations were subtly altered but were also primed for a collapse that would echo through global networks. Ava was puzzled by the finding.

Viktor’s gear signaled urgent warning across the team’s bands. Security patrols were coming from the street level, moving with purpose towards their position. “Time to disappear,” Kai said. “Good to go?”

“The whole grid is shutting down,” Sarah said.

Viktor voiced the alarm, “Those patrols are more of an army than a standard incursion team.” Hundreds of personnel were closing in on their position in the Meridian exchange. They left the financial district processors and sterile chamber, and his combat system began calculating optimal withdrawal paths.

"Third sublevel access is still clear," Sarah injected. "Window's open."

Patrol echoes carried from above. The district's security resets creating brief gaps in coverage - legacy systems awakening as modern networks recalibrated. Kai and Sarah reviewed ancient engineering diagrams merged with current security grids, exposing other maintenance tunnels beneath Meridian's polished facade. Viktor’s navigation system incorporated the new vectors lighting up several paths as they picked up their pace, putting some distance between them and the core.

"Move!" Viktor's military training took over as his implants switched into double time, passing Kai. Ava still catching up from the rear as Sarah attempted to choose from the navigation options.

“Wait up,” Ava said breathlessly. She was the fastest but they had a head start. “Go right!”

Sarah chose the path, not understanding and not having time to debate. Viktor kept up, now running side by side with Sarah, his visor identifying stressful weak points in the structures around them, the abacus on his back bouncing haphazardly as his lumbering gate broadened.

Sarah's gear cast a soft blue glow through the tunnel catching Viktor's face as they arrived at a maintenance shaft leading down from Meridian’s surface. "I'm detecting active security nodes," Sarah whispered, her eyes scanning through layers of infrastructure.

"I see it,” said Viktor taking an unusual position in the doorway, hands outstretched and griping the frame. "Finally, something goes right," Viktor looked down winking at Sarah, his exoskeleton whirring as stood in the door frame.

"Don't jinx it," Ava's voice came from behind them. “Almost there,” as she moved by Kai as if he were standing still and jumped between Viktor’s leg and raised arm into the maintenance shaft, diving and grabbing the ladder with both hands and gymnast practiced precision, her feet straddling both sides of the ladder as she slid down the shaft.

"Welcome to service tunnel G-7,” said Sarah, navigating past Viktor and descending the ladder after her.

Kai arrived breathless.

"Hurry up, old man," Viktor grinned, his exoskeleton now straining against the frame. With a final, Herculean push, he widened the breach, crumbling the marble facade. The hallway groaned in protest, its bones cracking under the pressure from the floor above. Dust and debris rained down with suffocating dust that obscured vision. Viktor climbed onto the Maintenance ladder, the sound of cracking and groaning rising behind him. Behind him, the ceiling with a monstrous weight of stone and steel structure buckled, sagged, and collapsed behind him, burying evidence of their departure.

They descended three levels into the substrate, passing back into remnants of the old city swallowed by progress. Ava paused briefly, her gear interacting with the ancient display. "Same protocols," she muttered. "They never learned." A panel retracted, revealing stairs descending into shadow.

The new route populated on Viktor’s navigation broadcast. "Great,” said Kai before continuing, “There is debris though."

"Debris?" Viktor's enhanced limbs hummed to life. "That's what you call a challenge?" They emerged from the hidden access staircase into a lower level. As they approached the Symmetrist border, debris began to build and impede progress. Viktor pushed forward making short work of the collapsed sections, each movement precise despite the bulk of the payload. A small avalanche of concrete adjusted from the removed debris as dust showered down, coating him in a fine gray powder.