Rule one of hacking: timing is everything.
I triple check my smart watch, syncing it with the others. Three minutes until we breach. We’re all waiting in an old maintenance tunnel just outside the Piccadilly data hub, one that supposedly serves no purpose anymore and should give us a quiet entrance to the facility. Just in case, I’ve injected a temporary masking algorithm which should let us slip past any surveillance drones. In theory, it’ll scramble their infra-red detection and turn us invisible. In theory. The drones use predictive movement calculations. If one of them gets close enough to a fixed heat source, it’ll still notice the absence of heat where there should be some. And data centers tend to run hot.
Jackdaw’s passing out charges like a manic Christmas elf, his hands surprisingly steady despite the energy I can feel buzzing from him. I try not to think about the blast radius calculations O-Ska ran through earlier. We’ve got fifteen minutes though once the charges are set, giving us plenty of time to get out past whatever bullshit Pax might throw our way.
Cam’s crouched at my elbow as we wait. “Sure you’re up for this?” His voice is low, barely audible over the anxious hum from the others making their final prep.
I breathe out slowly, letting the rhythmic tapping of my fingers against my phone screen ground me. “Not much choice now.”
Cam’s quiet for a moment, then so softly I almost miss it: “We could leave.”
My hand stills. “What?”
“Right now. You and me.” He’s not looking at me, gaze fixed someplace further down the tunnel. “Just… go. Disappear.”
I stare at him, a thousand replies tangling up on my tongue. Seriously? After everything, he wants to just abandon the cause? Abandon our friends? I search for any hint it’s just an ill-timed joke, but there’s nothing. Just a tightness around his eyes, a set to his jaw I’ve not seen before.
“Go where? Cam. I… “ I swallow hard. “You know we can’t. Where the hell are we going to go? Everything’s Pax-world now.”
Finally he meets my gaze. There’s something desperate and fierce there that sends a shiver down my spine. “Not everywhere. I can… I can keep you safe. Cut us off from the grid, and…”
“Abandon everyone?” I finish with a snarl. “How the fuck can you say this after everything Pax has taken from us?”
“From you,” he cuts in, voice cracking in a way I’ve never heard before. “It’s taken from you, Jess. Not me, I’m not…” He breaks off, shaking his head, voice dropping to near-silence. “I’m not real. You know that.”
“Don’t.” The word comes out too harsh. “Just shut up. Please.” As I snap at him, I try to ignore the painful clench in my chest. It’s never something I want to think about too hard – if I do, everything unravels. And I can’t afford to unravel here.
He’s still watching me, wanting an answer I don’t have. My throat feels tight, pressure building behind my eyes. Fuck. I want to reach out, pull him close and breathe in that electric tang of his skin until everything else just fades away. I want to run, like he said. Leave the rebellion and Pax and all this fucked up reality and just be two ghosts, two binary stars drifting in an endless sea.
But we just fucking can’t.
Then, slowly, he nods. As if he sensed something I hadn’t even said. “Okay.” It’s barely a breath, just a surrender. “Okay, Jess.”
Sybastion stands up straight. He's the tallest of us, which means he always gets to look down his nose. He runs one hand through his short white-blond hair, adjusting the comms device beneath the arm of his glasses with the other. "Drones are on the loop," he murmurs. "We've got a few minutes before they start cycling back. Remember, we hit all four junction points simultaneously. Anything else, and the backup systems will kick in before we can do real damage."
I notice how he’s staring at Cam as he says this, as though he’s waiting for him to slip up. But Cam just nods along, adjusting his gloves. Before we’d arrived, we’d passed around the EMP guns and grenades. They always turn my stomach. One burst from them and anything electronic within range just… dies. Cam made some excuse to avoid needing to carry a charge, said he’d pack the conventional firepower. Smart, if Syb hadn’t been there. It just made Syb’s eyes narrow even more.
“Alright, you beautiful disasters,” Jackdaw grins, checking his own weapon. He’s practically vibrating with excitement now. “Let’s make some noise! Four teams, four entry points. Plant your charges at the points, get out, boom. We all go home for a nice cup of tea.”
I can’t help but smile a bit. His enthusiasm is infectious, even if he is a complete muppet sometimes.
Daelith hefts his charge, weighing it like he’s testing fruit at a market. “Simple enough.”
“Too simple,” I mutter, only loud enough for Cam to hear. His fingers brush my wrist lightly, just enough to let me know he’s there watching my back. But Syb glances at us, and his hand snaps back to his pocket.
“Teams,” Syb announces, all business now. “O-Ska, you’re with Nomercy on the east side.”
Nomercy rolls his eyes. “We’ve been over this like fifty times.”
O-Ska looks up from his methodical detonator-checking with a snort. “Could you be any more dramatic? Why’ve I gotta be with this guy?”
“Could you be any more boring?” Nomercy shoots back, earning a middle finger from O-Ska.
“Children,” Syb snaps, but his eyes are on me. “Focus. Jackdaw–”
“I’ll take point with Jesstiny,” Jackdaw interrupts, winking at me. “Need our best hacker on overwatch.”
“Actually–” Syb starts, but Jackdaw’s already offering me an EMP grenade with a flourish. I take it, trying to ignore the knot in my stomach. “Fine. Karma, with me. We’ll take the west. Daelith takes the last point.”
Something flickers in Cam’s face – concern? – but it’s gone before I can read it. He just nods, all professional calm, following Syb towards their entry point.
“Try not to blow us up, yeah?” I follow Jackdaw, grateful for the excuse to get away from Syb’s intensity. It’s been getting weird lately.
“No promises, bestie.”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
As we move up the damp concrete staircase towards the construction site we’re using as an entry point, the air grows thicker with anticipation, even as the metal door swings open and we emerge outside. The facility looks like a huge mirror, all clean lines and reflective glass, squatting inconspicuously between two high-rises. A low hum ripples past us, and I freeze. A drone is skimming the edge of the building in a slow, deliberate arc.
“Keep moving,” Jackdaw hisses, eyes tracking the drone. “Now.”
We slip across the expanse of space between us and our entry point: a supply door out the back. It’s locked with a biometric scanner, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I pull my laptop out, dropping into a crouch next to the door. It boots in seconds – I’d gutted the OS to bare essentials.
“How long?” Jackdaw asks, keeping watch.
“Give me two minutes,” My fingers fly across keys. “Biometric systems are usually pretty basic, they just need valid input.”
```bash
sudo nmap -sS -p- 192.168.1.0/24 | grep “biometric”
Found it. Perfect. Now I just need to spoof the authentication server.
ssh -D 9050 [email protected]
python spoof.py –target-ip 192.168.1.45 –mode biometric
A string of data streams across the screen. “Got it,” I mutter. “These systems are connected to a central authentication server. I’ll trick it into thinking we’re maintenance…”
echo “INSERT INTO auth_queue (timestamp, clearance, checksum)
VALUES (CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, 5, 0x7FF4A1B2);” | mysql -h 192.168.1.45 -u
A few tense seconds. The lock clicks. Green light. I grin.
Jackdaw whistles low, squinting at my screen. “Yeah, no idea what any of that means, but you look like you know what you’re doing so… as you were.”
“Basic shit,” I say, already moving onto the security cameras. These ones are a bit more tricky. They run on a separate network with better protection. But there’s always a way in. “They work on motion detection,” I explain, more for my own benefit than his. “So we just have to…”
py inject_motion.py –id $cam –loop-file clean.mp4
“Done. They’ll see what they expect to see. An empty corridor.” As long as they don’t check version history.
I pack up, nodding to Jackdaw. He reaches for the door handle, pausing a second. “You ready?”
I think about Cam, somewhere on the other side of the building with Syb. What happens if any of these systems here detect what he really is. What happens if Syb finds out what he really is.
“Nope,” I say, forcing a grin. “Let’s fucking do it anyway.”
As we enter, it’s like stepping into the guts of some massive computer. Which I suppose it actually is. This one’s clean and orderly, rainbow bands of cables sorted into neat lines feeding into switches that glitter with LEDs. The floor’s that weird anti-static stuff that makes your shoes squeak, and there’s a sharp chemical tang of coolant in the air.
“Clear,” Jackdaw whispers, but he doesn’t really need to. There’s no human security here. Why would there be? Pax doesn’t need meat puppets to guard his brains. We move along identical corridors, following the schematics Daelith had somehow got his hands on. The cooling system is in the basement, and that’s our target. You can’t have thousands of processors running complex neural networks without generating enough heat to fry them. Take out the cooling, take out the brain.
My earpiece crackles. “East team in position.” Nomercy’s voice comes through.
“West ready,” Syb confirms. Something in his tone makes me feel uneasy.
“Moving to position,” Daelith adds.
We reach the stairs down to the basement level. It’s getting noticeably colder now, and I’m glad of the gloves as I grab a metal handrail spined with frost. The constant whir of industrial cooling units fills the air. Proper old school stuff – you can’t trust AI to cool itself with some clever algorithm. Need actual physics for that.
“Here.” Jackdaw points to a junction box where several thick pipes converge. “One goes here, and the coolant system goes down. Whole place’ll cook itself.”
I pull out the charge while he keeps watch. Simple. Just set the timer, arm it, get the hell out. Fifteen minutes is plenty of time to clear the blast radius.
But something’s wrong.
“Uh, Jack?” My hands are suddenly shaking. “The timer’s not…”
He turns sharp. “What?”
“It’s stuck on three minutes.” I tap the display, but the numbers don’t change. “This can’t be right.”
“What the fuck do you mean stuck?”
“I mean it’s fucking stuck!” I hiss, panic rising. “Comms check – anyone else seeing this?”
“Same here,” O-Ska’s voice comes through immediately. “Timer’s locked at three.”
“West confirms,” Syb says. “Three minutes.”
Daelith: “Yep. Three minutes.”
We’re fucked.
The charges are networked – they have to be so they detonate simultaneously. Someone’s changed the timer. But that’s…
“Abort,” I say, already reaching for the charge. “This is wrong, this is all wrong–”
The detonator panel’s locked. Not with a password or any shit I can work with – it’s literally sealed shut. I pull out my phone, hands shaking as I search for a local network. Nothing. It’d be like trying to hack into a brick.
“O-Ska,” Jackdaw snaps into comms. “Can you defuse yours?”
“Working on it.” His voice is tight. I hear metal scraping against metal. “Casing’s different. This isn’t right, someone’s modified these since we – give me a minute.”
“We don’t have a fucking minute!” Nomercy shouts, pitched high.
Two minutes left.
I’m typing commands blindly now, fingers slipping on keys. Nothing works. It’s like the whole thing’s been locked behind some hidden network we can’t access.
“Syb,” I try. “West team, what’s your status?”
No response.
“Syb? Cam?” My voice cracks. “Anyone?”
One minute forty-five seconds.
“Got the panel open,” O-Ska reports. “What? The wiring’s all wrong. This isn’t our standard confi–”
A dull thud cuts him off. Then another.
“What the fuck was that?” Jackdaw spins, gun raised.
The comms dissolve into static. An alarm starts wailing, and the room pulses blood red with emergency lighting.
Then darkness.
Complete, absolute darkness. I fumble for my phone's light, but the screen’s dead. EMP pulse must have gone off somewhere already.
Metal scrapes to my left. Whirrs. Drones? No, something bigger. I hear footsteps pounding away down the corridor, followed by gunfire. The strobes of muzzle flash illuminate twisted shapes moving through the darkness. The hiss-crack of an EMP discharge makes my teeth hurt.
Someone screams – I think it’s Nomercy – cut off with a wet thud.
“Jack?” I whisper. No answer. He was right fucking here. “Jackdaw?!”
More scraping. Closer. My fingers finally close around my EMP grenade. Not that I can see to throw it. One minute left. Maybe. I’ve lost track. The red lights flicker once, twice, showing me glimpses of empty corridor. Then nothing.
Something grabs my arm.
I try to twist away but the grip is like steel, yanking me off my feet. Before I can scream, before I can think, my feet leave the floor and I’m being carried – running – world tilting sickeningly, everything a blur of darkness and the thunder of my heart.
“Wait–” I start.
The explosion hits.
Heat and pressure slam into us like a searing wall, and I’m airborne. The grip on me loosens and for a moment, I’m weightless.
Then everything goes blinding white.
The last thing I register is the taste of blood and someone saying my name.