BANG—! BANG—!
We heard some shots fired in the distance.
"Sounds like foreign weaponry," I said.
Kyra nodded. "He must have started his assault."
"First's?" Cynthia asked.
"Yup. That means they'll deploy more guards to the border and the base will be more scarce than usual. Our window is an estimated 14 minutes, so we gotta be in-and-out."
We began to move in the shadows, climbing up the hill but remaining close to the ground. Once we reached the peak, we fell flat against the grass, proned. Just down the hill a couple hundred meters away, the entry closest to the technology we needed was in sight.
"Observe the exterior," Kyra told Emanuel. "Anything?"
Using his Fractal, only he could see the clearest from atop the hill. He watched for a moment, then replied. "Nothing on our end. But be wary of the sides. There are a few walking back and forth."
"Leave that caution to me and my Fractal," Kyra said. She began to make her way down the hill through the bushes, and we followed in pursuit. Unbeknownst to us, Kyra had her Fractal active from the moment we'd jumped from the plane. She planned to have it active at all times as a means of watching everything and anything that we needed to see. As we got closer to the building, we slowed down and made our footsteps silent. On Kyra's signal, as she made sure that the coast was clear, we quickly moved towards the building and pressed against its wall. We'd now cleared the external defenses.
"That's our entry," Kyra pointed to a ventilation latch that was too high for us to reach. "Cynthia, I need your help here."
She immediately acted on response and did what she'd been trained to do. She hunched against the wall and solidified herself with her Fractal, turning her into a pedestal for Kyra to climb over and reach the latch. I passed her a screwdriver from my bag as she began to remove the screws for the latch.
"If it drops, one of you need to catch it without making a noise. Got it?"
Me and Emanuel both nodded, positioned on either side of Kyra while ready to catch it. Once the final screw was removed, the latch began to fall. And just as it looked like it was about to land in my hands, it stopped mid-air. Kyra had caught it by the corner.
"Looks like I didn't need you guys after all," she laughed. We all climbed over Cynthia and crawled into the shaft one-by-one. Being the last one, I pulled Cynthia up into the vent after she'd disengaged her Fractal. As we crawled through the shaft, we all made sure to make as minimal noise as possible. There were countless latches we passed by from which noise could emit, but it wasn't until the 8th one that we'd arrived to our destination. The latch opened to a corner hall we studied to be a blind spot for the security cameras. As we slowly removed the latch and landed on the floor quietly, we were now in pure enemy territory. One wrong move and we'd be compromised immediately.
"The room with the tech should be just around this corner." Kyra led the way. I stayed closest to her right behind her back, my knife unsheathed ready to strike in the moment we made contact. We couldn't allow any guards to be alerted. Confrontation was to be met with immediate elimination. Those were the standards set by the General.
At the rear to our lineup was Cynthia, ready to harden as a shield in the case we got caught in crossfire from the far distance. Emanuel was in front of her constantly watching the back angle in the case that someone had spotted us. We were essentially ready for all scenarios present, both close and long-ranged.
"So, why were we tasked with doing this?" I asked Kyra.
"What do you mean?"
"Sav has Gateway. Couldn't he just warp Angels into the room, grab the tech, and then warp them back out? Wouldn't that be much easier than having us manually break-in?"
"It would be easier, but both the General and Sav don't want to risk losing the technology somewhere along the wormhole. There's been times where certain things have gone missing after being warped through one of Sav's wormholes, such as a bracelet or a necklace. Usually little things. The tech we're after is pretty small, so it was a no-go."
"Ah, got it." Nonetheless the confusion, I was content I was on a mission. Especially since it was in cooperation with two of the Upper Four.
We began to approach the corner Kyra said was next to the room. Rounding the corner, my instincts suddenly flared aggressively. We were face-to-face with a dead-end door that led to our goal, but it was covered by three guards with guns and a camera just above the door to watch everything go down. The guards first looked at us with confusion, which quickly turned into aggravation after realizing we weren't one of their own. We'd been spotted, and compromised.
"Shit—! Cynthia—!!!" Gunfire ensued. Just right on time, Cynthia slid in front of us and hardened herself, withstanding all of the bullets. But there were many open gaps for shots to leak through, including one that grazed Emanuel's arm.
"Ack—!"
My eyes widened with shock. My trauma was settling in. I couldn't witness another one of my comrades die again, not after what'd happened to Sixth and Ninth.
"Emanuel! Get down!" I pushed his back against the floor. I had to keep him in a shooting blind spot according to Cynthia's shield. I realized in the moment just after Emanuel's near death that it was just up to me and Kyra to stop the guards. In the few seconds this all went down, we exchanged a quick glance, as if spontaneously understanding each other's motives.
We nodded in unison.
She ran out towards her side from behind Cynthia's cover, keeping her Fractal active all the way through. The guards were momentarily distracted by her sudden movement, providing me the opening I needed. They began to shoot in Kyra's direction, but her advanced-sight Fractal, Panorama, let her dodge the bullets in unconventional ways. As this happened, I'd closed the gap between I and the three of them, and, with my knife unsheathed, I imagined myself cutting through thick knots of rope like I'd practiced in the arms-race course years ago.
Shlck—!
I'd sliced cleanly through one knot of flesh, but got stuck on the second. Opening my eyes, my knife had dug into the side of the second guard's neck. Noticing the spray of blood past him, the third guard turned his attention to me, with the point of his gun following in pursuit. But the reaction was too slow. His weapon was kicked to the ground by Kyra, who followed up with a stab to his neck.
Shank—!
"Jogular notch, just like you'd told me." She pulled her knife out. She looked over in my direction, noticing there was a beheaded guard and his head at my feet. "Holy…"
My knife was still stuck in the second guard's neck, who'd died by loss of blood by now. I pulled while kicking his body to the floor simultaneously, finally unshanking the weapon. "Nice going."
Across from us, Cynthia deactivated her Fractal, remaining to be unscathed, whereas Emanuel on the other hand held his arm with wincing pain. Cynthia pulled a rag out of her backpack and wrapped it tightly around his wound. "We'll take care of this when we get back, okay?"
Emanuel nodded. "Sorry guys..."
"No time for sorries." Kyra rushed to the door. She looked up at the camera that watched over us. "We need to get the stuff and get out of here quick. The camera saw everything. They'll be sending reinforcements soon."
I joined her by her side, remembering this was the moment we'd use the keycard provided to us. She pulled it out of her bag and scanned it along the door, immediately granting us access.
"How did we get our hands on that?" I asked.
"We have a mole in New Zina's government. The Overseers like to plant one in any country they deem to have potential, so that they can observe and relay any alarming information. That's how we got knowledge of this piece of technology we're after."
We all piled behind the door and breached inside together. The room was void of people. And it felt empty, save for the computers along the sides that directed us to the main attraction at the end of the room. Upon a stature of placement, held together by tiny metallic arms, was a small microchip connected-to by numerous wirings.
"This is it," Kyra told us. "This is what we came here for."
"Just this? The General made it sound like there was a lot of what we were going to collect." Emanuel said.
"The 'lot' he's talking about is inside that 'chip. Stashes upon stashes of replicable information inside of it is what they're going for." Kyra, using tiny forceps, pulled the microchip out of its place and placed it inside the briefcase we'd been assigned to keep it in. We were now set to leave.
"Klyson, alert the pilot that we're ready for pickup. Tell them to come to the vantage point now." Kyra stuffed the briefcase in her bag securely.
"Now? Isn't it still early?" I asked.
Alarms in the building began to blare, followed by an announcement over the speaker that yelled in a foreign language.
"No. We need it now!" Kyra bolted out of the room and we followed behind her. The entire facility was now fully aware we'd breached and taken their most prized possession, so the only choice left for us was to flee untouched. We arrived back to the corner hall we'd exited the vent from, noticing it still hung open up above. Cynthia hardened herself, allowing all of us to climb up into the vent. Once we were all up, I pulled her up quickly, just as some guards began pulling into the hallway and opening fire. Bullets nearly grazed Cynthia's foot, but we got inside just in time.
We had no time to waste. We crawled loudly and erratically now trying to dodge the bullets they fired at us through the vents.
"Cover your vital points with your arms!" Kyra called out to us. "The padding should be enough to withstand a bullet or two just in case!"
Soon enough, we'd felt the breeze from the outside world. The vent's exit was just around the next corner. As we turned towards it, we could hear an alarm blaring from outside. It seemed as though the entire camp had been alerted, meaning we had to get out quickly. Each of us tumbled out of the vent's exit, falling to the floor. Without time to properly regather ourselves, we began to run up the hill and over before any guards noticed we'd made it outside. Once we'd made it down the hill on the other side, we could finally stop for a moment to breathe.
"Oh my god… That was too close!" Cynthia rubbed her ankle. She'd felt a bullet just barely miss it.
"The vantage point's just up ahead. They're already there," Kyra looked at a watch on her wrist. It contained a coded means of communication with the pilot, which I'd used earlier to request the immediate pickup. We got back up on our feet and began slumbering towards the vantage point. As much as I squinted my eyes, I couldn't see the plane even though it was supposedly right there. It wasn't until I got close enough that I finally saw it. The black tint it'd been camouflaged with truly did blend in with the dark sky of New Zina. As we got close, the back of the plane began to open up. We'd finally made it to safety.
"Good work, guys," Kyra had said to us.
Hearing those words immediately filled me with relief. The unfulfilled tension I'd felt ever since the battle with Invidan had finally been eased, somewhat. For the first time, I'd been able to breathe.
"Good work to you too, Kyra."