There was no more debate. The vote was cast, the price accepted. The coalition moved with the grim precision of a single organism, its disparate parts—enemies only hours before—now synchronized by a shared, desperate purpose. From his vantage point in a high gallery overlooking the spire’s nave, Sineus watched them go. They were ghosts in the strange, internal twilight of Thule Ultima, their movements economical, their voices reduced to clipped, encrypted bursts over the comms network Zahara’s team had woven together. They moved as one.
Two kilometers below, Volkov and his team of Russian salvage divers slipped into the frigid, dark water of the spire’s primary coolant reservoir. The pipe they targeted was a three-meter-wide artery of reinforced steel, its purpose to draw in the icy Atlantic to cool the impossible machine at the spire’s heart. They carried no breathing apparatus, only small, high-pressure oxygen canisters for the final moments. Their movements were slow, deliberate, their bodies accustomed to the crushing pressure and lethal cold. They were specters in the deep, planting their magnetic charges on the intake’s main valve with silent efficiency. Their mission was not to survive; it was to create a wound deep in the spire’s gut, a catastrophic flood that would draw Axiom’s forces downward, away from the core.
Higher up, in the labyrinthine corridors that spiraled around the nave, the EU sappers moved like surgeons. They were a team of four, their faces hidden behind blast shields. They did not place their charges to break walls, but to fold them. Each explosive pack was a piece of deadly origami, calculated to collapse specific sections of corridor, to reshape the battlefield, and to funnel Joric’s advancing kill teams into pre-planned fields of fire. They worked in silence, their hands communicating in a rapid sign language of placement, timing, and withdrawal. They were turning the spire’s own architecture into an anvil.
Nadia Petrova was not with them. She was tucked into a service conduit two levels above Sineus, her focus on a small, matte-black box. The device hummed softly, its surface cool to the touch. With a few keystrokes on her datapad, she activated it. The box began to pulse, seeding Axiom’s tactical network with sensor ghosts. Dozens of false electronic signals bloomed across Joric’s command display—phantom targets moving through sealed-off sectors, drawing his reserves away on a wild chase. It was a digital sleight of hand, a lie designed to buy them the most precious commodity in this final hour: a clear path.
Sineus felt the thrum of their coordinated efforts through the stone floor. A green light blinked on his wrist-mounted display—Volkov’s charges were set. A second blink—the sappers were clear. A third from Nadia—the ghosts were in the machine. The board was set.
He turned from the gallery’s edge. Isabelle Moreau stood beside him, her rifle held at a low ready. The schematic of the spire’s core lay between them on a stone ledge, illuminated by the cold, blue light of her datapad. Her face was pale, etched with exhaustion, but her eyes were clear and hard as diamonds. The frantic energy of the chase was gone, replaced by a solid, unyielding calm. They reviewed the final approach vector one last time, a silent confirmation of angles and timings.
— See you on the other side, Professor, — she said, her voice low but steady. It was the soldier’s prayer, the phrase spoken when the odds were long and hope was a luxury. A statement of faith in a future that felt impossibly distant.
Sineus looked at her, at the woman who had been his rival, his asset, his partner. The one who had accepted the burden he was about to leave behind. The memory of his father’s shattered compass, a token of a simpler, more solid world, flickered in his mind. He had no such anchor now, only the grim certainty of the path ahead.
— There is no other side for me, — he replied. The words were not sad, not dramatic. They were a statement of fact, a final correction to the schematic. The price of this victory was logged, the payment guaranteed.
She held his gaze, and in that shared silence, the truth of it settled between them. She gave a single, sharp nod. The debt was acknowledged.
The assault was about to begin.
