The green digits on Ksenia’s chronometer hit zero. Nothing happened. The world did not shudder. No alarms fell silent. The air in the service tunnel, thick with the smell of rust and recycled oxygen, did not change. But the rules had. Somewhere high above, in the cold, silent vacuum of space, a satellite had obediently turned its eye away for thirty minutes. A wedge of darkness, bought and paid for with blackmail, had been carved into the city’s all-seeing gaze. It was time.
— Go, — Ksenia said. The word was not a command. It was a release.
They moved. The maintenance uniforms felt thin and ridiculous, a child’s costume for a grown-up’s war. Sineus clutched a datapad displaying the spoofed work order Dr. Aris Brandt had fabricated, a masterpiece of bureaucratic forgery that claimed they were here to recalibrate atmospheric pressure regulators. It was a lie so mundane it had to be true. They emerged from the tunnel into the sub-basement of the Chorus Spire. The air here was different. It was cold, sterile, and smelled of ozone, the clean scent of immense power. A scanner at the service hatch bathed them in pale blue light. Sineus held his breath. The light switched to green. A small, absurd miracle. They were in.
The corridors of the Chorus Spire were catacombs of perfection. The walls were seamless white polymer, glowing with a soft, internal light. The floor was polished to a mirror finish, so clean it felt wrong to walk on. Every ten meters, the sigil of the Ministry of Public Harmony—a stylized white dove in a perfect circle—was subtly embedded in the wall. It was a place without dust, without noise, without history. The only sound was the low, placid hum of the building’s life support and the soft, rhythmic scuff of their own boots.
Ksenia led, her steps counted, her path a line of pure logic pulled from the architectural schematics Voss had so foolishly let them steal. Sineus followed, then Zora, her left arm held tight against her body, her face pale but set. She had refused painkillers for this. She wanted her anger sharp. They moved like ghosts in a machine, their drab grey uniforms a smudge against the pristine white. They were a glitch in the system, an error in the code.
They pressed themselves into a shallow maintenance alcove as Ksenia held up a hand. The sound of footsteps, crisp and perfectly synchronized, grew louder. A two-man Ministry patrol, their pale blue uniforms immaculate, rounded the corner ahead. They walked with the placid confidence of men who had never encountered a locked door or an unexpected event in their entire lives. Sineus watched his own distorted face in the polished wall opposite. A flicker of movement, a ghost of a memory that wasn't his, danced at the edge of the reflection. A forgotten face in a forgotten crowd. He blinked it away.
The patrol passed their hiding spot, their conversation a low murmur about nutrient paste rations. They were ten meters down the corridor before Ksenia gave the signal to move.
— Margin of error is less than ten seconds, — she whispered, her voice tight. — They are running perfectly on schedule.
Of course they were. In this world, even the guards were optimized.
They reached the first major obstacle. It was not a door, but a shimmering curtain of light that blocked the corridor, a sensor array that tasted the air for unauthorized biometrics and emotional dissonance. This was what Zora had prepared for. She pulled a small remote from her pocket and pressed a button.
Fifty meters ahead, a grey disc the size of a dinner plate, one of the eight Static Veil jammers she had planted, came to life. The air hummed, a low, dissonant chord that seemed to absorb all other sound. For a five-second window, they were electronically invisible.
— Now, — Zora grunted.
They ran. For five seconds, they were nothing but blurs of grey against white. The polished floor beneath the jammer’s field went dead, its perfect reflection turning into a patch of flat, matte color, a hole in the world’s vanity. Sineus’s heart hammered against his ribs. It felt like running through water. The hum cut out. They were through. The reflection on the floor snapped back into existence, perfect and unbroken.
They did it three more times. Each time, the sequence was the same. The approach. The low, sound-dampening hum of the Static Veil. The five-second sprint through a pocket of pure electronic noise. The sudden silence. Each successful bypass was a small victory, a tiny act of proactive reclamation. They were not reacting anymore. They were inside the enemy’s brain, moving from synapse to synapse, unseen.
The final jammer brought them to a new corridor, this one different. It was shorter, the walls reinforced with dull, grey metal. At the far end, a seamless section of the wall glowed with a brighter, purer light. There were no visible doors, no handles, no keypads. It was the entrance to the broadcast core’s lower level. They had gathered their tools, their courage, their lies. They were here.
They had made it.
A soft, feminine chime echoed through the corridor, a sound at odds with the sterile silence. It was not an alarm. It was worse.
— Attention, — a synthesized voice announced, calm and pleasant, from hidden speakers. — A routine diagnostic of memetic field integrity will commence in this sector in ninety seconds. Please remain stationary.
Ksenia looked at Sineus, her face a mask of cold realization. They hadn't been spotted by a guard. They had been detected by the building itself. The plan was over. The fight was about to begin.
