The warehouse Rami’s friend had chosen for the upload was on the edge of the city—one of those half-finished tech startups that never got funded, with dusty VR headsets still shrink-wrapped in boxes and power cords coiled like sleeping snakes. It looked abandoned from the outside, but inside, it buzzed with tension.Davion paced, his boots scuffing over concrete. His hoodie clung to his back with sweat, though the room was freezing. Irene was perched near the window, scanning the horizon with a pair of stolen binoculars. Rami was hunched over a rusted desk, his fingers flying across the keyboard like they were possessed.“She’s late,” Irene muttered.“She’ll come,” Rami replied, not looking up. “She always does. Just has to make sure she’s not being tailed.”Davion stopped pacing. “And if she is?”“Then we bounce. Fast.”He hated this waiting. Every second felt like a countdown. He could still hear the scream of the explosion, feel the dust in his lungs. Reika had given them the drive

The rain came in sheets. Thick, pounding, relentless. Like the sky was trying to drown the whole city before Iron Hand could finish the job.Davion stood in the back of the truck, soaked through his hoodie, eyes fixed on the rusted tower up ahead. It rose from the middle of an abandoned lot, half-swallowed by vines and scaffolding, surrounded by silence. No guards. No lights. No signs of life.Which made it worse.“This feels like a trap,” Irene muttered, her breath fogging up the inside of her cracked helmet. “It’s way too quiet.”“It’s underground,” Rami said. He was fiddling with his drone controller like it was a game console. “They don’t need to guard the outside. The defense is below.”“We go in fast, hit the servers, leak what’s left, and get out before they catch up,” Davion said. He didn’t blink. “Simple.”“Simple,” Irene echoed. “He says that like we’re not about to walk into a hellhole built by literal psychopaths.”Maya’s voice crackled in their earpieces. “You’ve got five

Davion moved like a shadow through the crumbling halls, his heart pounding to the rhythm of distant gunfire. The base shook again—a dull, heavy thud. Another wall going down. Another piece of everything they’d built turned to smoke.He gritted his teeth. Every step forward felt like diving deeper into hell. But he wasn’t stopping.Not until Reika was done.Not until this ended.Ahead, flames curled up the hallway walls, licking old steel and melted wires. Sprinklers sputtered uselessly overhead. A rebel coughed against the wall, his arm bent wrong. Davion knelt, dragging him behind a broken cabinet.“Medics are in the north stairwell,” Davion muttered. “Go.”The kid looked at him like he was looking at a ghost. “You’re… Davion.”“Yeah, and I’m still breathing. Go.”The boy nodded shakily and took off limping.Davion pushed up and kept moving.He reached the training wing—the place where they used to run drills and spar and argue about who could bench the most.Now it looked like a war

The safehouse was quiet, save for the low hum of generators and the occasional burst of static from the comms table. Smoke still clung to the walls like ghosts of the battle they’d just survived.Davion stood alone near the broken window, staring out into the moonlit trees, jaw clenched.Footsteps echoed.Then her voice.“Still brooding, soldier?”He turned. Beverly was back. Covered in grime, blood crusted on her shirt, a map case slung over her shoulder like a war drum.“You look like hell,” he said.“Hell looks like me when I’m angry,” she shot back, tossing the map case on the table.The others—Maya, Rami, Irene—filtered in, drawn by the noise. Everyone was tense, tired, still wearing bruises from the Reika ambush. But Beverly’s energy was different. Electric. Focused.“I found something,” she said, unrolling the map.“What is it?” Irene asked, stepping close.Beverly tapped the faded blueprints. “This—this is where it started. Iron Hand. The original base. Not the flashy towers.

The drive was silent.Rami’s truck rumbled through the night, tires crunching on gravel roads as they headed farther into the wilderness. Forest trees closed in around them, their shadows long and eerie in the moonlight. The group sat in the back—muddy, bruised, and burnt. No one talked much. Not after what they just walked out of.Elias was propped gently in the back seat, oxygen mask on, an IV in his arm, Beverly holding the bag steady. Irene had wrapped his ribs. Maya kept glancing at the rear window, fingers twitching near her weapon. Davion just stared out at the trees.“We’re close,” Rami finally said. “Old Cold War base. No one’s used it in decades except me.”“Let’s hope that’s still true,” Beverly muttered.Davion barely heard her. His thoughts were far from the road.All he could see was his father’s face—calm, calculated, cold. Legacy must be earned, Davion. Not given.He’d grown up believing that. That to deserve love, power, even breath, you had to bleed for it.Now he wa