HELL'S ARCHITECT

Chapter 12. Silencing Protocol

WHOOSH!

Their landing was anything but graceful.

Elios and Vera slammed into the surface of toxic wastewater from a height of ten meters. The thick black liquid flooded their noses and mouths, tasting like molten sulfur mixed with leaking batteries.

They sank briefly into pitch darkness, then fought their way back up, coughing violently.

“Hack! Gagh!” Vera vomited the black sludge, her eyes burning in agony. Her helmet visor had been torn away during the fall, leaving her face fully exposed to the poisonous air.

“Don’t drink it, Sister! That’s not holy water!” Elios grabbed the back of Vera’s collar and dragged her toward the slick concrete edge.

Above them, from the opening they had jumped through, tactical flashlight beams swept downward. Then small cylindrical objects clattered as they fell.

Ting. Ting. Ting.

Elios’s eyes went wide. “Flashbangs!”

“Cover your eyes!”

BLAAAM!

A blinding white explosion detonated inside the vertical shaft, followed by a concussive blast that made their ears ring with pain. Even with their eyes shut tight, the light burned through their eyelids.

Before the echo faded, rappel lines slid down. Black Ops troops descended simultaneously with mechanical precision, magnetic boots clamping onto the slick pipe walls.

“Targets in Lower Sector. Execute on sight. Silencing Protocol active!” Commander Krov’s voice boomed through the soldiers’ helmet speakers, echoing monstrously through the narrow channel.

Elios forced himself upright, knees shaking. “Move! Unless you wanna end up as a water filter!”

Vera nodded weakly and raised her soaked energy pistol. “Where to? My map… my tablet’s dead.”

“We don’t need a map. We need a miracle,” Elios said, dragging Vera into a run.

They were in the facility’s chemical waste processing zone, a labyrinth of massive rusted pipes, high-pressure tanks, and narrow iron catwalks suspended above bubbling acid pools.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Bullets screamed past them, ricocheting off metal pipes and spraying sparks into air saturated with methane gas.

“Left sector! Box them in!” one of the Black Paladin soldiers shouted.

Five troops emerged from behind a tank on the left, cutting off their escape route. Assault rifles roared.

Elios shoved Vera behind a massive valve housing.

“Can you shoot or not?!” Elios yelled, firing back with his M1911. One soldier dropped, a round punching clean through the exposed gap at his neck seal.

“Weapon condition compromised! Energy efficiency down forty percent!” Vera shouted back. Even so, she rose and fired three blue laser bolts. Her shots were precise, crippling the legs of two soldiers at once.

“Not bad for an amateur!” Elios barked.

But there were too many of them. Twenty soldiers. These were not grunts. They moved in coordinated fireteams, covering each other flawlessly. Every time Elios tried to advance, a wall of bullets forced him back.

They were driven to the end of an iron catwalk. Below them churned a waste treatment pool venting green vapor. Ahead, Black Ops troops formed a semicircle, ballistic shields up front, rifles raised behind them.

Commander Krov stepped out from the rear. He wore no helmet, exposing a face scarred by old burns. He smiled coldly at Elios and Vera, cornered and filthy.

“It’s over, Elios,” Krov said calmly over the roar of machinery. “You run like a rat, and you die like one.”

He turned his gaze to Vera, disappointment heavy, like a father scolding a disobedient child.

“And you, Vera. You threw away your future for a heretic? Such a waste. We had great plans for you in Intelligence Division.”

Vera stood tall beside Elios. Her face was smeared with grime, her hair plastered flat, her white uniform now mud-stained and ruined. She did not bow her head.

“I saw what you did in that lab, Krov,” Vera said loudly. “You’re not protectors. You’re monster breeders.”

Krov laughed. “And who will believe you? Corpses don’t testify. Squad! Finish them!”

He raised his hand, signaling execution.

Twenty rifle barrels aligned in perfect unison.

Elios studied the formation, then scanned his surroundings. His sharp eyes caught what others missed. To the right of the Black Ops line stood a row of red gas cylinders marked Flammable.

Above them ran a pipeline labeled Oxidizer.

Elios’s mind assembled a mad plan in a fraction of a second.

“Vera,” Elios whispered without looking at her. “You trust me?”

“In a situation with zero percent survival probability? There’s no alternative,” Vera replied, gripping his arm.

“Good. Hold your breath. And this time… really hold it.”

As Krov slashed his hand down and shouted, “FIRE!”

Elios did not shoot the soldiers.

He fired at the oxidizer pipe overhead.

PING!

The pipe ruptured. Pure oxidizing fluid blasted out under extreme pressure, raining down on the Black Ops formation like a torrential downpour.

“What is this?!” a soldier shouted in confusion as liquid drenched his armor.

“Now for the seasoning,” Elios grinned.

The second shot hit the red gas cylinder.

BLAM!

Gas vented violently. And with the air already saturated in oxidizer, all it needed was a single spark.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ASSHOLES!” Elios roared.

He grabbed Vera, wrapped her tight against his chest, and leapt backward with his back to the blast.

KABOOOOM!

This was no ordinary explosion. It was an improvised fuel-air bomb.

A massive fireball of orange and blue erupted, swallowing the front line of Black Ops troops. The oxidizer made the flames burn ten times hotter and faster. Soldiers screamed as their armor became ovens.

The shockwave hurled Elios and Vera off the iron catwalk.

They flew through the air, the scorching heat blistering Elios’s back.

“Aaaaagh!” Vera screamed as they fell.

They did not plunge into the acid pool. The explosion collapsed the catwalk beneath them, dumping them into a deeper emergency drainage channel, one that fed directly into an underground river.

Elios smashed into rushing water. The current seized him instantly. Through the chaos, he glimpsed Krov above, standing amid the flames, face twisted with fury, firing his pistol wildly at their falling bodies.

One stray bullet tore into Elios’s left calf.

“Bastard!” Elios snarled underwater. Pain flared sharp and white as fresh blood poured out, immediately swallowed by the current.

He surfaced and sank again, searching desperately.

“Vera!”

A pale hand broke the surface of the churning water. Elios fought the current with everything he had and grabbed it.

“Got you!”

He hauled Vera close. She was barely conscious, her head having struck debris during the fall.

“Don’t die yet, Sister! I haven’t collected my life debt from you!”

Elios held Vera with one arm while his free hand clawed uselessly at the slick channel walls. The current was too strong. It dragged them deeper into darkness, away from the facility, away from fire, toward the uncharted belly of the earth.

Behind them, in the burning complex, Commander Krov stared down into the drainage shaft. Smoke curled from his partially scorched armor.

He touched his earpiece.

“Targets escaped through Drain Channel B-Nine,” Krov reported coldly. “Deploy Hunter-Killer drones. Seal all river outlets in the Lower District. I want their heads on my table before sunrise.”

In the freezing, violent current, Elios struggled to stay conscious. His wounded leg was going numb. The cold gnawed at his bones.

But in his chest pocket, Lyra’s golden chip felt warm.

Or maybe that was just his imagination.

“We’ll get out of this, Ly…” Elios thought as darkness finally claimed him. “And we’ll burn them all.”