2025-12-16 01:39:55
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Chapter 97: The Knife That Smiles
The lights went out in sections.Not all at once—never all at once. That was how panic spread. Instead, the rebel base dimmed in deliberate slices, corridors plunging into shadow like a mouth closing its teeth. Emergency strips flickered on, red and narrow, painting everyone’s faces with the same harsh color.Mira felt it before the alarms caught up.“This is internal,” she said, already moving. “No external breach hits power this clean.”Kapoor was beside her, fingers flying over his tablet. “I’m seeing command overrides—someone’s ghosting the system from inside the spine.”“Say the name,” Rourke muttered.Kapoor didn’t look up. “I don’t have to.”They all knew.Across the base, a blast door slammed shut with a boom that reverberated through the stone. Somewhere to the east wing, someone screamed. Then the alarms finally wailed—late, angry, useless.Mira keyed her comm. “Sari. Status.”Static. Then Sari’s voice cut through, breathless but controlled. “Weapons locker compromised. Two
Chapter 96: The Cost of Truth
The rebel base was no longer pretending to be safe.Emergency bulkheads were sealed across three sectors, isolating breaches where internal security had failed. Power reroutes hummed through the stone-carved corridors, casting the halls in alternating bands of white and red light. The air smelled of scorched metal and ozone—proof that something violent had already passed through.Mira stood in the central operations room, hands braced against the command table, eyes locked on the tactical display. Red markers pulsed across the map like infected wounds.“Confirmed casualties?” she asked.Kapoor swallowed, fingers moving quickly across his console. “Four injured. No fatalities. Whoever triggered the internal leak didn’t want mass bloodshed.”“That makes it worse,” Sari muttered from the far wall. “It means this was a test.”Rourke paced behind them, restless energy coiled tight in his shoulders. “Or a message.”Mira straightened slowly. “Either way, they were close enough to touch us.”
Chapter 95: Fracture Point
The rebel base was no longer quiet.It wasn’t the sound of alarms—not yet—but something worse. The low, restless hum of people who knew something was wrong and were waiting for it to break.Mira felt it the moment she stepped into the command tier. Conversations stopped mid-sentence. Heads turned. Eyes followed her—calculating, suspicious, afraid.The fracture had begun.Kapoor was already at the central console, fingers moving faster than Mira had ever seen them. Data streams flooded the holo-wall behind him, each line a potential death sentence if interpreted wrong.“They’re testing us,” Kapoor said without looking up. “Probing comms, scraping external chatter, simulating infiltration patterns.”“Government?” Mira asked.“Not directly,” Kapoor replied. “That’s what makes it worse.”Sari leaned against the bulkhead, arms folded, blade sheath visible at her back. “Proxy forces.”“Or internal leaks,” Rourke muttered.No one argued.Mira’s gaze drifted toward the observation wing—toward
Chapter 94: The Line That Breaks
Emergency lights glowed low along the corridors, painting the stone walls in slow pulses of amber. Smoke lingered in the air, thin but sharp, stinging the lungs with every breath.Lyra stood at the edge of the medical bay, arms wrapped tightly around herself.She hadn’t changed clothes. She hadn’t slept. Her hands were still stained faintly with blood—some hers, some Adrian’s, some belonging to people whose names she never learned before they were gone.Behind the reinforced glass, Adrian lay unconscious on the medical platform.Alive. Stable.But dangerously close to the line they had all been afraid of.Kapoor worked silently at the far console, eyes bloodshot behind his glasses as streams of diagnostics scrolled across his screens. Sari leaned against the wall near the door, arms crossed, posture sharp and ready despite the exhaustion dragging at her shoulders. Rourke sat on a crate, helmet off, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor like he was counting ghosts.Mira stood close
Chapter 93: The Line That Burns
The rebel base was no longer quiet.It wasn’t alarms this time. It was worse.Whispers.They moved through the corridors like smoke—uncertain, poisonous, impossible to trace. Personnel avoided eye contact. Guards doubled their patrols without explanation. Doors that used to open automatically now required secondary clearance. Trust, once fragile but present, had fractured into jagged pieces.Mira felt it the moment she stepped out of the command wing.This base was turning on itself.She stopped short at the junction overlooking the lower operations floor. Below her, engineers argued in tight clusters. Medics whispered over open tablets. Someone had painted a crude symbol on the far wall overnight—an old government insignia, crossed through with a jagged slash.A warning.Or a challenge.Mira’s jaw tightened.“Status?” she asked quietly.Kapoor fell into step beside her, eyes darting. “Data breach confirmed. Internal transmission routed through three masked relays. Clean. Too clean.”
Chapter 92: The Weight of Truth
The rebel base was holding its breath.The discovery that the traitor network extended deeper than Kessler—no one moved without suspicion. The corridors felt narrower, shadows stretching too long across the steel walls. Every door hiss sounded like a threat. Every footstep echoed louder than it should have.Mira stood on the upper platform overlooking the command floor, arms folded tight against her chest. She hadn’t slept. None of them had.Below her, technicians worked in tense silence, rerouting systems damaged during the attack. Burned panels sparked faintly. A drone carcass lay half-melted near the far wall, evidence of how close they’d come to losing everything.Or everyone.Kapoor approached quietly, tablet tucked under his arm. “We finished decrypting the secondary packet.”Mira didn’t turn. “And?”Kapoor hesitated. That was never a good sign.“And it confirms what Adrian suspected.”Mira finally faced him. “Say it.”Kapoor swallowed. “The government isn’t just hunting enhance
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