The glass facade of Malhotra Tower rose sixty stories into the rainy night sky of South Mumbai, a glowing obelisk of corporate power.
At 9:00 PM, three hours before Devendra Malhotra's scheduled midnight blackout, the streets below were eerily quiet. Police barricades blocked the roads leading to the tower, manned by private security enforcers wearing Malhotra-branded dark-matter chest plates.
"We have to bypass the lobby," Rhea's voice murmured in Vikram's earpiece. She was parked three blocks away inside a stolen delivery van, her fingers flying over three separate hacking consoles. "The main entrance has active gravitational sensors. If you step on the floor, the pressure plates will register your weight and trigger an instant lockdown. Use the service elevator shaft in the back alley."
Vikram pulled his wet hood lower. He stood in the narrow alley behind the tower, Rohan at his side. The air was warm, smelling of rain and diesel, but as Vikram took a step toward the steel service door, he stopped.
The hair on his arms stood up. A sudden, cold draft blew past him, freezing the rain droplets on the brick wall.
"The temperature," Vikram muttered, his breath forming a light mist in the air. "It's already dropping. Devendra is drawing power."
"That means the Core is active," Rohan said, checking the ammunition in his kinetic pistol. "Let's move, Vik. We have less than three hours."
Rohan jammed a mechanical override key into the service door's lock. The gears clicked, and the heavy door slid open. They slipped inside, entering the dark concrete corridor of the service bay.
Above them, the elevator cables hummed with a deep, low-frequency vibration.
Vikram closed his eyes, activating his Prana. In the darkness, he could feel the bio-electric output of his own heart, and then he felt it—a massive, cold electromagnetic field pulsing fifty floors above them. It was a dark-matter singular core, spinning like a black hole, warping the electric lines of the tower.
"We go up the shaft," Vikram said, looking up at the emergency maintenance ladder. "Rhea, can you keep the elevator cars frozen?"
"I've locked the elevators on the ground floor," Rhea replied. "But you have fifty flights of stairs and ladders to climb in the dark. Watch your step. And remember, if you use your Prana to climb faster, the tower's sensors might pick up the spike."
"I'll climb manually," Vikram said, grabbing the iron rungs of the ladder. "Let's go."