The OmniNeuro tower looked different in daylight.
Kaelen stood across the street, watching the main entrance. Guards. Metal detectors. Glass walls that reflected the gray morning sky. Everything about the building said keep out.
But they weren't using the main entrance.
Darya had found another way. A maintenance shaft that ran from the subway tunnels directly into the building's sub-basement. Old. Unused. Unmonitored.
"The security cameras down there have been broken for three years," Darya had said. "I filed the report myself. No one ever fixed it."
Now Kaelen stood in the subway tunnel with Echo, Darya, Sol, and the eleven other enforcers who had defected. They wore dark clothes. Neural stunners at their hips. Their faces were set and serious.
"Last chance to back out," Kaelen said.
No one moved.
"Good." He nodded at Darya. "Open it."
Darya knelt by the tunnel wall and pressed her palm against a metal panel. It beeped. A section of the wall slid open, revealing a narrow shaft lined with pipes and cables.
"Follow me," Darya said. "Stay close. Stay quiet."
She stepped into the shaft. The others followed.
---
The shaft was dark and tight.
Kaelen crawled behind Echo, his knees scraping against concrete. The air was cold and tasted of rust. Somewhere above them, he could hear the rumble of traffic — and beneath that, the low hum of OmniNeuro's power grid.
Darya stopped at a metal grate. She peered through.
"Sub-basement," she whispered. "Clear."
She cut through the grate with a small laser tool. The metal fell away with a soft clink. She dropped down into the darkness below. One by one, the others followed.
Kaelen landed on a concrete floor. The sub-basement was a maze of pipes and storage racks. Old servers. Broken chairs. Dust-covered boxes. No guards. No cameras.
Darya consulted a small tablet. "Service elevator is two hundred meters north. Takes us to the sixty-sixth floor. From there, we split up."
"What's the plan again?" Sol asked.
Kaelen answered. "Darya finds her daughter. Echo and I go to Harlow's office. Sol and the others secure the Memory Integrity Division and free any prototypes still in tanks."
"And if Harlow fights back?"
"Then we fight back harder."
They moved through the sub-basement in silence. Their footsteps echoed off the concrete walls. Kaelen's heart pounded in his chest, but his hands were steady.
They reached the service elevator. Darya swiped her card. The doors slid open.
"Everyone in," she said.
They packed into the elevator — thirteen people in a space meant for four. The doors closed. The elevator began to rise.
---
Floor by floor, they climbed.
Kaelen watched the display tick upward: 12, 23, 41, 55. His reflection stared back at him from the steel doors — the same tired eyes, the same stubble. But something was different now. He wasn't running anymore.
The elevator stopped at 66.
The doors opened onto a white hallway. Fluorescent lights. Closed doors. At the far end, a sign: MEMORY INTEGRITY DIVISION — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
"Here," Darya whispered. "I'll take Sol and half the team to the holding cells. Echo and Kaelen, you go to Harlow's office. The rest of you, secure the stairwells and elevators. No one gets in or out."
They nodded.
Kaelen looked at Echo. "Ready?"
She nodded. Her gold-flecked eyes were calm. "Let's finish this."
They moved.
---
The hallway seemed longer than Kaelen remembered.
He and Echo walked side by side, their footsteps muffled by the white tile floor. No guards. No alarms. Just the hum of the fluorescent lights and the distant sound of his own heartbeat.
They reached the door to Harlow's office. The same door from before. The same retinal scanner.
Echo pressed her palm to the panel. The door clicked open.
Inside, the circular room was empty.
The glass tanks still lined the walls. The blue fluid still glowed. But Harlow's desk was clean. Her chair was pushed in. A single data pearl sat in the center of the desk — white, pulsing softly.
Kaelen walked to the desk. Picked up the pearl.
A recording. Harlow's voice.
"You're too late, Subject 734. I've moved the prototypes. I've moved the kill switch. And I've taken Darya's daughter somewhere you'll never find."
The pearl went dark.
Kaelen's hand tightened around it.
Echo touched his arm. "Kaelen—"
"She knew. She knew we were coming."
"Then we find her. We don't stop."
He looked at her. At the determination in her eyes. She was right. Running was over. Hiding was over.
He slipped the pearl into his pocket.
"Let's go," he said.
They walked out of the office, into the white hallway, into whatever came next.