Chapter 49
2240words
Near the outskirts of Alton, California
Early Morning
The sky was still dark — that cold, suspended moment just before dawn. A faint mist clung to the ground, blurring the jagged remains of what once was a Sinclair-owned perimeter. The facility lay half-swallowed by time and ash, but something inside had awakened. They all felt it.
Kristina adjusted the strap on her gear, double-checked the sidearm at her hip, then looked up. Lucian stood a few paces away, arms crossed, jaw tight.
“You should’ve let Sebastian take point,” he said, voice low but steady.
Kristina stepped closer. “He’s needed with Vex and Ash. You know that.”
Lucian met her eyes, unreadable for a moment. “You volunteered. You didn’t even ask.”
“I didn’t have to.”
A few feet behind them, Eli lingered near the supply crate, pretending to double-check his weapon. But he was listening. Watching. He knew that tone in Lucian’s voice — not anger, but unease dressed as command. And Kristina... she was focused. Fierce. Steady. The kind of steady you don’t fake.
He didn’t interfere. He wouldn’t. Not here. But part of him wanted to say what Lucian wouldn’t — that she was the sharpest one among them when it came to this, and they all knew it. Eli had seen it firsthand. The way she moved through systems like she was born from them. The way her mind leapt between pieces others missed.
This mission had her name written on it. It always did.
Kristina continued, “I know this place. Not just from the files. From inside.” She tapped her temple. “That memory, the fragments we uncovered from the backups in Jakarta? This—Alton—is where it all started. If something goes wrong, I’ll know faster than any of you.”
Lucian’s gaze softened just a little, though the lines around his eyes held their weight. “That’s exactly why you shouldn’t be in front.”
“But it’s why I have to be,” she said. “If this is the end of it — if we’re finally putting a stop to this — then I need to see it through. Not from the sidelines. Not protected.”
Eli shifted his stance, silently loading the final round into his sidearm. He trusted her. He always had. But some part of him tensed anyway. This place wasn’t just a relic — it was bait. And whatever waited inside had her written into its design.
Lucian looked away, jaw clenching. “I just don’t want them to get a shot at you,” he muttered.
“They won’t.” She smiled faintly. “Not if you’ve got my back.”
Lucian exhaled and nodded. “Always.”
Eli gave a subtle nod to himself. Good. Whatever this mission turned into, they’d need to hold tight. Fractures weren’t an option.
They stood in silence for a few more seconds, the wind whispering through the brittle grass. Then Kristina turned toward the others.
“Positions.”
Sebastian joined Vex and Ash on the southern flank. Lucian and Eli fell in behind Kristina.
Ash’s voice crackled softly through comms. “Surveillance net is blind. Whatever’s still watching from inside, we’ll have to meet it the old-fashioned way.”
Kristina took one last look at the silhouette of the compound, steel and shadow wrapped in decay.
Let’s finish this.
She raised a fist.
“Move in.”
Alton Facility
The outer doors gave way with a metallic groan, rust and age fighting the hydraulics until the locks finally disengaged. Kristina stepped in first, sweeping her light across the narrow corridor. Concrete walls. Cracked tiles. Cold, sterile decay
Then: humming.
Faint. Mechanical. Active.
“This place shouldn’t have power,” Lucian muttered behind her.
“Backup grid,” Kristina replied. “Same pattern we saw in Jakarta. They kept just enough alive.”
Eli moved silently, covering the rear. “It’s watching us.”
Kristina didn’t answer. She was already ahead, eyes tracing the wires in the walls, the way the vents had been recently cleaned, the tiny flicker of motion sensors blinking as they passed.
They reached the main junction — a fork between the server wing and what used to be the labs.
That’s when everything snapped into motion.
A flash from the corner — no warning. A drone dropped from the ceiling with a hiss of compressed air, followed by two more in perfect silence. Sleek, matte black, modified with retractable weapon arms.
“DOWN!” Lucian shouted, tackling Kristina as plasma fire tore through the wall beside her.
Eli raised his pistol and fired twice — both rounds sparking off the drone’s side armor. “Dammit—these aren’t old stock!”
“No, they’re not,” Kristina gritted out, sliding across the floor and rolling behind a beam. She yanked a compact EMP disk from her belt. “Cover me!”
Lucian popped up and fired to draw attention, while Eli ducked right and unleashed a volley at the exposed drone joints. Kristina dashed forward, planted the disk, and dove.
Thunk. Bzzzzap—
The charge detonated, shorting the closest drone. It jerked midair, spasmed, then fell with a clatter.
The other two adjusted — now recalibrating, reacting faster.
“Two more inbound from the right hallway!” Eli barked.
“Go loud,” Lucian said, voice clipped. “We take this floor before they cut off our exit.”
Kristina drew her sidearm and moved with lethal purpose. Her fingers danced along the wall-mounted controls mid-run, rerouting power from the corridor ahead.
“They’re syncing through the grid,” she said. “They’re not just autonomous — someone’s guiding them.”
“You’re saying someone’s watching?” Lucian growled.
“I’m saying we’re not alone in here.”
They pushed forward, coordinated and clean. Lucian’s aim was ruthless, Eli fast and precise, and Kristina — thinking faster than she could speak. Every turn felt familiar. The layouts. The camera placements. Even the way the attack patterns unfolded.
Like they’d been rehearsed. For her.
After another firefight — short, brutal — they cleared the north wing and sealed the entry behind them.
Breathing hard, Lucian leaned against the wall, scanning the remains of the drones. “This wasn’t random defense.”
“No,” Kristina said quietly. “It was staged.”
Eli stepped over a smoldering drone. “You think they knew we’d come?”
Kristina stared down the dark hallway ahead.
“No,” she said. “I think they wanted us to.”
Alton Facility | Lower East Wing
Footsteps. Too many. Too fast.
Lucian’s head snapped toward the east corridor as gunfire rang out from above and below. The team had barely regrouped when it started — the flood.
They came in coordinated waves. Not drones. Not tech. People. Armed. Masked. Trained.
"Flanking from the mezzanine!" Vex yelled as he slammed against the wall, unloading return fire.
Ash dragged a heavy crate across the floor for cover while Sebastian kept the side hallway clear. “They're closing in from the north, too!”
Eli cursed under his breath. “They're herding us!”
"Fall back—!" Lucian started, but his voice was lost to the clang of something metal hitting the floor.
Kristina saw it first. Cylindrical. Matte casing. No time.
She dove. The bomb rolled once. A pop — then a whump of force. No fire. But smoke. Noise. Disruption.
The blast scattered them.
Eli’s ears rang as he scrambled for visual. Vex had dragged Ash behind a server cabinet. Lucian had taken a hit to the shoulder but was conscious. Kristina—
No — there.
She stood across the room, body low, eyes focused, pulling something from her pocket — a black scarf. Thin and gauzy. As she wrapped it around her face, it felt like ritual. Like memory.
Lucian turned to her, blinking through the haze. “Kristina—what are you doing?”
“Protect him,” she said to Eli, Her voice was low, deliberate. “No matter what happens.”
“What?” Lucian stepped forward, wincing. “Where are you going? What are you doing?”
Kristina looked back at him, veil catching the last of the flickering lights.
“What I do best.”
Then — she was gone.
She darted into the smoke, blending into the chaos as if it welcomed her. Shadows closed behind her like curtains falling on a stage. The sound of shouts, gunfire, and confusion still echoed, but she moved through it — a ghost.
Alton Facility – West Maintenance Wing
Minutes later
The corridors were thick with smoke and voices.
Kristina moved low, silent.
Boots thundered past her hiding place — two, maybe three soldiers rushing toward the others. She waited. One second. Two. Then stepped out behind them like a whisper.
Her strike was fast. A hard jab to the base of the skull — one down. She caught the second’s rifle before it could swing toward her. A twist. Crack. The weapon dropped. She finished the third with a side-snap kick and let him fall without a sound.
No hesitation. No anger. Just movement.
Another figure rounded the corner. Gun raised. She ducked under the barrel, drove her elbow into his ribs, and shoved him into the wall. He didn’t go down. He fought back — bigger, trained.
They grappled.
He slammed her against the metal panel. Her head rang. She dropped, letting gravity take her under his legs and sliced at the back of his knee with a blade she’d drawn from her belt. He screamed. She drove her palm into his throat.
He stopped.
Kristina leaned against the wall, chest heaving. The smoke curled past her face, catching on the edge of the scarf. Her hands were shaking — not from fear, but from memory.
This felt too familiar.
Gunfire echoed again from the main hall. No time to stop. She pulled a pistol from the floor, checked the magazine. Four rounds. That’s all she needed.
She kept moving.
Two guards ahead. One turned — saw her. Too late.
She shot him cleanly in the leg — non-lethal, but enough to drop him. The other raised his rifle. Kristina slid across the floor beneath the spray of bullets and fired once — his knee. He collapsed screaming.
She didn’t wait. She was already gone.
A steel door loomed ahead — locked, humming. The core system. This was it.
She pressed her palm to the interface panel. No clearance. She stared at the screen, breathing hard.
Then it lit up.
Access Granted.
Her stomach dropped.
This wasn’t just a door.
It was an invitation.
Gunfire cracked from deeper within the corridor. Then screams. Muffled. Sharp. Human.
Lucian flinched. “Damn it—Kristina!” He took a step forward, eyes scanning the thick smoke that was now curling into the hall like fog. “We have to go after her—”
“She’s not just some soldier, Lucian,” Eli said, already moving beside him. “She’s surrounded. She could be—”
Sebastian stopped them. “She is Black Harrow.”
“Was,” Eli and Lucian said in unison.
They glanced at each other — just a flicker of surprise.
Ash blinked. “Okay.”
Vex gave a crooked grin. “Noted.”
Then silence. Tense, electric. The kind that makes your skin itch.
A sharp, clean gunshot tore through the fog, loud enough to rattle their ears. Lucian turned on instinct, hand already going for his sidearm—
—and froze.
Behind them, a man dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, blood pooling under his head. His weapon clattered a foot away — aimed, unmistakably, at Lucian’s back.
The team turned. And there she was.
Half-veiled in smoke, the muzzle of her pistol still trailing a wisp of heat.
She didn’t stop.
She ran forward like a blur, leapt — and the moment her boots left the ground, it was like something in her snapped into focus.
She twisted mid-air, landed on the downed man’s chest with both knees, and without hesitation—
Her elbow shattered his nose.
She rolled off before he could wheeze. In one fluid motion, she gripped the back of his collar, lifted, then slammed his face into the concrete with enough force to crack the floor.
The man stopped moving.
Dead weight.
The room went quiet except for the sound of her breath.
Kristina stood slowly, eyes scanning them all — then turned, wiped the blood from her scarf, and calmly reloaded her pistol.
“Let’s go,” she said. Voice flat. Cold. Efficient.
The others just stared.
Lucian had seen her angry. Seen her grief. But this—this was something else. Something built in the dark, sharpened by silence.
Ash whispered to no one in particular, “Remind me never to piss her off.”
Even Sebastian didn’t speak.
They followed.
Because whatever Kristina had become in that moment—it wasn’t over.
They followed her, quiet and grim, through the corridor strewn with bodies.
Some slumped against the wall, others sprawled where they fell — throats crushed, limbs twisted, guns still in hand. Blood streaked across the floor like brushstrokes on concrete.
Kristina didn’t look back.
Lucian, Eli, Sebastian, Ash, and Vex walked in her wake. They walked in silence. Not fear — just disbelief. And something else they couldn’t yet name.
They knew what Kristina could do.
They just hadn’t seen it like this.
At the far end of the hall stood the door — heavy, sealed, clean.
Kristina stepped up to the panel beside it. Her hand hovered, then pressed flat against the scanner.
The light turned green.
The door hissed open.
She stared at it a moment longer before saying, almost under her breath, “It scanned my palm... as if it was waiting for me.”
The others exchanged glances, the weight of the past slamming into the present.
Lucian took a breath. “Then let’s finish this.”
And together, they stepped inside.
Every threshold has a cost. And some are paid in blood.
—To be continued.
