Chapter 13: Breach Beneath the Table

6 year later:

Location: Undisclosed Subterranean Chamber, beneath Hyclone's Old Courier Hall

Time: 02:36 AM

It was the kind of place designed for silence.

No cameras. No wires. No walls that echoed. The air was dry, scented faintly with gun oil and concrete, and the only sound came from the slow scrape of Ronan O'Sullivan's chair as he sat.

Across the long obsidian table stood Liam, arms folded, boots planted as if he were standing on contested ground. To the left, six other figures shifted slightly in their seats—men and women whose names rarely left whispers, the kind of people who ran empires without ever appearing in headlines.

They weren't friends.

They weren't even allies.

But tonight, they had gathered for survival.

Halcyon had begun to expand again. Quietly. Efficiently. With the same surgical precision that had buried cartels and corporations before. But this time, something was wrong. Territory lines blurred, ghost operations swallowed entire warehouses, and once-reliable black-market routes went dead without warning.

And then came the message: an encoded signal that bore Ronan O'Sullivan's seal, the kind no one ignored unless they wished to disappear. The invitation was simple. No names, no threats. Only a time. A place. And a promise:

"Come if you wish to understand what's about to burn."

So they came.

A former military tactician known only as Gray sat beside a syndicate broker who controlled Hyclone's narcotic ports. Across from them, a woman with silver gloves and a permanent smirk traced her finger along the table edge—Lucine Veyr, said to traffic in surveillance, secrets, and the sale of loyalty.

Ronan broke the stillness first.

"We've bled enough on each other's streets," he said, voice low, measured. "If Halcyon's about to cut through this city, we need to know where everyone stands. Before we all fall one by one."

A beat of silence passed, thick and watchful.

Liam finally nodded, slow and cautious.

"I didn't come here to play diplomat, Ronan. If you've got something to say, say it. Otherwise, we all go back to preparing for siege."

"You're already preparing for the wrong war," said Lucine, without looking up. "That's the problem. You're still preparing for a siege. Halcyon doesn't storm gates. They buy the keys."

Gray leaned forward, his voice quiet but edged.

"They're not buying anymore. They're removing. Quietly. Efficiently. Like pruning a tree."

Ronan gestured to the center of the table. A black tablet flickered to life under his fingerprint, casting a soft glow upward. Names. Maps. Coordinates.

"These aren't rumors," he said. "Confirmed strikes on facilities we all thought were secure. Two were taken out without resistance. The third?"

He tapped.

"Left empty. Files gone. People gone. Doors locked from the inside."

"Someone's taking things..." Lucine said slowly, "...without claiming responsibility. That's worse than blood."

"Worse," Gray echoed, "because it means they don't fear recognition. Or they want us guessing."

A flicker broke through the corner screen.

The first alarm.

Ground-level motion reader. Old sewer access. Barely visible. An insect crawl of red light. Then it was gone.

Liam's voice sliced through the rising unease.

"Did you invite anyone else?"

Ronan didn't flinch. His eyes flicked to the corner of the room.

"No."

"Then we're compromised."

One of the guards by the sealed steel door moved toward the console. Hand to earpiece. Another flicker on the tablet. This time, inside the ventilation shaft. A whisper of static hissed from the wall.

Then—

the lights cut out.

Total blackout.

Weapons came out in near silence. Silhouettes crouched, moved, flanked. Someone cursed under their breath.

A flash from the tablet before it died: "Access Node Breached. Internal Ping Detected."

Then, the room shook.

Not from above.

Below.

A dull, subterranean rumble echoed upward. Dust sifted down. Concrete groaned. Ronan's chair tipped slightly.

Liam moved first. Toward the exit, but not running. Calculated steps.

Ronan's voice, clear even in the dark:

"It's not a hit."

"How the hell do you know?" someone growled.

"Because we're not the target."

He reached into his jacket, produced a small beacon. Switched it on. Blue light illuminated the table. In its faint glow, they saw the tablet again. One message was still alive, repeating:

"Vault Access Engaged. Breach in Lower Archive."

Lucine's mouth curled, not in amusement.

"They wanted us here. Talking. Distracted."

"A coordinated theft," Gray said. "But of what?"

The answer came a moment later.

Far beneath the chamber—a second, deeper explosion. More muted. Precise. Not designed to kill.

But to collapse.

From the street above, it would look like nothing.

From below, the Hyclone Empire's Strategic Intelligence Core just folded in on itself.

Minutes passed in stunned silence.

Then the backup lights blinked on, low and red. Emergency mode.

The table was empty of data. The air now tasted of cement and betrayal.

Ronan stood.

"The core's gone. Along with whatever was inside."

"What did they take?" Liam asked again, quieter this time.

"The one file no one thought anyone could reach," Ronan said. "The one we built the vault to hide."

Lucine spoke slowly.

"Subject Zero."

"Kane," Gray whispered.

Ronan didn't deny it.

"And now, she knows."

Aftermath

When they emerged, the city was already stirring.

Police scanners were in chaos. Emergency drones buzzed through smoke-clogged alleys. But there were no sirens yet.

Because no one knew what had happened.

To the outside world, it looked like a sinkhole. An unfortunate infrastructure failure.

But to them? It was war.

Back in a different location—an off-grid communication bunker outside the Hyclone border—they gathered again. No longer seated. No longer diplomatic.

A screen displayed the aftermath: a collapsed sector. Null zones in digital records. And a blinking trace.

One name.

"E. Kane"

Ronan spoke first.

"She didn't come to destroy us. She came to remind us she was never truly gone."

Lucine's silver gloves caught the light.

"This isn't personal. Not for her. She's not seeking revenge."

Gray grunted.

"She's sending a message."

"What message?" Liam asked, almost mocking.

Ronan turned slowly.

"That we were never in control."

And this time, no one argued.

Location: Unknown Observation Room, somewhere beneath the collapsed Hyclone State Empire Tower

Time: 03:02 AM

The room was silent but awake.

In the dim light of three control panels, each humming with dull blue glow, sat a figure. Neither tall nor short, neither distinctly masculine nor feminine—cloaked in the anonymity of shadows, posture still, gloved hands resting lightly over an array of keys and switches.

The chamber itself had no markers of personality. No pictures. No notes. No nameplates or discarded coffee mugs. It was as though the room had been built not for a person but for an act.

And that act had just reached its crescendo.

Above the chamber, three hundred feet of concrete, steel, and debris, smoke still spiraled from what had once been Hyclone State Empire Tower, the meeting place of the underworld's most dangerous minds. The blast hadn't just been structural—it was surgical. It had cut clean through shielding, destabilized the support beams, and collapsed the core without touching the nearby civilian blocks.

A miracle, some would say.

A message, thought others.

But down here, in this side chamber buried beneath the crust of the city, no one spoke. Only machines blinked, recorded, indexed. Monitored what remained.

The figure leaned forward.

One of the monitors displayed real-time satellite footage, a tilted view of twisted metal and broken stone. Thermal imaging showed little. Most bodies were already cold.

But not all.

Survivors were moving. Scrambling. Shouting. The gang heads who hadn't been in the direct blast zone were beginning to regroup. Confusion hadn't yet given way to vengeance. That would take a few more hours.

And by then, the one responsible would already be dust between names.

The figure didn't watch for fame or credit.

They watched for something else.

Another screen lit up—a surveillance log from twenty-seven hours ago. A deep scan of Hyclone's criminal circuits. Intercepted chatter. Movement records. Weapon transfers. A spiderweb of betrayal, bribery, shifting alliances. All of them had been documented. None of them, until now, had been interrupted.

Until tonight.

Until this watcher decided to act.

They adjusted a dial, pulling up the audio feed from a local emergency channel. Police scanners were overwhelmed. Multiple agencies had been triggered. Fire control, urban security, military subcontractors. And deeper still—threads of government code traced back to Halcyon.

Even they hadn't seen this coming.

The watcher tilted their head, as though listening more to the silence than the noise.

And then, with no rush at all, they stood.

Their chair made no sound.

Their footsteps did not echo.

They walked slowly toward a secondary console, where a slim black drive pulsed with faint white light. The drive had no label. Its encryption had no name. But its function was clear to one who knew:

It had issued the command.

The signal to the detonation device. The final override that bypassed every gang's countermeasure. That cracked open Hyclone's bones like a whisper.

The drive blinked one final time.

Then stopped.

The figure picked it up, placed it into a lead-shielded box, and closed the lid. Click.

A breath.

Nothing about the figure said celebration. Nothing said regret.

And that was the most terrifying thing about them.

No manifesto. No callsign. No signature left behind in the ashes of power.

Just one choice.

One action.

And now, the city would burn in confusion.

Above ground, the surviving factions would meet again—this time not to parley, but to hunt. Each would suspect the other. Each would spill blood in the name of retribution.

They would scream about betrayal.

But they wouldn't know the truth.

The person responsible had never been at the table to begin with.

They had always been under it.

Watching.

And waiting.

The door to the chamber opened with a pressurized hiss. The figure walked into the dark beyond, vanishing into shadow.

The lights went off one by one.

The chamber went to sleep.

But the war had only just awakened.