Chapter 41 - Cira
«Don't forget the plan.» Orlans Voice crackled through the coms. «Get in, get Aren and Liora, get out. Take no risks. Evran and Bran are going in ten minutes after you to provide Backup when needed. Sierra keeps an eye on the Maps and Intel Lena gave us. And I will stay out as the last line of back Up if needed.»
«Copy that,» Cira whispered.
She adjusted the hearing aid in her left ear, the faint electric buzz of Orlan's voice fading as the channel quieted. The hearing aids—matte black, almost invisible in the dim light— got an Update from Lena. She had tuned them with pulse-dampeners and ambient noise filters. It made the world feel too quiet. Like the breath before a storm.
Cira moved.
The suit Lena gave her was thinner than armor, but stronger than anything she'd worn before. It clung to her like a second skin—midnight gray with hex-mesh panels that shifted light just enough to blur her silhouette. Flexible, silent, frictionless. She could feel her heartbeat in her fingertips, but her steps made no sound. Not even the hum of her presence registered on the motion sensors—they'd tested it. Over that she wore a set of Verlag Weave Armor.
A matte harness hugged her chest, holding shock-gel rounds and a pistol loaded with impact disruptors—nonlethal, barely. Her belt carried her Arcblade, her pistol, a thermal cutter disguised, and three glass vials filled with quick-smoke gel. Lena called them phantom drops. Cira hadn't asked what was in them. She just saw what they did.
A soft click. Her mask unfolded from her collar—magnetically sealed, breathable, tinted to hide her eyes. It synced instantly with the data Orlan fed from the maps. Lines and paths lit up faintly across her vision—blue for safe, yellow for unknown, red for heat.
The sewers stank of rust and rotting water. Cira moved in a crouch, shadows clinging to her like oil. The low ceiling forced her to duck, her gloved fingers skimming the moist wall to keep balance as she advanced along the narrow ledge above the main flow. Pipes hissed steam intermittently—old pressure lines rerouted, probably, during the last security upgrade. Lena's map had accounted for that.
She reached a maintenance hatch. Just where it was supposed to be.
Her left gauntlet lit up as she pressed her palm against the panel—thin filaments snaking from her glove into the access port like metal ivy. A second passed. A third. Then the lock disengaged with a soft clack. She climbed the ladder, slow and silent, pausing just beneath the hatch to listen.
Nothing.
With a fluid motion, she pushed the hatch open an inch and slipped through.
She emerged into a dark utility corridor, narrow and humming with unseen conduits. A faint red glow pulsed along the walls—emergency lighting, low-power mode. Good. No visual confirmation systems would be operating at full strength. She closed the hatch behind her, flipped the lock, and crouched low.
Her visor tagged a few soft-blue lines ahead—ventilation path to Block C, power duct crossing to Sub-Level Two. Liora was on Two. Aren was deeper—Level Four, security-max, no elevator access.
She'd get Liora first.
Cira crept along the corridor, boots whisper-silent thanks to Lena's "sandfall tread." She paused at intersections, used micro-cams to peek corners, deployed one phantom drop in a security blindspot when she detected faint vibrations—motion detection plates beneath the floor.
The vial shattered on impact, releasing a swirling gray mist that didn't move like smoke. It hung, pulse-reactive, absorbing light and masking thermal signatures. She passed through it like a ghost.
Ten minutes in.
She reached the first checkpoint.
Two guards stood near a flickering holo-screen, rifles slung, chatting lazily. Cira moved before either of them noticed. One step—then two—then the arcblade sang. A single precise strike across the back of the knee dropped the first man. She caught him, twisted, drove her elbow into his neck. The second spun, reaching for his weapon, but she slammed him against the wall and drove her forearm into his throat until he went limp. No kills. As planned.
«Checkpoint one clear,»she whispered.
«Confirmed» Sierra's voice came soft in her ear. «You're on track. Power fluctuation on the next hall. Avoid Route Delta.»
Every step, every breath, every movement had been trained, honed, tempered. But even that couldn't quiet the part of her that felt the silence. Not heard it—felt it. In her teeth. In the stillness between heartbeats. The place was too quiet. Too empty.
That was wrong.
She ducked beneath a loose cable, slipped into a side passage dimly lit by failing strips of red emergency glow. The buzz of dying lights echoed off concrete walls, masking her steps. But not the unease crawling up her spine.
They should've doubled security after Riel.
They had doubled it, according to Sierra's intel. Heat maps from Lena's recon drone showed regular guard patrols, proximity sensors, three internal surveillance tiers—one of which had been rerouted through a dummy loop by Lena herself. But Cira had only passed two guards in ten minutes.
Something's off.
Still crouched, she tapped the side of her left hearing aid twice. The HUD dimmed, the faint blue paths replaced by a radial pulse scan—one of Lena's newer patches. It pinged the hallway ahead in three-second bursts. Two life signatures, far end, walking away. One stationary just outside Liora's cell.
She closed her eyes, exhaled slow.
The suit whispered with her movement—an advanced shadowweave polyfiber mesh layered over her skin-tight stealth base. It held to her like liquid night, adapting dynamically to body heat and air pressure. Lena had called it Spectraweave, custom-built, single-thread filament weft with reactive scaling. Cira had just called it unreal when she first put it on.
No metal. No armor plating. The protection came from flexibility—kinetic gel packs molded into her limbs, the Verlag armor catching blunt strikes like ripples through water. She could move in it like it wasn't there. She could vanish in it.
The gloves were pressure-sensitive—magnetic-threaded, with microfilament claws she could extend across her fingers to climb or pierce light materials. The boots—"sandfall tread," Lena said—broke up footstep vibration with micro-mesh fibers, spreading each step across dozens of soft contact points. They made her footsteps vanish even on grated metal.
And the mask.
The mask had surprised her.
Not for the tech—she expected retinal overlays, thermal filters, atmosphere balancing. But for the way it felt—seamless. No hiss when it sealed. No weight when it locked in place. It had been custom-molded for her face. Lena's doing, of course. Cira had never asked when she took her scan.
She rounded a corner, dipped into shadow as two patrols passed her by. Neither noticed. The suit blurred her shape just enough when she moved, making her seem like a trick of the light. One flicked his head toward her, squinted, then shook it off.
She exhaled once, slow.
«Orlan,» she murmured. «I've seen two patrols. That's it. I'm fifteen minutes in. No drones, no alarms. Nothing. This place is hollow.»
Orlan's voice came low. «Noted. Stay on course. Get Liora. Then Aren. Then get out.»
Cira pressed forward, eyes scanning every corner, every panel, every flicker of false light.
She reached the corridor to Sub-Level Two—a narrow shaft behind a half-open security door. The manual override had been melted shut, so she used the thermal cutter strapped to her hip. The blade was no larger than a finger, but burned white-hot. It sliced through the lower hinge in seconds.
A hiss. A whisper of smoke.
She slipped through.
The passage sloped downward, lined with peeling maintenance warnings and exposed cables. Sparks popped from one broken junction box. When she reached the second checkpoint, she slowed, staying flat against the wall.
One guard outside Liora's cell. As predicted.
He noticed her, His hand hovered over his weapon but too late—Cira was already on him.
A stun round to the shoulder.
One crackling hiss of her Arcblade to his collarbone.
He slumped, unconscious.
She dragged his body behind a junction box, zip-tied his wrists and cut the comms line on his belt. Only then did she crouch near the cell door and pull out Lena's bypass spike. It was the size of a stylus, tipped with a filament interface and coded pulse sync.
The lock took twelve seconds to crack.
Cira stepped into the dark, narrow room—and Liora looked up from the far wall. She looked healthy and Not hurt. Thank God.
Her eyes widened, breath catching. «Cira? What are you doing Here?»
«Time to go,» Cira whispered, crouching beside her. She passed her a stun baton and a vial. «Stay close. Stay quiet. If we get separated, you follow the blue lines in your HUD—»
«I don't have a—»
Cira pressed a backup mask to her face. It sealed in a second. Liora flinched, but her breathing steadied.
«Now you do.»
«Liora secured,» Cira said into the coms. «Moving to Sub-Level Four.»
She looked back once, just once. That silence was still there, pulsing at the edges of her mind like pressure before a migraine.
Something was wrong.
And Cain… Cain had been too calm since the last time they met. As if he was waiting.
She didn't say it aloud.
But she knew.
This, somehow, was a trap.