Ch 77: The Final Substation

Kael leaned against the workbench, fingers tapping rhythmically against the metal as he reviewed the decrypted data.

Substation 9 was next.

The facility would be emptied within the next 24 hours, which meant whatever was inside would either be moved or erased.

He had one chance to see what was hidden before it was gone.

Kael exhaled through his nose, shutting off the screen. He had gathered plenty of data on Substation 7, but most of it was still outside his area of expertise.

The one thing he did know?

Whoever was behind this had resources—enough to maintain hidden facilities, hire private security, and run energy-draining operations inside Gron without anyone noticing.

That wasn't some minor gang operation.

It was something bigger.

Kael didn't believe in blind infiltration. Going in unprepared was a death sentence.

Before heading to Substation 9, he needed to confirm a few things:

How much power was still being drawn? What kind of surveillance was in place? Did it connect to the same hidden grid as Substation 7?

He ran a background check using the city's utility logs, tapping into a secured maintenance network that most people didn't even know existed.

The results?

Substation 9 had been drawing immense amounts of power for the past two years. The drain stopped abruptly three days ago. Security access logs showed multiple people had entered in the last 12 hours.

They're cleaning up.

Kael didn't like that. It meant he was already late to the party.

But that didn't mean there wasn't something left behind.

Kael didn't go in from the front.

Instead, he circled the perimeter, using a thermal imager to scan the structure. No heat signatures. Either the place was truly abandoned, or they had cooled everything down to avoid detection.

He climbed onto an adjacent industrial building, setting up a directional receiver to scan for any active signals.

A few encrypted bursts—likely final data transfers.

But no consistent radio chatter.

That was good. It meant minimal personnel left inside.

Kael moved swiftly, slipping through a maintenance access shaft at the facility's rear.

Inside, the air was thick with ozone—the telltale scent of recently powered-down high-voltage systems.

The facility was mostly empty—disassembled workstations, stripped wiring, and crates marked for transport.

But Kael wasn't interested in what they had taken.

He was interested in what they had left behind.

At the center of the room was a reinforced server rack, still bolted to the floor.

They didn't have time to move everything.

Kael pulled out his power injector, bypassing the main connection and bringing the remaining drives back online.

The screen flickered.

SECURE FILE ACCESS — AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED

He inserted a data bypass module, forcing the system into diagnostic mode. That would let him skim the stored cache without triggering deeper security locks.

As the files decrypted, Kael's eyes narrowed.

Project Viros — Genetic Sequencing & Adaptation. Project Nyx — Experimental Combat Enhancements. Project Meridian — Restricted.

The last file was completely locked out, even with his bypass.

That made it the most important one.

Kael copied everything.

Something Left Behind

He was about to leave when something caught his eye.

A glass containment unit, pushed to the side, partially covered with a tarp.

Kael pulled the fabric back, revealing a preserved biological sample suspended in a containment fluid.

It wasn't human.

At least, not entirely.

It was humanoid in shape, but the skeletal structure was denser, the musculature more defined, and the proportions slightly off.

A tag on the container read:

"Specimen Zeta-3 — Status: Incomplete."

Kael exhaled, studying the strange, unnatural form floating in the liquid.

He didn't know what this thing was, and to be honest, he didn't care.

What did matter was that whoever had been here before him had left this behind.

Which meant they didn't think it was valuable enough to move—or it was already considered a failure.

Either way, it wasn't his problem.

Leaving No Trace

Kael wiped the server logs, ensuring that his intrusion wouldn't be tracked.

He left the way he came, disappearing into the night as the facility remained silent behind him.

Once he was back at his safehouse, he plugged the new data chip into his console, beginning the decryption process.

Whatever this was—whatever Project Meridian involved—it was something people had gone to extreme lengths to hide.

Kael cracked his knuckles.

Now, it was just a matter of finding out why.