Chapter 26 – Collapse

The corridor behind Hale collapsed in a firestorm of light and static. He didn't look back. He couldn't.

06:59.

The neural core was dying—and with it, the last remnants of Project Marionette's stolen souls. Hale sprinted through the facility, air thick with heat and the scent of burning wires. Sirens echoed from every direction. The walls groaned like the entire bunker was coming apart.

He slammed his hand onto a security door. Nothing. Power was failing. Systems were going dark one by one. He cursed, stepped back, and fired three rounds into the control panel. Sparks burst, and the lock hissed open.

Freedom was just ahead.

But so were the enemy.

Down the hall, Blackstar agents spilled into view—armed and ready. At least four. Maybe more.

Hale ducked behind a column, counting his bullets. Not enough.

He heard one of them call out: "Alive. They want him alive!"

Not today.

He popped out from cover, aimed for the sprinklers overhead. One shot.

Glass shattered. Water rained down, shorting exposed wiring and bathing the floor in chaos.

As agents scrambled, Hale ran.

He weaved through a lab—knocking over tables, grabbing a flash drive from a dead scientist's pocket, slamming into the emergency exit.

05:31.

The tunnel beyond twisted upward like a spinal cord of concrete and metal. At the end: a ladder.

He climbed.

Every rung burned his palms, but he kept going. One floor. Two. Then—

Boom.

A pressure wave from below hit the shaft like a thunderclap. He lost his grip—slipped—and caught himself inches from a fall. Blood from his arm smeared the metal, but he climbed again.

At the top, daylight cracked through a rusted hatch.

He burst through.

The cold air hit him like a rebirth.

He was out.

The field was quiet. He was somewhere outside the city—snow still clinging to dying grass. The facility had been buried in a forgotten bunker.

Behind him, the earth trembled. Smoke rose from vents hidden in the hills.

Then—silence.

Hale collapsed to his knees, sucking in ragged breaths.

The flash drive in his hand pulsed like a heartbeat.

He looked at it.

The last piece of evidence. The last copy of everything that had just burned.

Then footsteps.

A figure emerged from the trees.

He turned fast, gun raised.

But it wasn't Blackstar.

It was her.

Charlie's sister—coat stained with ash, hands up in surrender.

"You made it," she said softly.

"Barely."

She looked at the flash drive. "Then there's still time."

"Time for what?"

She stepped closer.

"To finish what they started."

A sniper scope settles on Hale's back.

In the distance, someone whispers into a radio.

"Target reacquired. Awaiting greenlight."

Fade to black.