“I was looking for the man trying to kill our son.”
Olenka held Henrik’s gaze. The lie was a calculated risk. Jurgis’s overlaid code on her datapad was the evidence, a digital shadow of his true intent. Henrik's pupils contracted as cold rage replaced suspicion.
Then, the entire level shuddered. A low, grinding resonance vibrated through the reinforced plasteel floor. Warning klaxons, previously silenced during the lockdown, blared to life across the server farm, their pulse-fire red lights strobing through the confined space. An automated voice, flat and unyielding, announced: “Unauthorized entry detected. Perimeter breach. Sector Gamma-7.”
Henrik’s head snapped towards the nearest sensor array, his hand going to a comm-unit clipped to his belt. “What in the name of the Blight is that?”
“Jurgis,” Olenka stated, her voice devoid of inflection. She gestured to the datapad, still displaying the spliced code. “He knows I found his payload. This is his contingency.”
Before Henrik could respond, the heavy server racks along the far wall began to tilt, groaning under an unseen force. A section of the wall exploded inwards, shrapnel and dust erupting into the room. Through the newly formed aperture, a construction-droid, stripped of its safety protocols and armed with a repurposed plasma cutter, roared. Its multi-jointed arms, typically used for precision welding, swiveled menacingly.
Henrik didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Olenka, shoving her behind a cluster of coolant pipes as the droid’s plasma beam seared the air where she had just stood. The heat was immense, the smell of ozone choking. He drew a compact sidearm from a holster beneath his jacket. “Miko!” he barked into his comm-unit. “Status!”
Static. The compound's comm-channels were jammed.
“He’s cut off outside communication,” Olenka observed, watching the droid advance, its optical sensors glowing malevolently. “Standard procedure for a hostile takeover. He’s taking everything.”
“He won’t take my son.” Henrik’s voice was a low growl, utterly devoid of fear, replaced by a chilling resolve. He fired, the kinetic slug shearing a chunk from the droid’s armored chassis. It staggered but kept advancing. These were not the standard fabrication units; these were combat models, built for heavy demolition, now turned instruments of ruin.
Another breach erupted further down the corridor. Two more units clambered through, accompanied by three contract gunmen in reinforced visors with carbines raised. The estate was under assault, not from outside, but from within its own walls.
Olenka scanned the unfolding chaos. This attack had been mapped out to exploit the estate’s unfinished state, leveraging exposed cable runs and temporary paneling. Her planned dead-zones would now serve as unexpected chokepoints.
“North wall, section three,” she announced, pointing. “The comms relay is vulnerable. They’ll try to disable our local network from there. I built a pressure plate, miscalibrated. We can collapse the service shaft.”
Henrik nodded, his gaze already calculating trajectories and cover. “You lead.”
They moved with a terrifying, synchronized efficiency. Henrik covered her as she sprinted through a maze of exposed wiring, the construction-droids’ heavy footfalls shaking the floor. He laid down suppressing fire, pinning the gunmen, allowing Olenka seconds to reach the miscalibrated plate. She slammed her palm down, and a hidden bulkhead sheared its bolts. The shaft buckled, sending concrete chunks onto two infiltrators who had almost reached their objective.
“South corridor,” Olenka yelled over the din of battle, already anticipating their next flanking maneuver. “Temporary power bus. Overload it.”
Henrik moved, a blur of focused aggression. He vaulted over a fallen coolant line, firing at a gunman attempting to outflank them. The target dropped, carbine clattering on the plasteel floor. Henrik drove the heel of his boot into a junction box, sparking an arc cascade along the feed lines that plunged that grid into darkness.
They moved back-to-back. Olenka knew every flaw and deliberately weakened junction she had engineered into the frame. Henrik recognized the utility of each vulnerability, turning them into traps. A ventilation shaft she had broadened for bypasses gave Henrik height; he dropped onto a squad rifleman from above, snapping his neck with an efficient twist.
“He’s trying to cut off our escape,” Henrik grunted, reloading his pistol with practiced ease. “There’s only one route out of this sector, and they’re converging.”
Olenka’s internal map of the Bastion, etched into her memory, spun with new possibilities. “There’s an unused crawlway beneath the main trunk line,” she stated, her voice flat against the gunfire. “It leads directly to Miko’s suite. I routed it as an egress under the guise of a scrubber duct.”
Henrik’s eyes narrowed. “You planned for this.”
“I plan for every contingency,” she replied, dodging a volley of plasma bolts. They were pressed, cornered. The sounds of heavy machinery and combat grew closer, a cacophony of destruction. Jurgis was relentless.
They fought their way towards the hidden access tunnel, blasting through a final construction-droid that guarded its entrance. The air reeked of ozone, propellant, and melted insulation. They scrambled through the narrow passage, Henrik covering their rear, until they emerged into a service corridor two levels above, leading to the residential wing.
“Miko!” Henrik bellowed into the still-jammed comms. His face was grim, a thin line of blood trickling from a graze on his temple. Olenka noted the tremor in his fingers, indexing it as a tactical liability.
They burst into Miko’s opulent suite. The boy was huddled in a corner, his small frame shaking, a data-slate clutched tight. His pupils dilated, darting between Henrik and Olenka.
“Papa! Mama!” he cried, a rare display of vulnerability.
Before either could reach him, the reinforced viewport of the suite shattered with a deafening crack. A raider, suspended from a descent cable outside, had found an opening. His high-caliber carbine swung towards Miko.
Henrik didn’t think. He reacted. With a guttural roar, he lunged, throwing himself across Miko’s small body, shielding him from the impending impact.
The crack of the rifle was deafening. A geyser of blood erupted from Henrik’s shoulder as the round tore through him. He collapsed, Miko whimpering beneath his weight, the data-slate falling from the boy’s grasp.
Olenka’s vision narrowed. The world turned a cold, precise red. Without a word, she scooped up the firearm Henrik had dropped, sighting down the barrel. Two shots. The raider went slack, slipping from the harness and plummeting hundreds of meters to the terrace below.
She knelt beside Henrik, whose breath came in ragged gasps. The wound was grievous, blood spreading rapidly across his expensive suit. His face, usually a mask of control, was contorted in pain, yet his gaze, unfocused, found hers.
“Miko,” he choked out, his voice hoarse, a primal plea.
His eyes, glazed with pain, drifted to the shattered viewport, then to the remnants of the fight outside, the hostile architecture Olenka had designed. He looked at her again, a dawning realization in their depths, cutting through the agony. A single, profound truth, like a blade. “The structural flaws… you did not build them to kill me. You built them to defend him.”