The hum of the ventilation system was louder in the early hours of the morning. At 04:00, the underground lab was supposed to be at its quietest—just rotating staff, automated diagnostics, and silence. But silence, Damian knew, was just the cover for movement. And this morning, movement meant war.
He stood in the central command room, dim red lights bathing the lab's interior as he watched the security feeds blink into loops. The pattern was exact: Sasha's touch. Four feeds covering primary access halls were now frozen in twenty-minute loops. No alarms. No warnings. Just illusion.
A slight vibration ran through the floor—nothing any regular scientist would notice. But to Damian, it was the signal: the Infiltrators had activated.
He left the terminal and walked into the containment corridor, coat swaying behind him, expression unreadable. Behind reinforced glass, five Conduits slept or waited—or paced. This would be their last night as prisoners. Grace hadn't told them of the plan but she just told told them something would happen soon.
He keyed in the access code to Grace's cell first.
She was awake, already dressed. Her eyes met his through the shrinking barrier.
"Is it time?" she asked quietly.
He nodded. "Move quickly. You're on point."
No questions. She stepped out, flexing her fingers. The steel rings she'd crafted from lab scrap floated to her side like loyal pets.
Next was Jason. He met Damian's gaze with raw suspicion as the door opened. "You better explain this, fast."
"I'm breaking you all out of here," Damian said. "You can ask why later—or stay here and die."
Jason clenched his jaw. "I'll take the door."
Rachel was already standing by hers, coin in hand.
"Tails this time," she whispered and flipped it. It landed—tails. She smiled and joined Grace silently.
Marissa's door slid open with a long hiss. She paused only to gather her wrist-mounted tone-pulse devices.
"Not the rescue I expected," she muttered, "but better than the one I planned."
Elliot was last. He stumbled out, wide-eyed, trembling.
"What… What's happening?"
"We're escaping," Grace said, already walking. "Stay close and keep quiet. Follow orders."
Damian led them through the service corridor, bypassing main hallways where guards would soon rotate shifts. Sasha's work had shut off most electronic locks and redirected surveillance. Still, it was only a matter of time.
Halfway through the west wing, one of the Infiltrators flickered into visibility beside him—a slim, angular humanoid cloaked in an iridescent shimmer.
"Clear path ahead," it rasped in a frequency only Damian could hear. "One patrol intercepted in Hall 3C. Audio loop deployed."
"Good," Damian said replied in the same frequency. "Maintain shadow form. Stay rear."
The group moved as a unit now following Grace's command. Jason watched every shadow. Rachel calculated every step. Marissa sent sonar pulses through the floor. Elliot stuck to Damian's side like a frightened child.
Then—a voice ahead.
"Hold it! Who the hell are—?"
Damian stepped forward, already pulling a stun-dart from his coat. But before he could fire, Grace flung two of her rings forward. They sliced through the air with a hum, striking the guard's gun and wrist. Metal clanged; bone cracked. The guard hit the floor before he could scream.
More footsteps—three more guards from the right.
Jason surged forward, absorbing a stun baton strike to the chest. He redirected the energy into a palm blast that threw one soldier into a wall.
Marissa let out a scream—not fear, but frequency. The piercing tone made the last two guards stumble, dropping their weapons. Grace finished it with a focused push, slamming a heavy cart into them.
It was over in seconds.
Rachel knelt, flipping a coin from one of the fallen. "Bad luck," she said.
Damian nodded, impressed. "Good work. I'm impressed. Now let's move before someone comes to check out why they're now responding."
Meanwhile, two floors above, Sasha moved like smoke through the shadows of the secondary control hub. She'd left the infiltrator pretending to be her in the cell, it was currently being "interrogated" by a First Sons lieutenant none the wiser.
Now, she was busy erasing logs.
She pulled a data drives from her hip and plugged it into the backup server. Years of First Sons experimentation—Conduit energy profiling, Ray Sphere tests, digital logs of human trials—all transferring in minutes. She set a viral overwrite to erase records on her access.
"Extraction team nearing ventilation shaft," came Damian's voice over the comm.
Sasha smiled, her wings rippling faintly under the illusion suit. "Your path is clear. You have five minutes before the secondary systems reboot."
Back in the lab's lowest sublevel, the group reached a wide, sealed hatch. The ventilation shaft beyond it was narrow—single-file only—but it would take them past the blast doors and out into the surface access tunnels.
Damian keyed in a bypass code. The lock hissed.
"Grace, you head out first," he said. "Take Rachel and Marissa with you."
"Got it," she nodded. "Jason, you bring up the middle. Elliot, stick with Damian."
Each of them nodded, filing in quickly. The tunnel was dim, rusted, but clear. Wind from surface vents whistled faintly in the distance.
As the last of them entered, a klaxon rang out—brief, muffled, confused. The surveillance reboot had started, and someone had noticed.
"Too late," Sasha whispered into his ear, alerting him that she had retrieved the other data drives and was now following behind them.
Damian gave her a subtle nod. "Good cover our escape without being seen."
As Damian closed the hatch behind him, Sasha placed a small device that burned the access pad with a burst of electricity, and followed the group as they climbed the emergency ladder that was only used if the elevators malfunctioned.
They emerged into the Historic District under cover of dawn. Cold wind slapped their faces. The sky above Empire City was streaked red-gold, smoke from distant fires curling upward.
The test subjects stood, blinking, breathing air that wasn't recycled, processed, filtered. Real air. The weight of sky above them. The open world.
Elliot nearly fell to his knees. "We made it…"
Jason looked around, on edge. "For now."
Grace turned to Damian. "What now? I doubt they'll just let us go."
Damian tapped his comm once.
"Breach in the lab. Conduits are loose. Head for the elevator."
And with that, he turned to face the group, "That'll buy us a few extra minutes. Now that we've done the easy part we can focus on the hard part. For now, let's get you guys out of those hospital robes as they draw too much attention. Once that's done we can focus on trying to make it to The Warren."