Marina's neural ports sparked. Blood ran down her neck in thin streams, mixing with the water still dripping from her jacket. She pulled up the first guard profile on a handheld display that looked older than the Buenos Aires metro system.
"This one still remembers her name," Marina said. "But she won't by morning."
Kasper took the device from her hands. The screen showed a young woman, maybe twenty-four, with neural ports running along her spine like a surgical scar that never healed. Brown eyes that looked dead in the photograph.
They were standing in Onofre's underground facility. Not the operations center. A side chamber that smelled like gun oil and old concrete and something metallic that reminded Kasper of blood. The walls had geometric patterns carved into them, art deco angles that turned structural support into something almost beautiful. Brass light fixtures from 1932 cast everything in amber.
The team had arrived fifteen minutes ago. Still wet from the factory's fire suppression systems. Still running on adrenaline from fighting off European special operations forces. García was checking her equipment in the corner, her hands shaking just slightly. Every few seconds she'd touch her left temple. Three times. Always three. Kasper had noticed it during the factory firefight. Some kind of stress response her institutional training hadn't managed to condition out of her.
Valerian was cleaning his sidearm with aristocratic precision, like violence was just another social obligation. Rui's bioluminescence flickered dim and blue against the geometric shadows.
And Lydia stood near a communications array, all seventeen experiential streams processing the guard profile Marina had just shown them.
"Natalia Reyes," Marina continued. Blood dripped from her nose now. Slow. Steady. "Guard Three in the rotation. When her conditioning weakens, she whispers 'Nat' to herself. Like she's trying to remember who she was before al-Zawahiri made her into this."
Lydia's hand found the edge of the tactical table. Gripped hard.
"I know her," Lydia said quietly. "Knew her. When we were children in Project Lazarus. Before the conditioning. Before everything."
Kasper looked at Onofre, who had appeared in the doorway like he'd been waiting for this exact moment. The old man wore the same immaculate suit despite Buenos Aires falling apart around them. His chronometer caught the light, brass casing with a sunburst pattern that belonged in a museum.
"We need to talk about your plan," Kasper said. "Before you brief everyone else."
Onofre raised an eyebrow. Slight. Controlled. "You have objections to simultaneous operations?"
"I have objections to suicide missions dressed up as tactics." Kasper pulled up the operational timeline on the nearest display. Four teams. Six-minute windows. Eight-minute windows. Seventeen-minute windows. All compressed into twenty-four hours because al-Zawahiri had detected their intelligence leak and was accelerating his evacuation protocols.
The mathematics were brutal.
"Team Two," Kasper said, pointing at Sean's assignment. "You're asking him to extract seventeen children from a defended facility in eight minutes. If he's thirty seconds too slow, ATA executes the subjects rather than lose them. That's not a tactical challenge. That's asking him to be lucky."
"Luck is a resource," Onofre replied. "Like ammunition or time. You use what you have."
"Luck runs out."
"So does time." Onofre checked his chronometer. "Twenty-three hours, forty-two minutes until operations execute. Argue with the plan if it makes you feel better. But the timeline won't change because you're uncomfortable with probability."
Kasper's jaw tightened. He wanted to hit something. Preferably Onofre's face. But the old man was right. Time didn't care about objections.
Marina swayed slightly. Caught herself against the tactical table. Her neural ports were flickering faster now, the damage indicators pulsing with a rhythm that looked wrong.
"Twelve hours," she said. Her voice was flat. Mechanical. "My conditioning is breaking down. Al-Zawahiri built failsafes into everyone he enhanced. If we deviate too far from programming, the neural architecture starts collapsing. I'm deviating. It's collapsing."
"Twelve hours until what?" García asked from across the chamber. Her hand found her left temple. Tapped three times. Her institutional training demanded specifics even when she was terrified.
"Until I'm nonfunctional." Marina touched the ports along her spine. Winced. "Until my nervous system decides that choosing to help you is more painful than dying. Until I stop being useful and start being a liability."
Rui crossed the chamber. His bioluminescence brightened as he got closer, circuits pulsing faster as his cyberlitch consciousness analyzed her neural architecture automatically. "Can you make it through the briefing? Give us everything before the failsafes kill you?"
"Yes." Marina pulled up more guard profiles. Twelve faces. Enhanced individuals who'd been children when al-Zawahiri started conditioning them. "But I can't be there tomorrow. Won't survive long enough to help with extraction. So I need to teach you everything now. Every recognition code. Every phrase that reaches the six salvageable guards. Every way to break through conditioning when someone's fighting to remember they're human."
She looked at Kasper. Her eyes had blood in them. Capillaries rupturing from neural stress. "The six guards who are fighting. They're not trying to escape. They're trying to stay conscious while their nervous systems tell them that being a weapon is easier. That obedience means relief. That al-Zawahiri's programming is protecting them from the agony of free will."
Kasper understood that. Costa del Sol had taught him what it felt like when your body betrayed your choices. When pain became so constant that surrender started looking like mercy.
"Show me the rest," he said.
Marina pulled up the second profile. Male. Twenty-six. Augmentation visible even in the photograph, geometric patterns of enhancement running along his arms like circuit boards growing under skin.
"Carlos Mendoza. Guard Seven. He remembers being called Charlie." Marina's hand trembled as she pulled up more data. Twelve years of watching people lose themselves piece by piece. "He fights conditioning by counting. Numbers in sequence. Prime numbers when it's really bad. Anything to prove his mind is still his own."
Lydia made a sound. Not quite a sob. Not quite a gasp. Something between the two that suggested her distributed consciousness was fracturing just from seeing his face.
"Charlie drew pictures," Lydia said. All seventeen streams converging on memory. "On the walls. With markers when they'd let him. With his own blood when they took everything else. He said as long as he could create something, they couldn't own him completely."
The third profile appeared before anyone could respond. Female. Twenty-three. Enhancement more extensive than the others. Neural ports covering most of her spine. Hands modified for combat in ways that suggested she'd been designed as a weapon more thoroughly than most.
"Isabela Torres. Guard Twelve." Marina hesitated. Blood dripped faster from her nose now. "She doesn't remember her original name anymore. But she remembers Lydia. Remembers being friends with someone who chose pink sneakers. That memory is the only thing keeping her consciousness anchored."
Lydia let go of the tactical table. Took two steps back. Her hand was shaking.
"I can't," she said. Her voice came out broken. Fragmented. Like her consciousness was splitting apart just from seeing their faces. "I can't go in there. Can't watch them die. Can't handle remembering who they were while killing what they've become."
"You're not going to kill them." Rui moved beside her. His circuits pulsed steady, artificial heartbeat trying to remind her biological one how to function. "You're going to save them."
"What if I'm wrong?" Lydia's fragmentation was accelerating. You could see it in how her movements became less coordinated, how her voice split between different inflections. "What if I remember them being saveable and they're not? What if my memories are just conditioning making me think they're still human so al-Zawahiri can use my hesitation to kill us all?"
Kasper crossed to where she stood. Put himself directly in her line of sight so all seventeen streams had to process him instead of spiraling into panic.
"You identify them," he said. "I decide if they're salvageable. You don't carry that weight. I do."
Lydia looked at him. All seventeen streams processing that offer.
"You'd kill my friends if I'm wrong about them?"
"Yes." No hesitation. Costa del Sol had burned out whatever part of him needed to soften terrible truths. "Because keeping you functional is more important than preserving your innocence. You're asking if I'd sacrifice your friends to save you. The answer is yes. Every time. Without question."
Something shifted in Lydia's expression. Not quite relief. Not quite horror. Just recognition that someone else was willing to carry the weight of impossible choices so she didn't have to.
Her hand still shook. Her breathing was still uneven. But the seventeen streams started coordinating again. Enough to function. Enough to fight.
"Okay," she said. Her voice cracked but it was singular. "I identify them. You decide. We extract who we can."
A klaxon cut through the chamber. Not loud. Just insistent. The kind of alarm that said someone was exactly where they shouldn't be.
Onofre's expression didn't change. He pulled out a handheld communicator that looked like it had survived three wars and a flood. "Report."
The voice that came back was professional. Calm. But urgency bled through underneath. "European operatives. Inspector Weber's signature. They've found the entrance to the San Telmo tunnels. Currently attempting breach. We're holding them at the primary choke point but they've brought shaped charges."
Kasper's hand found his sidearm automatically. "How long until they're through?"
"Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty if we're lucky."
"Luck is a resource," Kasper said, throwing Onofre's words back at him. "Like ammunition or time."
Onofre allowed himself a slight smile. "Indeed." He spoke into the communicator again. "Activate decoy protocols. Lead them toward the Palermo exit. Make them think we're evacuating that direction. Full commitment. I want this convincing."
He looked at Kasper. "We have approximately thirty-eight minutes before Weber realizes she's chasing ghosts. We'll use that time to complete the operational briefing. Then we relocate again. The Sindicato has more tunnels than the Europeans have patience."
"They'll keep coming," García said. Her hand found her left temple. Three taps. Fast. "Every time we relocate, they track us. Every time they track us, we lose time we don't have."
"Which is why we're not just relocating." Onofre pulled up a holographic display. The image flickered slightly, power fluctuations from old infrastructure meeting new technology. "We're accelerating operations. Deploying in twenty-three hours instead of forty-eight. Hitting all four targets before Weber can organize another assault."
"That's not acceleration," Valerian said from where he'd been cleaning his weapon. His aristocratic drawl had an edge now. "That's desperation."
"Desperation and tactics look identical when you're running out of time." Onofre activated a broader tactical display. Four targets glowed in amber light against geometric patterns that turned Buenos Aires into art deco cartography.
The operations center was filling with people now. Operatives in tactical gear. Technical specialists checking encryption arrays housed in brass casings with geometric reliefs. Medical personnel preparing surgical stations. All of them moving with efficiency that came from practice. The chamber smelled like gun oil and antiseptic and coffee that had been brewing too long.
Onofre's voice cut across the space. "Twenty-three hours, forty-two minutes. Four simultaneous strikes. Every team deploys with compressed timeline and minimal margin for error."
He pulled up the first target. Edificio Kavanagh. The art deco tower that had been Buenos Aires's tallest building for thirty years and still dominated the skyline with geometric precision.
"Team One. Server destruction." Onofre looked at Torrealba, who'd appeared near the tactical displays. "Your window is six minutes before ATA reroutes data to European backup servers. Failure means al-Zawahiri's complete operational history transfers to EU Intelligence. Success means forty years of techniques die with those servers."
Torrealba nodded once. His face showed nothing. But his hand found the grip of his sidearm, checking it was there, checking it was loaded. Ritual before impossible odds.
"Team Two." Onofre pulled up the second target. A warehouse in Barracas that looked abandoned from the outside. The kind of place where terrible things happened and nobody asked questions. "Seventeen children in various stages of enhancement. Mr. O'Connor leads extraction."
Sean stepped forward. Burns from Mirage City still visible on his arms, the skin pink and tight where regeneration hadn't quite finished. "Eight minutes?"
"Eight minutes before ATA executes failsafe protocols and kills the subjects rather than let them be rescued."
"No." Sean's voice was flat. Hard. "I'm not doing this."
The operations center went quiet. Conversations stopped mid-sentence. Operatives turned to look. Even the hum of equipment seemed to fade.
Onofre's expression didn't change. "Mr. O'Connor..."
"Eight minutes for seventeen children?" Sean cut him off. His jaw was tight. Hands clenched at his sides. "That's not tactics. That's not even gambling. That's asking me to watch kids die because you can't give me enough time to save them all."
"The timeline is dictated by ATA's failsafe protocols, not by my preferences."
"Then we change the timeline." Sean pulled up the facility schematics. "We hit them earlier. Before they know we're coming. Before they can trigger the failsafe."
"Earlier means Teams One, Three, and Four lose their coordination advantage. Al-Zawahiri detects the pattern and evacuates."
"So we accept that some children die?" Sean's voice had an edge now. Anger underneath the professional calm. "We do the math and decide seventeen lives isn't worth disrupting the larger operation?"
"Yes." Onofre met his eyes. "Because saving seventeen while losing the six salvageable guards and allowing al-Zawahiri to escape means he creates seventeen more enhanced children next year. And seventeen more the year after that. The mathematics are brutal. I'm not pretending otherwise."
Sean was quiet for three seconds. His hand went to his pocket. Touched something there. That photograph Kasper had glimpsed earlier. Two children smiling.
"Fine," Sean said finally. His voice was quieter now. Resigned. "Eight minutes. But if I'm thirty seconds too slow and those kids die, that's on you. Not on the timeline. Not on ATA. On you."
"Accepted." Onofre pulled up the third target without acknowledging the weight of what he'd just agreed to carry. "Team Three. Mobile convoy interception. Mr. Xander leads with Manager García providing digital warfare support."
Valerian studied the tracking patterns. "If al-Zawahiri detects our pattern and reroutes?"
"Then Team Three becomes mobile response adapting to changing conditions." Onofre met his eyes. "I'm assigning you specifically because Obsidian Syndicate training prepared you for operations where plans disintegrate and adaptation determines survival."
"Flattering." Valerian's tone was dry. Aristocratic. "When do we deploy?"
"Seventeen minutes after Teams One and Two execute. You must engage before al-Zawahiri evacuates to backup location."
"Seventeen minutes." García had moved beside Valerian, her tablet already displaying convoy intelligence. Her hand found her left temple. Three taps. "That assumes Teams One and Two hit their windows exactly. If they're delayed..."
"If they're delayed, al-Zawahiri escapes and we've accomplished nothing." Onofre's voice was detached. Clinical. Ninety-three years of making terrible calculations. "Which is why delay isn't acceptable."
The chamber had gone quiet again. Not silent. The hum of ventilation systems. The click of equipment being checked. The murmur of operatives receiving assignments. But quiet in the way that mattered. People absorbing that success required perfect execution across four simultaneous operations with timelines measured in minutes.
"Team Four." Onofre's attention shifted to Kasper. "Cryogenic facility. Twelve enhanced guards. Six potentially salvageable. Six too far gone. Your window is nonexistent. You deploy simultaneously with Team Three."
He pulled up facility schematics. The building looked small from above. Underground, it sprawled like a tumor. Geometric patterns showing chambers and corridors that went down three levels. Power systems. Containment systems. And at the center, the cryogenic storage where al-Zawahiri kept his decoy body and his most valuable assets.
"Extract the salvageable guards," Onofre continued. "Eliminate the unsaveable. Destroy the decoy body. And somehow accomplish this without losing Miss Ceballos in the process."
Lydia touched the neural ports along her temple. "My friends are among the six salvageable guards. Nat and Charlie and Isabela. If I'm wrong about them, I watch them die. If I'm right but we're too slow, al-Zawahiri executes them. If we succeed but I can't handle the emotional impact, my consciousness fragments completely."
She looked at Onofre. All seventeen streams focused. "No pressure. Just everything."
Marina stepped forward. Moving carefully now, like her nervous system was fighting every motion. "I can help Team Four. I know the facility layout. Know the guard rotations. Know which six are fighting and which six are lost."
"You're compromised," Rui said. His bioluminescence pulsed brighter. "Your conditioning is breaking down. The moment you approach the facility, it might reassert control."
"Might." Marina met his eyes. Circuits recognizing circuits. "But it might not. And Team Four needs every advantage."
"She won't survive long enough to help with extraction," Kasper said. Stating the obvious because someone had to. "Twelve hours until her conditioning kills her. Operations deploy in twenty-three. She'll be dead before we breach."
"Then I give you everything now." Marina pulled out a data cylinder. Different from the one she'd given at the harbor. This one looked older. Personal. Scratched from years of being carried close. "Everything I know about breaking conditioning. Every technique that worked for me. Every moment I managed to choose instead of just executing programming."
She set it on the tactical table. "When you go into that facility tomorrow. When you see those six guards fighting conditioning. Remember they're choosing agony over comfort. That's not weakness. That's the strongest thing humans can do."
A technician appeared in the doorway. Young. Nervous. The kind of person who probably got assigned messenger duty because they weren't useful anywhere else.
"Sir," they said to Onofre. "Inspector Weber's forces have breached the decoy tunnel. They're pursuing our operatives toward Palermo."
"Good." Onofre checked his chronometer. "How long until they realize it's a diversion?"
"Thirty minutes. Maybe forty."
"We'll need twenty." Onofre pulled up a new set of schematics. Another tunnel system. This one deeper. Older. The architectural patterns suggested it predated the 1932 construction by decades. Colonial stonework instead of poured concrete. "We relocate to secondary facility. Complete tactical preparation there. Deploy at dawn."
"Dawn," García repeated. Her hand found her temple again. Three taps. Always three. "In approximately twenty-two hours."
"Twenty-two hours, seventeen minutes." Onofre deactivated the displays. "Teams separate for equipment distribution. Study target packages. Run scenario simulations if you need mental preparation. But understand this is happening whether you're ready or not."
The operatives began dispersing. Professional efficiency giving way to something more human. People finding quiet corners. Checking equipment with ritualistic precision. Sean pulled out that photograph again, staring at it like it was the only thing keeping him anchored.
Kasper headed toward where Team Four's tactical packages were being assembled. The section of the chamber smelled different here. More gun oil. More metal. The scent of equipment maintained for violence.
Rui followed. His bioluminescence casting blue-green patterns across geometric concrete walls. Then Lydia, moving with the slight uncoordination that meant her distributed consciousness was processing too many streams simultaneously. Marina came last, each step looking like it cost her something.
The tactical table displayed everything Marina had provided. Facility layout. Guard positions. Recognition codes. Shift rotations. Windows where conditioning weakened. The intelligence was comprehensive. The kind of detail that came from twelve years of living inside the system.
"These three." Marina pulled up profiles. "Nat. Charlie. Isabela. Lydia's friends from Project Lazarus."
The faces appeared in sequence. Each one showing someone who'd been a child when al-Zawahiri started conditioning them. Who'd spent years being turned into weapons. Who were fighting to remember they'd been human first.
Lydia's hand found the table's edge again. White knuckles. All seventeen streams converging on faces she recognized.
"Nat taught me how to hide food," Lydia said quietly. "When the scientists weren't looking. So we wouldn't be hungry between experiments. She was nine. I was seven. We promised we'd escape together."
Her voice cracked. "Charlie drew pictures on the walls. With whatever he could find. Said as long as he could create something, they couldn't own him completely."
Second profile. Carlos Mendoza. Guard Seven. Enhancement patterns visible in the photograph like someone had tattooed circuit diagrams onto his skin.
"And Isabela." Lydia's distributed consciousness was fracturing again. You could see it in how her movements became jerky. Uncoordinated. "Isabela doesn't remember her own name but she remembers me. Remembers pink sneakers. That's all that's left of who she was."
Marina pulled up the other three guards' profiles. The ones who were salvageable but Lydia didn't know personally.
"These three are also fighting," Marina said. "Different reasons. Different memories. But they're conscious enough to resist conditioning when external pressure provides opening."
She highlighted recognition codes. Small deviations in response protocols. Hesitations before executing orders. Questions that hinted at thought instead of programming.
"We don't extract them directly," Marina continued. "We create situation where they extract themselves. Cut power to conditioning reinforcement systems. Disable remote execution protocols. Give them sixty-second window where their free will isn't being suppressed."
"And if they choose to keep fighting?" Valerian had joined the group, his weapon now clean and reassembled. "In that sixty seconds?"
"Then they were never salvageable." Marina's voice was flat. "And we kill them knowing we gave them a chance. That's better than killing them while they're still fighting to escape."
Rui's circuits pulsed brighter. "I can disable the conditioning reinforcement systems. Interface with their neural architecture. Introduce enough interference that their free will surfaces for sixty seconds."
He paused. "But doing that burns out my systems. I'll have maybe five minutes after I disable their conditioning before my consciousness fragments completely."
Silence in the tactical area. Just the hum of ventilation and the distant sound of operatives preparing equipment.
"You're saying you'll die," Kasper said.
"I'm saying I've run the numbers." Rui's bioluminescence flickered. "My consciousness can handle the interface or it can handle staying alive. Not both. I'm choosing the interface."
"Why?"
"Because Lydia needs to believe people like us can be saved." Rui looked at her. At all seventeen of her fragmented streams processing his words. "If I die proving that former Lazarus subjects can break conditioning and choose to help others, it proves she has a future. That fragments can remember being whole."
He smiled. Complicated expression on a face that was partially synthetic. "I'm dying so she can live believing she's still human. That's good mathematics."
Lydia made that sound again. Not quite a sob. Her hand found Rui's arm. All seventeen streams trying to communicate something words couldn't carry.
"Don't," she managed. "Please don't."
"Someone has to." Rui's circuits pulsed steady. "Might as well be me."
Marina swayed. Caught herself against the table. Blood was running from her nose now. Thin stream of red against pale skin. Her neural ports sparked, bright enough to see even in the amber light.
"Failsafe protocols accelerating," she said. Her voice was strained. Mechanical. Like the conditioning was fighting for control even as it killed her. "Eight hours now. Maybe less."
She pulled up facility schematics one more time. "Remote execution system has a failsafe. If al-Zawahiri detects rescue attempt, he can trigger it manually. Kill all twelve guards in three seconds. Someone needs to disable that before you breach."
"That's me." Lydia's distributed consciousness was already interfacing with the tactical data. Processing security architecture through seventeen different analytical frameworks. "I can infiltrate their network without triggering alarms. Disable the failsafe. But I need physical access to facility systems. Within fifty meters."
"Fifty meters puts you in the kill zone," Valerian said. His tactical assessment was immediate. "Enhanced guards with directed energy weapons. The moment you're detected..."
"Then we don't get detected." Kasper pulled up approach vectors. "Lydia infiltrates ahead of main team. Disables failsafe. Signals when it's done. Then we breach."
He looked at each of them. Rui who was choosing to die. Marina who was dying whether she chose it or not. Lydia who was fighting to stay conscious enough to save her friends. Valerian who was calculating odds and not liking what he found.
"The six who are too far gone," Kasper said. "What's the protocol?"
"Lethal force." Marina's voice was flat. "No hesitation. They're weapons that look like people. You treat them as threats until they prove otherwise."
García appeared at the tactical table. Her hand found her left temple. Three taps. "We should discuss contingencies. What if one of the teams is compromised before deployment? What if Weber tracks us to the secondary facility? What if..."
"Then we adapt." Kasper cut her off. Not unkindly. Just recognizing that planning for every contingency was how you paralyzed yourself before the fight even started. "We move. We adjust. We complete the mission or we die trying."
García's hand found her temple again. Three taps. But she nodded.
Another klaxon. Different tone. Higher pitch. The kind of alarm that meant the situation had changed in ways that required immediate attention.
The technician appeared again. Even more nervous now. "Sir. Inspector Weber has realized the decoy. She's redirecting her forces. Currently triangulating our actual position using signal analysis."
Onofre's expression didn't change. "Time until she locates us?"
"Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty."
"We evacuate in ten." Onofre's voice cut across the chamber. "All personnel. Secondary facility. Leave the trackers they planted during the factory assault. Let Weber chase more ghosts while we prepare for operations."
He looked at Kasper. At Team Four. At the tactical displays showing impossible timelines and brutal mathematics.
"Twenty-two hours, three minutes," Onofre said. "And Inspector Weber closing in faster than projected. Al-Zawahiri accelerating his evacuation. Marina's conditioning killing her. Rui's sacrifice imminent. And six guards who might be fighting or might be bait."
He checked his chronometer one more time. "The mathematics keep getting worse. But the mission doesn't change. Four teams. Four targets. Everything happens at dawn whether we're ready or not."
The chamber erupted into controlled chaos. Operatives grabbing equipment. Technical specialists disconnecting arrays from their brass housings. Medical personnel securing surgical stations. All of it happening with the kind of efficiency that came from practicing evacuation procedures until they became muscle memory.
Kasper helped Lydia gather the guard profiles. She was moving slower now. All seventeen streams showing exhaustion that went beyond physical. Marina was leaning against the tactical table, her neural ports sparking with increasing frequency. Blood dripping from her nose onto geometric patterns carved into concrete.
Rui's bioluminescence was dim. Flickering. Like his consciousness was already preparing for what came next.
"Kasper." It was García. Her institutional training giving way to something rawer. Fear. Her hand found her left temple. Three taps. Fast. Desperate. "We're not going to make it, are we? Four teams. Impossible timelines. European operatives hunting us. This is suicide with extra steps."
"Probably." Kasper finished gathering equipment. "But the alternative is letting al-Zawahiri continue for another forty years. You're choosing between immediate tragedy and prolonged atrocity."
"That's not a choice. That's just picking which nightmare we prefer."
"Welcome to tactics." Kasper handed her a tactical package. "Study the convoy routes. Find patterns Weber wouldn't see. Figure out how to make seventeen minutes feel like an hour."
García took the package. Her hand found her temple again. Three taps. But she nodded. Turned toward where Valerian was coordinating with Team Three specialists.
The evacuation was nearly complete. The chamber that had been full of people and equipment now showed signs of rapid departure. Cables disconnected. Displays dark. Just the ambient hum of ventilation and the geometric shadows cast by brass fixtures that had survived ninety-three years of Sindicato operations.
Onofre was the last to leave. He stood near the entrance, checking his chronometer, calculating something only he understood.
"Mr. de la Fuente," he said. "A moment."
Kasper crossed to where the old man waited. Up close, you could see the wear. The exhaustion behind detached precision. Ninety-three years of managing the Sindicato. Of making terrible choices and living with their consequences.
"You asked earlier if I was just another manipulator who understands hope is the cruelest form of control," Onofre said. "The answer is yes. I am. But that doesn't make the hope less real. Those six guards are fighting. Marina confirmed it. Rui believes it. Lydia needs it. Whether they're salvageable or not, they're fighting."
He looked at Kasper. "Tomorrow you'll prove whether faith in salvageability is justified or whether I'm just an old man who's been doing this too long to remember that sometimes people are lost beyond recovery."
"And if they're lost?"
"Then you kill them. And we all live with one more tragedy." Onofre checked his chronometer. "Nine minutes until Weber's forces arrive. We should go."
They left through tunnels that went deeper than the first installation. Older architecture. The geometric patterns were rougher here. Less refined. Like whoever built these passages cared more about function than aesthetic. The brass fixtures were tarnished. The concrete showed cracks from decades of settling.
The team moved in silence. Professional spacing. Eyes tracking for threats even though they were supposed to be secure. Kasper's enhanced hearing caught the sound of water dripping somewhere distant. The scrape of boots on concrete. The hum of Rui's bioluminescence providing just enough light to navigate by.
Marina stumbled. Rui caught her. His circuits flared bright for a second, analyzing her failing systems automatically.
"Seven hours," Marina said. "Maybe six."
"Can you make it to the secondary facility?" Rui asked.
"Yes. But that's all. No extraction. No operations." She looked back at where Kasper was helping Lydia navigate the uneven floor. "Everything I know is on that data cylinder. Recognition codes. Breaking techniques. Everything."
"We'll use it," Kasper said. "Save your friends. Prove conditioning can be broken."
"Prove weapons can choose to stop being weapons," Marina corrected. Her neural ports sparked again. Brighter this time. "That's what you're really proving. Whether choice exists when someone's spent years being told they don't have one."
The tunnel opened into a larger chamber. This one looked older than the San Telmo installation by decades. Maybe centuries. The architectural style was different. Less art deco. More colonial. Brick and stone instead of poured concrete. Light came from electric fixtures that had been retrofitted into spaces designed for torches.
"Secondary facility," Onofre announced. "Built in 1810 when Buenos Aires was fighting for independence. The Sindicato acquired it in 1875. We've maintained it ever since."
The space was smaller than the first operations center. But it had the same capabilities. Holographic displays flickering against colonial stonework. Communications arrays. Weapon racks. Medical stations. Just compressed into colonial architecture that predated modern warfare by a century.
Teams claimed their territories. Team One gathering around a scaled model of Edificio Kavanagh. Team Two distributing specialized extraction gear, the smell of explosives sharp in the old air. Team Three analyzing convoy routes with the kind of focus that came from knowing how thin their margins were.
And Team Four near the tactical displays showing the cryogenic facility. Kasper. Rui. Lydia. Marina leaning against a support column because standing unsupported was becoming impossible.
"Twenty-one hours, fifty-three minutes," Onofre announced. "Teams have until dawn to prepare. Sleep if you can. I suggest you try."
But nobody moved toward the sleeping quarters. Just stood there processing that tomorrow they'd either save six lives or prove that some weapons could never become people again.
Kasper's communicator buzzed. Single vibration. Message incoming.
He pulled it out. The screen showed an unknown sender. Military-grade encryption. The kind that required quantum processing to crack. But the message had come through anyway. Just six words in simple text.
I know you're coming. Good luck.
No signature. But Kasper knew who'd sent it.
Al-Zawahiri.
The message timestamp was three minutes old. Which meant he'd been tracking them. Knew about the operations. Knew about the four teams. Knew about tomorrow's deployment.
And he'd sent his regards anyway.
Kasper looked at his team. At Rui who was dying to prove choice mattered. At Marina who was dying because she'd already chosen. At Lydia who was fighting to stay conscious enough to save her friends who might already be dead.
He showed them the message.
Lydia's seventeen streams all focused on the screen at once. Her hand found the edge of the tactical display. Gripped hard enough that her knuckles went white.
"He knows," she said. All seventeen streams converging on terrible certainty. "He knows about Nat and Charlie and Isabela. He knows we're coming for them. He's going to kill them before we even breach."
"Maybe." Rui's bioluminescence flickered. "Or maybe he's bluffing. Trying to make us change the plan. Second-guess ourselves into failure."
"Or maybe he's testing them." Marina's voice was barely a whisper. Blood still dripping from her nose. "Telling them that rescue is coming. Seeing if they'll try to hold out for one more day. Seeing if they'll choose to keep fighting even when he gives them the chance to surrender."
Kasper looked at the message again. Six words. I know you're coming. Good luck.
Not a threat. Not a taunt. Just acknowledgment. Like al-Zawahiri understood exactly what they were trying to do and wanted them to know he respected the attempt even as he prepared to crush it.
"Twenty-one hours," Kasper said. "We deploy at dawn. He knows we're coming. Fine. Let him know. Let him prepare. Let him do whatever he thinks will stop us."
He looked at each of them. "Because we're going anyway. And tomorrow we find out if weapons can choose to stop being weapons. Or if al-Zawahiri's right and choice is just another illusion."
Lydia's hand was still shaking. Her seventeen streams were still fragmenting. But she nodded.
"Tomorrow," she said. "We save them or we prove they were already lost."
The colonial facility hummed around them. Old stone. Older secrets. And somewhere above, Buenos Aires continued its rhythms. People sleeping. Traffic flowing. Life continuing with oblivious momentum.
While underneath, a team prepared for operations that would either prove that conditioning could be broken.
Or that some people were weapons from the moment al-Zawahiri touched them.
Twenty-one hours until they found out which.