At precisely 2:00 a.m., Julian Kade stood on the edge of the Valkor Spire, staring across at the Concord's most fortified data node.
The Valkor Spire was supposed to be unbreakable — a glass-and-titanium monolith housing the combined server banks of three major defense corporations. Buried beneath it were black-budget AI projects, weapon schematics, and covert tracking programs designed to neutralize him.
Julian's lips twitched into a smile.
Tonight, he was going to walk right in.
"Julian, are you sure about this?" Vessa's voice came through the quantum comm, tense but steady. "That building's crawling with pulse sentries, hardlight barriers, and a direct neural guard net. Even you can't code-jump through that without setting off alarms."
Nyra's voice followed, dry and sharp. "You could just let me go in and break a few skulls."
Julian chuckled softly. "No, Nyra. We're not here to smash." He raised his hand, admiring the faint glow of the ring. "We're here to dance."
The System whispered in his mind:
[Environmental Scan: Complete]
[Optimal Infiltration Route Calculated]
[Material Manipulation Nodes Ready]
Julian drew a deep breath, closed his eyes — and leapt.
Halfway through the air, gravity seemed to twitch.
The ring pulsed. Julian twisted his body, tapping into the System's quantum reflex sync, and angled himself perfectly between two rotating defense drones. He slipped past the first hardlight grid, landing lightly on an invisible maintenance ledge that wasn't supposed to exist.
[Nanoweb Surface Deployed]
He ran his palm across the smooth glass — and the surface rippled, bending to his touch. Microfilament tendrils spread from the ring, latching onto the molecular lattice of the wall. With a subtle pulse, the glass softened, allowing Julian to phase through as if slipping through water.
On the other side, a hallway buzzed with crisscrossing laser tripwires.
Julian knelt, examining the field.
Ordinary infiltrators would try to bypass the lasers by finding gaps or cutting the grid — but Julian wasn't ordinary.
He reached into his belt, pulling out a slim metal disc no larger than a coin. With a flick, the System injected it with a lattice-weave nanoweb. Julian pressed it to the ground.
Instantly, the disc expanded into a thin, floating sheet — a field projector. The System pulsed again, syncing its harmonic frequency with the tripwires. Slowly, carefully, Julian raised the field projector — bending the lasers upward, arching them harmlessly over his head like strands of light turned to silk.
He walked through, untouched.
Nyra's voice came through, impressed despite herself. "Okay, you're showing off now."
Julian grinned. "Haven't even started."
Deeper inside the Spire, things got harder.
Reinforced vault doors, DNA-locked security nodes, on-site neural guardians — elite agents wired into the building's defense system, capable of thinking and acting as fast as any machine.
Julian ducked behind a pillar as two neural guardians passed, their eyes flickering with augmented overlays.
"System," he murmured. "Options?"
[Engage Directly: 21% Success]
[Decoy Deployment: 46% Success]
[Environmental Manipulation: 78% Success]
Julian's eyes flicked toward the ceiling — where an array of magnetic stabilizers pulsed gently, holding up a section of weightless architecture.
A smile crept across his face.
He reached into the wall, fingers glowing faintly as the ring's nanoweb extended. Carefully, he traced the circuit lines leading to the stabilizers — then pulsed a recalibration surge.
The result was immediate.
The magnetic field reversed for a split second — just long enough to drop a section of floating architecture five centimeters downward, triggering a localized crash.
The neural guardians spun, weapons drawn, racing toward the disturbance.
Julian slid past them like a shadow, slipping through their own blind spot, and into the main vault.
Inside, the room was cold and humming with energy.
Rows of black servers pulsed with blue light, each one a fortress of encrypted data — military AI schematics, Concord attack plans, next-generation countermeasures designed to wipe Julian's entire empire off the map.
He placed his hand on the nearest server.
The ring glowed.
[Direct Neural Interface Established]
Julian's mind flooded with data — streams of raw code, locked and firewalled, but the System flowed through it like water through cracks. He wasn't breaking in; he was becoming the system itself, weaving through its defenses like a ghost.
Suddenly, alarms blared.
Julian's head snapped up. "What—?"
[Warning: Detection Systems Adaptive]
[Physical Presence Compromised]
A voice boomed through the vault: "Julian Kade. Step away from the servers. You are surrounded."
The walls slid open, and a dozen neural guardians emerged, weapons raised.
Julian's heart pounded.
For a moment, even with all his power, he saw no way out.
Then, the creative out-of-the-box innovation spark hit him.
He glanced down — the servers.
Not just data banks, but massive energy nodes, generating heat and electromagnetic surges.
He reached into his belt, pulling out three tiny magnetized coils — tools for delicate energy calibration. Carefully, he linked them together into a loop, setting the feedback parameters manually.
"System," he whispered. "Can you amplify this?"
[Amplification Possible: Risk Level High]
Julian grinned. "Let's do it anyway."
He slammed the loop onto the nearest server and pulsed the command.
Instantly, the feedback surged, creating a massive localized EMP burst — not enough to fry the servers, but more than enough to short every exosuit and weapon in the room.
The neural guardians collapsed, their systems crashing into reboot mode.
Julian sprinted through the gap, leaping onto a rising platform as the vault tried to seal itself. He ducked through a closing hatch, rolled under a collapsing wall, and slammed a portable cloaker onto his back just as the entire vault went dark.
Outside, Nyra was waiting on the skimmer, grinning. "Told you we should've just smashed in."
Julian collapsed into the seat, panting, the data crystal clutched in his hand.
Vessa's voice came through the comms, a mix of relief and exasperation. "Did you have to pull an EMP bomb inside a military-grade vault?"
Julian laughed, the adrenaline still coursing through him. "Hey, it worked, didn't it?"
Nyra punched his shoulder affectionately. "You're insane, boss."
Julian sat back, staring at the glowing city skyline.
Maybe he was.
But now, he had something the Concord didn't expect — a complete blueprint of their plans, their weapons, their entire anti-Julian playbook.
And the next move?
It was his.