15 Miles: The Heist
By Rapwizzy Debaron
Episode 32: Ghost Mode
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Rain fell harder now, echoing like distant gunfire in the storm drains above. Beneath the city's veins, the D7 team moved in silence—coordinated, invisible, deadly. The Whisper Protocol had turned them into digital phantoms. Every camera, drone, and AI system scanning the city fed back nothing but static where they stood.
Julian led the way through a flooded tunnel beneath the old industrial district. Their destination: Black Site Theta.
"ETA six minutes," Eve whispered through her comms.
Reese, ever the wild card, flipped a blade between his fingers as he jogged behind her. "Feels too easy."
Carter, scanning their route with a repurposed Nexus node, frowned. "That's because it is. I'm picking up frequency spikes ahead. Scramblers—they know we're coming."
Julian halted. "Trap?"
"Maybe. But it's not Lucian's style to ambush with just scramblers. He's baiting us."
Julian's jaw tightened. "Then let's bite."
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Inside Black Site Theta...
Lucian stood before a towering black monolith, a piece of the Nexus Core unlike any other. It pulsed with eerie, blood-red light.
"Activate contingency protocol," he ordered.
His technician hesitated. "Sir, if you trigger it now, we risk a system backlash—worldwide."
Lucian didn't blink. "I said activate it."
A keystroke later, deep below the surface, Nexus stirred.
Back in the tunnel, Carter's device screeched in his hand.
"Uh... problem," he muttered.
"What now?" Reese groaned.
"The Nexus Core is rewriting the grid. Everything's locking down—harder than before. It's... it's fighting back."
Julian's eyes narrowed. "So we hit harder."
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Thirty floors below Nexus HQ...
A secret terminal, once thought to be dormant, blinked to life. A lone figure, face obscured, watched D7's every move on a private feed.
"Phase two begins," the voice whispered, cold and mechanical.
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Back with D7...
The tunnel opened into a massive underground chamber—a forgotten train station, bathed in dim red emergency lights. Ahead, two dozen Ghost Net soldiers stood in formation, rifles raised, masks cold and unfeeling.
Julian stepped forward slowly, hands raised.
"We don't want to kill you."
Reese snorted. "I kinda do."
Suddenly, all the lights shut off. Then—
Bang.
The first shot rang out.
Chaos.
Eve dove behind a rusted bench, returning fire. Carter launched a flash grenade. Reese danced between pillars, silent and lethal. Julian surged ahead, every move calculated, every bullet finding its mark.
Within minutes, the station was a warzone of smoke and silence.
As the last Ghost Net soldier dropped, Eve limped to Julian's side.
"We need to move," she gasped. "This was just the outer ring."
Julian took a breath, wiped the blood from his brow, and looked up toward the sealed elevator shaft at the far end of the chamber.
"We go up," he said. "We end this."
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To be continued…
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15 Miles: The Heist