On the third night, as a blizzard howled outside, the lance broke through. One moment they were melting rock, the next, the beam punched into open air, followed by a rush of cool, sterile-smelling air.
They had done it. They were in.
The hole opened into a maintenance crawlspace, a narrow conduit of bundled fiber-optic cables and chilled water pipes that fed the server racks above. The hum of the supercomputers was a tangible vibration in the air.
They slipped through the breach, armed with silenced weapons and tools. Mo Chen's [Thermal Sense] painted a picture of the space around them: the cold lines of the coolant pipes, the warm banks of servers, and the moving heat signatures of the security patrols.
They moved like ghosts through the belly of the beast. Silas planted shaped charges on key structural supports and the main power conduits. This wasn't just about destroying data; it was about bringing the entire mountain down on top of it.
Mo Chen's target was the core server array—the "Black Box" that contained Kraken's most sensitive secrets. She needed physical access to download the data before the destruction began.
They reached the central chamber, a cathedral of technology. Rows of black server racks stretched into the gloom, blinking with countless lights. In the center was a isolated, cylindrical chamber—the Black Box, protected by its own separate power and security system.
This was the heart. And it was heavily guarded. Two Kraken operatives stood watch, their thermal signatures alert and armed.
There was no way to sneak past them.