Chapter 19: Precision
I slammed the medical bay curtain shut and ripped the bandages over my head. This place didn't give me no time to recover from my psychical episode, but Jorah's presence was a cold kind of clarity. He was focused on the mission; I needed to be, too.
"We have to go, Kenji," I yelled, " I thought the only way i get answers about this 'linked soul' is if we survive this mission." Kenji nodded grimly, already pulling on his gear. His face was pure nothing, but his movements were noticable—the silent, was noticable in the hallway. "Five minutes are up," Jorah grunted, already halfway out the door. "Move out."
The Old Rogen District was just a busted down fort like the southside; but inside it was a labyrinth of derelict, close-packed apartments and crumbling concrete towers, smelling of dust and stagnant water. We had to run across the rooftops, we had to keep, silence of because of the authority patrol, three hundred meters, heading south," Lyna's voice crackled over headpiecs Klaus had made, cutting through the wind. "They're moving fast. We're cutting it close."
Jorah didn't look down. He simply smashed his metal fist into the roof parapet, instantly creating a sturdy hole. "Kenji, stabilization."
Kenji pushed as hard as he could and for the first time.I felt a wave of internal flaming energy that could cancel a tremor in the structure beneath us. Jorah used the stability to spring across a fifteen-foot gap onto the next building, pulling Lyna, then me, We dropped into what looked like a rooftop greenhouse, its glass panes long shattered. The air here felt super thick, spiritually charged.
"There," Jorah hissed, pointing.
The shattered communication drone layed exposed. Next to its central processing unit was a Aetherium device, it was dark, angular, and covered in strange, pulsing glyphs. It was ticking.
Lyna dropped to her knees beside it, her analyzer humming frantically. Her eyes, usually so bright, were wide with disbelief.
"Lyna, report," Jorah demanded, his voice with a low growl.
"It's a scrambler. Their stealing the data of the fortress. They'll have it in..."Five minutes and thirty seconds. If we disconnect it, it'll overload and wipe the core. We have to shut it down internally."
Five minutes. The air felt thin. I knew the only way to stop it without causing a self-destruct was to hit the device's spiritual core—the chaotic energy source powering the decryption—but that required insane precision. One wrong move, and the entire thing could explode.
What about Kenji he can use his energy to deactivate it, "I need absolute silence, Kenji Said kneeling next to the device. "Lyna, tell me exactly where the core is."
Lyna pointed a trembling finger at a cluster of three interlocking glyphs. " You have to hit only those three points simultaneously. Come on Kenji you do this just focused, drawing the power of your energy. It was
raw destruction; it was mental surgery. He saw the Aetherium device not as metal, but as a complex web of corrupted spiritual threads. To hit those three points, he needed a Surgical Strike.
Kenji channeled his energy and launched an invisible, infinitesimal liquid like a it was a force, pushing through the shielding. I wonder how it felt was it like threading a needle through a hurricane, a mental strain that made you have horrible headaches.
One... two... three...
A faint hiss came from the device. The flashing glyphs died. The countdown went off. Which means he'd succeeded, "It's dead," Lyna whispered, awestruck. "You shut down the entire spiritual mechanism."
"Get the drone," Jorah snapped, already moving. He didn't offer a compliment, only a warning: "Your precision cost us time. The Authority knows exactly where we are now."