The silence after the fight hit hard. It was worse than any sound, pressing down on them, broken only by the sharp, ragged sound of them trying to breathe.The total darkness was disorienting, robbing the cabin of its false reality.
Julian lay on the rubber matting, his ribs aching from Eliza's tackle. He could hear her shifting, the scrape of the Drive bag against the floor near his feet.
"The battery," he forced out, his voice hoarse. "How long?"
Eliza's voice came back, thin and cold, somewhere in the black. "The internal core battery can run the system and the protocol sequence for maybe two hours. It needs the generator to complete the Link transfer. But it will still try to run the purge."
"The global wipe," Julian corrected, lifting himself onto his elbows. The sudden darkness made him feel blind and vulnerable. "You didn't know about that."
He heard the dry, miserable scrape of her jacket as she sat up. "Sterling never shares the final security layers with field staff. We are not trusted with the entire picture, Julian. I only knew the Drive was sacred."
"And I am not," Julian replied simply. He pressed a hand against his side, trying to locate the pain.
Eliza crawled away from him, her movement slow and deliberate, toward the far corner where the generator sat inert. "He made the choice simple for me. I secure the Link, I survive. My survival is secondary to the purity of the data. He figured my ingrained loyalty to the mission would make me pull the trigger."
"But the global wipe changes the equation," Julian said, pushing himself up the wall until he found purchase against the cold logs. "If he executes that, he doesn't just secure the Drive. He deletes the entire operational footprint. Every asset, every agent, every trace of the Link's true function goes dark. He is ending the game."
"And starting a new one," Eliza murmured, the sound muffled. He could picture her, back against the rough wood, her head down. "He planned this exit a decade ago. He knew this location. He knew the variables. He gave me a way out, but it was just a final, elegant form of control."
A small, metallic snick echoed in the darkness.
"What was that?" Julian tensed.
"The lock on the drive case," she said. "I'm opening it. We have two hours before the internal battery on the terminal runs the purge sequence. We are completely blind, but the terminal is, too. We have to analyze the contents now. I need to find the master key."
"The key that stops the purge?"
"The key that sends the data outside Sterling's network. We need a secondary extraction route, an off-ramp he never accounted for. It has to be in the code structure itself, a backdoor I missed because I was only looking for a safe house."
Julian stood up fully, finding his footing on the smooth rubber matting. "We can't do this in the dark. We need light."
"Light means a chance of being seen," Eliza warned. "The sensor suite outside the cabin is still running on its own power. We are on a bluff overlooking a valley. Any sustained light source is a beacon."
Julian didn't argue. He moved slowly toward the supply rack, remembering its general height and location. He scraped his fingers across the cold metal. He found the familiar shape of the flashlight….a heavy, military metal tube. He didn't turn it on immediately.
"He left an alternative power source," Julian said, his voice quiet. He was thinking of the ridiculous, expensive bottle of liquor. "The scotch."
"Whiskey doesn't run electronics, Julian."
"No, but the fuel for the generator does. That generator is a multi-fuel machine. It can run on diesel, jet fuel, or even high-proof alcohol. He left that bottle, knowing you would see it, and knowing if you hesitated on my termination, you would have a high-energy fallback to restart the process and secure the Drive. He left you the option of drowning your guilt or fueling the execution."
The thought was chilling. Sterling's preparation was never about comfort; it was always about control and ensuring the protocol was followed.
"We risk the light," Eliza decided, the sound of her voice now closer to the table. "We need the data now, before the purge begins. Don't use the beam. Use the lowest setting, pointed directly at the terminal screen. And stand between the light and the windows."
Julian gripped the flashlight. He closed his eyes, inhaling the stale, synthetic air of the prepared cage. He heard the faint metallic hiss of the Drive case opening.
He thumbed the switch.
A pale, weak beam cut through the absolute darkness, directed downward. It illuminated the rubber matting and the thick, black terminal lying open on the floor. The light made the cold log walls seem even more threatening.
Eliza leaned over the terminal, already inserting a slim, shielded component from the Drive bag into a concealed port. The screen was still dark. But the small light inside the terminal….a tiny flicker—started beating quickly, like a heart going crazy.
"I'm breaking the main system," Eliza whispered, her voice low and hard. "This forces the core to expose its foundation layer. "If there's an off-ramp in the code, it will be here."
The dim light threw Eliza's face into dark shadow, showing the deep lines of being tired and focused. She wasn't typing. She was using a special pen on a layer under the screen, touching the Link's deep core. The screen didn't show pictures. It showed a brutal flood of weird numbers and memory spots.
"It's a total mess," she muttered. Her breath fogged up slightly in the cold cabin air. The generator's warmth was dissipating fast. "Sterling didn't just lock the door, he welded the entire frame. I'm looking for anything that deviates from the 'Link Protocol 5.0' signature. An older hash. A pre-loaded certificate that allows for an external handshake."
Julian shifted, his eyes fixed on the black square of the cabin's sole window. Every guts feeling screamed that their silence was temporary, a weak bubble ready to burst. His mind was running a marathon, trying to picture a map of the valley in the dark, looking for a way out, but it was just too impossible.
"We need to move the terminal," Julian whispered, trying to keep his voice quiet against the logs. "We can't get caught in the act. If Sterling knows the generator is off, he'll be here in minutes."
Eliza shook her head, not looking up. "The Link is in a critical state. If I move the hardware, the magnetic shielding might fail, and the core will initiate a self-destruct. We stay. I have to find a signature that bypasses the Transfer & Purge command." Her stylus flickered over a cluster of glowing white characters. "Wait. This is wrong. Look at this memory pointer—it's looping to an old project file. Project Chronos." She dragged her finger across the screen, isolating the marker. "That project was decommissioned twenty years ago. It's a dead end. Why would it be referenced in the final sequence parameters?" The number sequence associated with the Chronos reference was specific and unique: 21.03.1979. "It's a date. It's an instruction."
She looked up at him, her eyes catching the pale light, wide and strained."We have less than two hours, Julian. And we're on the clock."