Chapter 88: Gearing Up for the Graveyard
He looked up at them, at his broken, mismatched family, and a new, cold wave of dread washed over him.
He was about to lead them into hell.
"Valerius’s intel wasn’t complete," he said, his voice a low, grim statement of fact.
He pointed to the lowest, most heavily reinforced level of the blueprint.
"That’s not a research wing."
The dragon’s echo in his soul stirred, a faint, ancient whisper of recognition. It knew this kind of energy. The energy of a prison.
He met Chloe’s cold, gray eyes, his own wide with a dawning, terrible realization.
"It was a disposal site," he said, the words a quiet, chilling finality.
"A dumping ground for the experiments that were too unstable, too monstrous, even for Project Chimera."
He took a slow, shaky breath.
"The security system isn’t our biggest problem."
"The prisoners are."
The warehouse was a hive of quiet, focused activity.
The air, usually filled with Jax’s manic energy and Jinx’s cynical commentary, was thick with the somber, professional tension that comes before a mission you might not come back from.
This wasn’t a heist.
It wasn’t a battle.
It was a descent into a graveyard, and they were all keenly aware that there might not be enough room on the tombstone for all of their names.
Michael found Jinx in the armory, a small, reinforced room that smelled of gun oil and cordite.
She was methodically field-stripping her rifle, her movements a familiar, meditative ritual of control in a world that was spiraling out of it.
He leaned against the doorframe, the silence stretching between them for a long moment.
"Hey," he said finally, the word feeling small and inadequate.
She didn’t look up. "Hey."
"I, uh..." he started, then stopped, the words getting stuck in his throat.
He wasn’t good at this. The feelings stuff. The apologies.
"You were right," he said, the words coming out in a rush. "About Valerius. About the DGC. It was a risk."
"I know why you don’t trust her," he said quietly. "And I’m sorry. For not... listening."
Jinx stopped her work, the soft click of metal on metal ceasing.
She finally looked up, her electric-blue eyes meeting his. The anger was gone. In its place was a deep, weary resignation.
"The call’s been made, kid," she said, her voice a low, rough thing. "Now we live with it."
She paused, a faint, humorless smile touching her lips.
"Or die with it."
"Either way, it’s just another Tuesday."
She turned back to her rifle, but her movements were different now. The tension was gone.
She reached under her workbench and pulled out a sleek, black harness made of a matte, non-reflective material.
She tossed it to him.
"Here," she grunted. "New toy."
"It’s a Gen-4 OmniCorp stealth harness," she explained, her voice all business. "The kind the Vanguard scouts use. Dampens your heat signature and absorbs sound. It’s not invisibility, but in a place with no electronic surveillance, it’s the next best thing."
He looked at the harness, then back at her. It was a peace offering. A non-verbal statement.
I’m still watching your back, you idiot.
"Thanks, Jinx," he said, the words feeling heavier than they should.
"Don’t thank me yet," she retorted, not looking at him. "It’s a prototype I lifted off a dead Vanguard a few months ago. The power cell has a fifty-fifty chance of either working perfectly or giving you a very nasty, very personal electrical shock."
She gave him a sideways glance, a faint, cynical spark back in her eyes.
"Don’t get yourself killed," she said. "It’d be a waste of good hardware."
He found Jax in his workshop, and the sight was so jarringly out of character that it actually made him pause.
Jax wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t juggling grenades.
He was just... working.
He was hunched over his workbench, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated focus, a pair of high-tech magnifying goggles strapped to his head.
He was carefully, meticulously, assembling a new series of grenades. They were smaller than his usual creations, sleek and surgical.
"Hey, Boomer," Michael said quietly.
Jax looked up, his usual manic grin replaced by a tired, but genuine, smile.
"Spooky!" he said, his voice a little too quiet. "Come to admire the artist at work?"
He held up one of the new grenades. It was a thing of minimalist, deadly beauty.
"New batch," he explained. "Not the usual ’make a big noise and run away’ kind. These are... quieter."
"Resonance charges," he said, his voice dropping. "They won’t blow a hole in a wall. They’ll vibrate it apart at a molecular level. Perfect for getting through old, brittle structures without bringing the whole damn graveyard down on our heads."
He tossed one to Michael, who caught it with a fumbled, nervous motion.
"Kael’s pets are probably down there," Jax said, his voice turning serious. "The ones that didn’t make the cut. The early models. They’ll have cybernetics. You’ll need something to give them a headache."
He looked at Michael then, his cheerful mask slipping for a moment, revealing the genuine fear beneath.
"So, uh..." he started, his voice suddenly awkward. "Just in case we don’t make it back..."
He gestured with his head towards the corner of the workshop, where his little googly-eyed drone, Sparky, was currently trying to stack a pile of nuts and bolts.
"You can have Sparky," he said, his voice a little choked. "He needs a firm but loving hand. And his primary motivator is the fear of being disassembled for parts. He’s very relatable."
The quiet, absurd sincerity of the offer almost made Michael laugh. It almost made him cry.
"I’ll keep that in mind, Jax," he said, his own voice a little thick.
He left Jax to his work and walked back out into the main common area, the weight of his team’s fragile, broken trust a heavy, comforting presence.
He was about to head to his own room, to prepare, to meditate, to build his walls for the hell that was to come.
"Michael."
The voice was Chloe’s.
She was standing by the main exit, a datapad held in her hand like a shield.
Her face was a mask of cold, professional composure.
"Final mission briefing," she said, holding the datapad out to him. "Asset assignments. Infiltration routes. Contingency plans."
"Memorize it."
It was her usual, clinical, no-nonsense self.
He reached out to take the datapad.
Her fingers brushed against his.
And she didn’t let go.
The touch was light, almost imperceptible, but it was a live wire. A jolt of pure, unadulterated, and utterly unprofessional emotion that shot straight up his arm.
He looked up at her, surprised.
She was looking at him, but her usual, analytical gaze was gone.
Her cold, gray eyes were a stormy sea of a thousand unspoken fears.
"Michael," she said again, her voice a quiet, almost desperate whisper, the use of his actual name a shocking, intimate thing.
"The Alkahest," she said, her professional mask cracking, just for a moment. "It is not just a mission-critical objective."
She took a small, shaky breath, her gaze so intense it felt like a physical weight.
"It is... a personal priority."
It was the closest she could come to saying it.
Your survival is important to me.
Don’t you dare die on me.
He felt it then, not with his ears, but with his [Void Sense].
A raw, overwhelming, and utterly terrifying wave of pure, undiluted anxiety, pouring off of her in waves so strong they almost buckled his knees.
She was terrified.
Not for the mission.
For him.
The moment stretched, a silent, fragile eternity.
Then, she seemed to remember who she was.
She pulled her hand back as if she’d been burned, her composure slamming back into place with the force of a reinforced steel door.
"Go," she said, her voice suddenly stiff, formal. "We move out in five."
She turned and walked away, her back ramrod straight.
Michael just stood there, the datapad heavy in his hand, his heart pounding a slow, heavy rhythm in his chest.
The van was quiet as they drove towards the quarantined walls of the Bronx.
The city lights faded behind them, replaced by the dark, skeletal shapes of the dead zone.
The mood was somber. Resigned.
They were a team.
They were a family.
And they were walking into their own tomb.
Just as they reached the massive, graffiti-covered concrete walls of the quarantine zone, a frantic, desperate voice crackled to life in their comms.
It was Luna.
Her breath was coming in ragged, panicked gasps.
"I... I see it," she stammered, her voice a thin, terrified thread. "The black site..."
She let out a small, choked sob.
"It’s not a prison," she whispered, her voice full of a new, specific, and deeply unsettling terror.
"It’s not a graveyard."
She took a shaky, terrified breath, her final words a chilling, final verdict that turned their blood to ice.
"It’s a nest."
"Something has been... growing... in the dark."