Chapter 41 - Protocol Zero
The red beams of the Cleaners’ laser sights converged instantly across the fractured chamber. For Marcus Sterling, the pronouncement from the gunship was a death sentence he hadn't foreseen. His masters had not sent reinforcements; they had sent an eraser.
"Wait! I am the Director!" Marcus shrieked, backing away toward the secondary consoles. "The data is almost decrypted! We control the Whitmore assets!"
The lead Cleaner didn't answer with words. A suppressed burst from his submachine gun stitched across the steel console inches from Marcus’s head, showering him in sparks and severed copper wiring. The Directorate didn't negotiate with liabilities.
"Clara, down!" Ethan roared.
The glass cage took the next barrage. High-caliber rounds punched through the reinforced acrylic, spider-webbing the transparent walls into opaque white fractures. Clara curled into a tight ball in the corner, her hands clamped over her ears as fragments of glass rained over her.
Naomi didn't flinch. In the heartbeat between the Cleaners' landing and their second volley, she was already moving. The maid's gray uniform tore at the shoulder as she pivoted off the main terminal, snatching a heavy ceramic insulator rod from the shattered floor and hurling it with inhuman velocity.
The rod struck the nearest Cleaner square in the throat seal of his tactical helmet. The man choked, stumbling backward into two of his squadmates just as their rifles discharged into the ceiling.
"Ethan! South pillar! Suppressive fire!" Naomi commanded, her voice cutting through the mechanical countdown blaring across the platform.
*[Platform structural integrity failing in forty-five seconds. Core vents purging.]*
Ethan fired two controlled double-taps from his Sig Sauer, dropping one of the off-balance Cleaners before diving behind an overturned server rack. "I'm running dry on ammunition! How do we get Clara out?"
"Watch the door!" Naomi yelled.
Vanessa, clutching her shattered, bleeding hand where Ethan's bullet had destroyed the remote detonator, was scrambling toward the side exit. But the steel blast doors were already locked tight by the fail-safe code Naomi had injected.
"Let me out! Father, open the damn door!" Vanessa screamed, beating her bloody fist against the reinforced steel.
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Marcus didn't even look at his daughter. His eyes were wild, darting toward a narrow maintenance hatch beneath the raised catwalk—a single-occupant escape route meant only for the architect of the facility.
"There is no loyalty among monsters," Naomi muttered, dropping low as another Cleaner swung his barrel toward her. She lunged forward, closing the six-foot gap before the soldier could pull the trigger.
