The predawn fog hung thick over District Nine as the hands of the clock tower crept toward five-thirty in the morning.
Inside the sprawling complex of Central Relief Hospital, two hundred heavily armed Directorate elite guards patrolled the tiled corridors with loaded rifles.
Every major hallway, surgical ward, and pediatric unit had been wired with high-yield mana-explosives, their glowing red detonator wires snaking through the ceiling panels.
"Look at the mana signatures radiating from the intensive care unit on floor four," Vasa whispered, adjusting her thermal goggles from the ventilation catwalk above the main lobby.
"They have converted the entire central surgical wing into an off-world spatial extraction gate."
"Director Sterling is preparing to flee the planet through that gate while using five thousand patients as a biological shield," Jax noted, tracing the primary electrical lines with his scanner.
