The Drive case was cold enough to stick to Eliza's gloves. She snapped it open. The screen, usually a crisp white, looked ghostly blue in the total dark of the forest. The light, even on the lowest setting, felt like a spotlight, hitting the frozen moss and their desperate, tired faces.
"Thirty minutes," Julian confirmed, his voice barely a sound. He held the Link terminal, its casing now slick with condensation from the temperature shift, pressed against the remaining warmth of his chest. The angry red light pulsed relentlessly: STABILITY CRITICAL.
"We get three, maybe four seconds of broadcast time, tops," Eliza said, her breath fogging the screen. "I have to isolate the Link's outbound frequency, patch it to the Drive's directional antenna, initiate a broadcast ping, and receive the return signal. Then I run the calculation. If I take longer than five seconds, Sterling's monitoring systems will have a lock on us. Not a vague triangulation—a lock."
"Do it in three," Julian corrected, his eyes scanning the dense undergrowth. Every branch shadow looked like a crouching figure. The drone's distant, circular howl was a constant, maddening reminder that they were not alone.
The Drive case was their only advantage. It wasn't just power; it was a secure communication and hacking system—the size of a small briefcase and weighing almost as much. Its primary function was to run complex, long-range computations, making it the perfect tool for a quick, directional sweep.
Eliza took a deep, shaky breath, her hands hovering over the input keys. She couldn't afford to fumble. The air was so cold the plastic buttons were brittle and unforgiving.
"On my mark. I need you to brace the Link. Any vibration during the ping and we might corrupt the address cache. That is the only thing keeping the failsafe from executing right now."
Julian nodded, settling back against the pine. He pressed the Link flat and still, using his own body as the dampener, ignoring the sharp, grinding protest from his broken ribs. The pain was just white noise now.
"Mark."
Eliza's fingers stabbed the keys: Patch. Initiate Antenna. Broadcast Frequency Isolation.
The Drive case responded with a sudden, mechanical growl. Relays clicked like gunshots inside the aluminum casing, and a bright green LED flared momentarily before settling into a rapid, blinking yellow. The internal fan, loud in the silence, whined up to a desperate pitch as the system cycled through a massive power surge.
The directional antenna, a flat, dark panel embedded in the case's lid, was now transmitting. Their signal, faint but powerful, was screaming into the network looking for Destination_Theta_1.
Julian watched the Link. It remained steady, but the red light changed its rhythm, pulsing faster, hungrily reacting to the Drive's sudden proximity to a live power cycle. It was an animal straining at its leash.
Eliza's head was down, focused entirely on the screen. Data scrolled, a frantic wash of network traffic and spatial coordinates.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
"Got it! Signal received!" Eliza shouted, her voice tight with triumph and panic. She slammed the TERMINATE command. The Drive case instantly went silent, the fans slowing to a dead stop, the bright yellow light winking out. The total broadcast time: 3.2 seconds.
The Lock
Julian released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. The silence rushed back in, broken only by the persistent, distant whir of the drone.
"Location?"
Eliza was already running the geometry. The calculation was complex, folding in atmospheric interference, signal decay, and the known topology of the valley. A new, clean map vector appeared on the Drive's small screen.
"It's a point four kilometers due north of here," Eliza announced, her finger tracing the line on the map. "Not a house. It's an old communications relay—a mast. Sterling's team must be running a portable receiver out of a bunker or an abandoned station at the base of the mast. That's the only place with enough height and existing infrastructure to receive a transmission this weak."
The location was precise. But as relief surged through Julian, it was immediately crushed by a new reality.
The Link terminal, which had just been stable, abruptly pulsed a brilliant BLUE—not the critical red, but a new, terrifying status. A small, secondary screen in the corner flashed a new, bold text: CONN. ATTEMPT DETECTED.
"Eliza! The Link felt the network response," Julian hissed.
Eliza whipped her head up, her face draining of color. "We found their receiver, but our signal wasn't the only thing that pinged. When we established that temporary connection, the Link's unique signature—which Sterling's systems are programmed to find—was exposed for 3.2 seconds."
She slammed the Drive case shut. The click of the latches was final.
"They didn't triangulate us, Julian. They found the signature. They know who and, more importantly, what just broadcast near their receiver. They are already running a vector on the source."
The hunter had become the hunted. They had exchanged the aerial threat of the drone for the ground assault of a coordinated, armed extraction team.
"How long until they reach us?" Julian asked, pushing himself to his feet. He felt a sudden, electric clarity, the panic replaced by cold, focused rage.
"They're four kilometers away, waiting for a key they know we have. If they're competent, ten minutes to mobilize and secure the mast, then maybe fifteen to reach this point. That gives us twenty-five minutes of head start, maximum. And we still have the time limit on the Link."
The Link's internal purge timer, once an abstract danger, was now the same timer counting down until Sterling's team found them.
"We're moving," Julian commanded, tucking the Link back into his jacket. "We don't try to hide anymore. We go for the source. If they're at the mast, that's where the power is. We steal their power supply, stabilize the Link, and transmit Destination_Theta_1 before Sterling can stop us."
The comms mast, a dark, thin skeletal spire, was faintly visible through the trees in the distance, a lonely needle piercing the low cloud cover. It was their objective, their power source, and their final battleground. Julian started moving, plunging deeper into the unforgiving darkness of the forest, no longer trying to run gently, but running with the blunt, brutal speed of pure necessity.
The race is now a direct assault on Sterling's temporary fortress. What is the single most critical piece of equipment they must carry and why is it now more dangerous than the Link itself?