The Vertical Gauntlet
The blaring Red Alert transformed the subterranean tunnels of Installation Gamma-7 from a secure facility into a claustrophobic death trap. The air throbbed with the sound of the approaching military choppers, a deep, bone-vibrating thrum that cut through the alarms. Below them, the sliding vault door was closing with a slow, grinding finality, sealing off their access route, but also protecting their rear for the next few crucial moments from any internal OSM pursuit. The very atmosphere felt charged with the electricity of absolute military panic.
Anya clutched the kinetic-dampened satchel containing the Quantum Logic Core, its weight physical and strategic a lead anchor in her hands. "Marco, now! We don't have time for the OSM to reroute security to the shaft. They'll be dropping stun gas soon."
Marco, pale with exertion, pressed his hands against the massive, bolted cover of the main ventilation shaft. His power, normally focused on fine metallic lattices, was now tasked with fatiguing a two-inch-thick steel plate meant to withstand explosive pressure. He concentrated, ignoring the alarms, ignoring the sweat that stung his eyes. Under his hands, the metal began to emit a high-pitched, almost inaudible screech of strained molecules as the internal bonding failed. A spiderweb of hairline fractures spread across the steel's surface, visible only under the harsh, emergency red lights. He pulled back, shaking uncontrollably.
"Done. It's brittle," he gasped, clutching his cramping forearms. "The molecular bonds are failing. One heavy kinetic impact and it will shear clean away."
Caleb produced a custom-made, non-lethal kinetic charge a device Thomas had built for breaching reinforced windows, capable of delivering a powerful, localized push rather than an explosion. He slapped it onto the center of Marco's stressed plate. The resulting impact was a deafening CRACK that momentarily silenced the alarms nearby and hammered the team's eardrums. The steel cover ripped away, folding outward like a crushed tin can, revealing a dark, hundred-foot vertical drop into shadow and a flimsy-looking steel ladder rising toward the faint circle of light that was the roof access. Dust and debris rained down briefly into the depths of the shaft.
"Go! Jenna, take the point, give us sound dampening and visual cover," Anya ordered. "We climb fast. No mistakes."
Jenna, her body shimmering at the edges, was the first to scramble onto the narrow, freezing ladder. Her kinetic camouflage was struggling desperately; the high-frequency sonic emitters embedded in the OSM's deep security infrastructure were interfering with her power, turning her perfect invisibility into a mere, volatile distortion field a faint, oily ripple in the air. She was a blurry streak moving up the ladder, but her power did successfully dampen the noise of their boots and the grinding metal rungs, turning their desperate climb into a ghost's ascent, minimizing the chance of an acoustic lock-on.
Dampeners and Drone Fire
They were halfway up when the first OSM response team, moving with terrifying speed, arrived below, flooding the vent entrance with blinding tactical light. They weren't soldiers, but former Vought-contracted security, now wearing General Rourke's colors.
"They're coming! Shooting up the shaft with Suppressor Rounds!" Caleb yelled, his voice echoing painfully off the steel walls.
Rifle fire rattled violently against the vent walls not aimed at them, but suppressing fire to stop their climb and force them to retreat. One of the shots grazed the rung above Marco's hand, sending a searing metallic tang into the air. He reacted instinctively, fueled by pure adrenaline and fear. With a guttural cry of effort, he focused his molecular agitation on the ceiling-mounted light fixtures ten feet below the OSM team. The glass lenses exploded in a shower of sparks and broken tungsten, plunging the entrance into absolute darkness and forcing the OSM soldiers to briefly retreat to engage night vision and reorient their formation.
That bought them thirty seconds thirty seconds measured in heartbeats and strained muscles.
As Anya hauled herself over the lip of the access hatch, the rhythmic thwok-thwok-thwok of the helicopters was directly overhead, overwhelming. She and Caleb shoulder-charged the thin access hatch, bursting out onto the exposed, wind-swept rooftop. The scene was pure chaos: two massive military OSM Gunships black, menacing silhouettes against the twilight sky were descending, kicking up a hurricane of debris, and two of the C-list strongmen were sprinting toward them from across the rooftop, eager for the fight their superiors never allowed them. These were the "dumb muscle" assets who hadn't been chipped yet, acting on pure instinct.
Jenna immediately activated the maximum output of her camouflage, creating a wide, shimmering field around the team. For a vital four seconds, the Harvesters vanished into a flickering heat-haze, distorting the vision of the Strongmen and the gunship pilots, causing their targeting systems to momentarily spaz out.
Then came the first wave of disciplined, ground-level attack: three OSM tactical teams, unburdened by the Strongmen's arrogance, swarmed the roof access, all wearing the tell-tale Dampener Packs. These were highly trained conventional soldiers who had been briefed on Supe tactics. Anya felt the effect immediately a crushing pressure, like the air had turned to treacle, making her Compound V-fueled strength feel like useless ballast. The subtle, constant sonic hum from the dampeners felt like a migraine waiting to happen, threatening to unravel the focus needed for her telekinesis.
The Last Line of Defense
The confrontation escalated rapidly into a chaotic, desperate melee. One of the Strongmen, a brute called "Quake," whose power was localized seismic shockwaves, slammed his fist into the concrete roof fifty feet away. The rooftop bucked violently. The kinetic dampening field made all their movements slow and heavy, but it made Quake's ground-based power painfully effective, transmitting the shockwave directly through the soles of their feet. The jolt sent the Harvesters sprawling, dropping the valuable Core satchel onto the vibrating concrete.
"The Core!" Anya screamed, scrambling forward against the dizzying dampener field.
"The perimeter wall! We move! Now!" Caleb yelled, providing cover fire with a seized OSM sidearm.
Caleb knew he couldn't win a direct fight against the highly trained OSM troops. He dropped to his knee, pulling out a handful of custom-made signal jammers small, metallic spheres built from salvaged Vought drone parts. He threw them desperately in the direction of the closest helicopter, the one trying to stabilize its descent for a sniper shot. His minor technopathy surged, and the spheres activated, broadcasting white-noise static across the helicopter's targeting and communications frequencies. The pilot, temporarily deafened by the static and unable to lock his weapons or receive coherent commands, peeled away violently, narrowly avoiding a collision with the second gunship.
This momentary distraction allowed the Harvesters to regroup and reach the roof edge. Their extraction vehicle, a reinforced, unmarked delivery van driven by their ally, Leo, was waiting nervously near the perimeter fence, engine running hot.
Just as they prepared to drop, an OSM soldier armed with an Acoustic Scrambler rounded the corner of the air conditioning unit, finding his mark. Anya was the closest to him. The high-frequency wave hit her like a physical blow, slamming her into the cooling unit behind her. Disoriented and nauseous, she felt her telekinesis violently destabilize, her vision blurring at the edges a sudden, sharp pain lancing through her temples.
Anya fought the debilitating vertigo, anchoring her mind on the image of Thomas's cracked shield. She focused every ounce of her remaining, dampened power, not on the soldier, but on the small, high-tech surveillance drone hovering directly between them, relaying her position to the gunships. With a soundless mental snap, she used her telekinesis to rapidly and violently accelerate the drone's tiny plastic rotor blades far past their breaking point the equivalent of an enhanced mental stroke.
The drone didn't just crash it exploded in a shower of shredded plastic and sparks, creating a momentary, blinding cloud of debris that shielded Anya from the Scrambler's main assault. The soldier flinched back, momentarily blinded and disoriented. That was all the time she needed.
Anya pushed off the roof and dropped twenty feet, landing with a jarring impact next to the fence line, the Core satchel clutched securely to her chest. Marco, already on the ground, used his last reserve of energy to agitate the metal base of a nearby OSM perimeter jeep, causing its tires to blow simultaneously and its fuel tank to rupture, creating a flaming, expanding roadblock. Jenna shimmered out of existence entirely, executing a final, total burst of kinetic camouflage covering the leap of the remaining team members, ensuring their final steps were unseen.