The heavy blast door leading out of the Sonar Zone slid shut behind them, sealing off the oppressive silence.
But the relief was short-lived. Vance looked at the corridor stretching out before them, and his expression darkened behind his sunglasses.
"Old Ghost wasn't kidding," Vance muttered, his voice tight. "This is the kill zone."
This hallway was different. It was fifty meters long, perfectly straight, and lined with smooth, seamless white panels. There were no cameras here. No laser grids. Just a floor paved with large, pristine white ceramic tiles.
It looked like the entrance to a heaven, or a morgue.
"Pressure sensors," Vance analyzed, his eyes scanning the floor. The data stream on his retina confirmed the threat. "Independent piezoelectric plates. Calibrated to detect a weight variance of 500 grams. A rat runs across, and the walls open up to turn this hallway into a shredder."
There was no pattern to hack. It wasn't a software problem; it was a physical circuit. Step on it, close the loop, die.
Cerberus looked at the floor, then at the walls. The walls were polished glass-reinforced polymer—too smooth to climb, too hard to dig into.
"We can't fly," Cerberus whispered, his muscles tensing as he calculated jump distances. Fifty meters was impossible, even for him.
"No," Vance smirked, a drop of sweat sliding down his temple. "But we can change our perspective."
He knelt down and tapped the heels of his heavy tactical boots.
Click.HUMMM.
A low-frequency vibration traveled up his legs. The soles of the boots began to emit a faint electromagnetic pulse. These were the Magnetic Tactical Boots he had bought from the Ghost Market—standard issue for zero-gravity ship mechanics, repurposed for urban infiltration.
"The ceiling," Vance pointed up.
Unlike the smooth floor and walls, the ceiling was an exposed industrial skeleton. Heavy steel I-beams, ventilation ducts, and cable trays ran the length of the corridor, hidden in the shadows above the glare of the floor lights.
"It's the only surface not wired to kill us," Vance said. "Follow me. Step only on the steel beams. If you fall... don't expect me to catch you."
Vance walked to the corner where a vertical support beam met the wall. He lifted his foot and placed it on the steel surface.
CLANG.
The magnet engaged with a heavy, metallic thud. It felt like his foot had been welded to the wall. He lifted the other foot, stepping higher.
CLANG.
He walked up the wall, defying gravity, until he reached the ceiling. Then, with a grunt of exertion, he inverted his body completely.
Blood rushed to his head instantly. The world flipped. The deadly white floor was now a ceiling hanging above him, threatening to crush him. The vertigo was nauseating.
"Move," Vance gritted out, his voice sounding strange and congested due to the inversion.
Cerberus followed. The boy moved with surprising grace, his core strength allowing him to swing his legs up and lock onto the beams effortlessly.
They began their upside-down trek across the fifty-meter death trap.
It was an exhausting ordeal. Every step required forcibly ripping the magnetic boot from the steel and then slamming it down again. Thud. Thud. Thud. The rhythmic sound echoed in the steel, vibrating through Vance's skull.
Dust, undisturbed for years, drifted down from the cable trays, coating Vance's face. He wanted to sneeze, but he held it back, tears welling in his eyes.
Halfway across, Vance stopped abruptly.
His boot had landed on a section of ductwork that wasn't bolted down securely.
Creaaak.
The metal sheet groaned under his weight, shifting a few millimeters. A screw, rusted loose by time, fell from the ceiling.
Vance watched in horror as the tiny screw tumbled down, down, down toward the white tiles below.
It was small, maybe 10 grams. But if it hit the sensor at terminal velocity?
Ping.
The screw hit the tile. It bounced once. Twice. And settled.
Vance held his breath, staring at the hidden gun ports in the walls.
Silence.
The weight was too light to trigger the alarm.
Vance exhaled, realizing his shirt was soaked with sweat. The inverted gravity was making his nosebleed worse; he could taste the iron of his own blood trickling down the back of his throat.
"Don't step on the ducts," Vance signaled to Cerberus. "Stick to the I-beams."
They continued, slower this time. The strain on Vance's ankles and abs was screaming. His neural port throbbed in sync with his pulse.
Finally, they reached the end of the corridor.
They hung upside down above the destination.
Below them lay the steel doors of the central elevator. And just to the right of the elevator, tucked in a dark corner, was a heavy, industrial maintenance hatch.
Vance scanned the area.
Above the elevator doors, mounted high on the wall, was a single camera lens.
"That one isn't rotating," Vance noted, wiping the blood and sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. "It's a fixed watcher. A digital sentry guarding the gate."
The camera stared unblinkingly at the space in front of the elevator.
"I can disable it," Cerberus whispered, reaching for a throwing knife from his inverted position.
"No." Vance shook his head, his face flushed red from the blood pressure. "If you break it, the signal cuts, and the alarm goes off. It's a dead man's switch."
Vance checked his internal map, overlaying the blueprints onto the physical space below.
The layout was a tactical nightmare.
The maintenance hatch led to the ventilation shaft for the holding cells—Basement Level 3, where Nyar was kept.
But the elevator led to the Top Floor, the command center where Envy sat in his spiderweb of screens.
"We can't bypass that camera to get to the hatch without being seen," Vance realized. "And we can't hack the elevator without physical access."
He looked at the hatch, then at the elevator. A plan, reckless and dangerous, began to form in his overclocked mind.
"Drop down," Vance whispered. "In the blind spot. Corner, left."
CLANG. Thud.
Vance disengaged his boots and dropped to the floor, landing in a crouch in the small shadow beside the elevator shaft, just out of the camera's view. Cerberus landed silently beside him.
Vance stood up, his legs shaking slightly as blood rushed back to his lower body. He took a deep breath, steadying his equilibrium.
He looked at the maintenance hatch on the floor. Then he looked up at the elevator button.
"Change of plans," Vance said, his voice dropping to a whisper, cold and decisive.
"We can't ghost our way through this part. Envy is paranoid. He has all the doors locked."
"To open the path..." Vance adjusted his sunglasses, hiding the ruthless calculation in his eyes. "...someone has to knock on the front door."