The alarms began as a polite chime—then, in under a minute, mutated into a high-frequency wail that bled through every surface. Hazel jerked away from her console, ears ringing, as the penthouse's windows pulsed with an emergency overlay: swaths of crimson flooding across the city's map, little warning icons metastasizing along every arterial route.
On the wall, the main display seized control of itself, force-playing a newsfeed: shaky drone-cam footage of armored Nexar Dynamics teams kicking down the doors of Sombra tenements, dragging out Feran and human alike, rifles and wands drawn. Somewhere in the background, a building's top three floors burned, smoke pouring upward to merge with the city's already cancerous sky.
Ellen tried the main comms, got nothing but static. She shifted to the backup, then the third line—every channel came back jammed or silent. Even the internal signal between their team's earpieces crackled with preemptive defeat.
Hazel was already trying to hack the grid, her hands shaking. "They've got a citywide lockdown. Not just the Sombra lines—Crystal, Financial, even the Underground is sealed off. All transit, all digital, even the food delivery bots are dark."
Jane paced in front of the main screen, every muscle in her shoulders wired tight. "This isn't a sweep. This is an extermination."
Owen's focus was on a secondary monitor, where he'd mapped their planned routes for the heist. As the city's overlays updated, his highlighted escape paths bled red. "They're corralling everyone toward the water, then tightening the loop. We can't get to the target, and if we did, we'd never get out."
Hazel flicked through feeds in a panic: a cluster of teens beaten to the ground by armored police, a riot in Sombra already choked out by gas grenades, a luxury maglev overturned and burning at the edge of Lockwood. "This wasn't supposed to go down until tomorrow. It was supposed to be gradual. They advanced the timeline, or they found out about us."
Ellen tried the comms again. Still nothing but static and the whine of citywide panic.
On the newsfeed, the anchor's mask-perfect face reappeared, voice honeyed and cold. "Breaking news—joint Nexar-Police operation has resulted in the collapse of the Sombra Syndicate, one of the city's largest criminal organizations. Please remain indoors as public safety teams restore order—"
Jane stabbed the mute, nearly breaking the remote. "They just wrote an entire population out of the city's script. Do you know how hard it is to kill a syndicate in one night?"
Owen double-tapped the tactical overlay, zooming in on the Lancaster megaplant. Around it, the icons for private security multiplied, concentric rings forming a siege. "All that noise out there is just to distract from the real play. They're not just clearing Sombra—they're fortifying everything that matters."
Hazel's voice cracked. "They're deploying mages, too. Real ones. Look—" She brought up a spectral analysis, and the penthouse display glowed with lines of mana, all of them flowing east and uptown. "They're using leylines to scan, jam, and disrupt anything that doesn't match the city's DNA. If we light up, even a little, we're dead."
Ellen, eyes fixed on the skyline, picked up a faint, sickening vibration in her hands. The anti-mage fields had activated: a low, persistent pressure in the bones, a taste of iron on the tongue. She touched the edge of her blade, feeling its wards sputter, then fail.
"They're running suppressors," she said. "I haven't felt a blanket like this since—" She stopped, the memory sour.
Owen knew it too. "Nexar's deploying military-grade. They want this over by dawn."
Jane raked a hand through her hair, scanning for options. "We can't reach the target tonight. Not alive, not even dead." She looked at Owen, then Ellen. "Any way to pivot? Any opening?"
Ellen's jaw flexed. "We'd have to go through three lockdown points, past at least two kill teams. Even if we got in, we'd be trapped. Unless—" She caught herself, eyes flicking to Hazel.
Hazel finished the thought, voice dull with shock. "Unless we go invisible. No magic, no tech, nothing. Ghosts."
Jane turned, her presence gathering the team. "We've done worse."
Hazel shook her head, chin low. "Not against this. Not when they're expecting us."
For a moment, the alarms dropped to a lower, more mournful tone—a city in shock, then in silence. The penthouse was sealed off, every digital feed a reminder that the world outside had changed forever in under five minutes.
Owen looked at his team, then at the city, then back at his team.
"We adapt," he said. "We always do."
Outside, the city howled, a thousand fires blooming in the dark.
Jane hit the table so hard the holo-display flickered, blue shadows strobing across every face. "This is a goddamn setup," she spat. "We're supposed to walk into the Lancaster Vault while the rest of the city gets hosed down? No chance. Someone moved our window up and didn't bother to tell us."
Ellen nodded, already pulling up the external feeds on a secondary screen. "Statistical probability of this being random is less than point zero one percent. Our hit was predicted, and they planned this as a cover." She tapped through the overlay, fingers leaving faint heat prints on the poly-surface. "Every route we mapped is either blocked by drones or has overlapping magical suppressors. Even if we ghost it, we get tagged and bagged within two clicks of the target."
Owen looked at his own terminal, where the old routes blinked red in a rhythm that felt like a countdown. "We can still breach. We split into two pairs, go through maintenance tunnels. They're old, pre-grid, probably off the surveillance net. If we time it with the third shift handover, we can get inside, maybe even use the lockdown as a shield."
Jane shot him a look that would have melted lesser men. "You want to improvise against a warzone? With suppressors up, half our kit is useless, and the rest is borderline suicidal. Even if we get in, we don't get out."
Hazel hadn't moved since the alarms started. She stared at the city through the polarized glass, eyes dry and bright. "We were outplayed," she whispered, so low only Ellen caught it.
Ellen leaned in. "What are you thinking?"
Hazel kept her gaze fixed on the chaos outside. "They didn't just collapse Sombra. They collapsed us. All of this—every warning, every signal—was to make sure we couldn't move. We're not the main event. We're just a subplot to whatever Nexar and Taira and Lancaster are cooking."
The word "subplot" hung in the air like a curse.
Jane paced the length of the table, hands clenching and unclenching. "So we hole up. Wait it out. See what survives the night, then hit the target when the dust settles."
Owen bristled, arms crossed. "That's a retreat. We don't do that."
Jane snapped back, louder than the sirens outside. "We do if it means we live to try again." She swung her glare around the room, pinning each of them in turn. "We're no good to anyone if we get erased in the crossfire."
Hazel's fingers twitched, calling up the locked-down comms again. "Even if we wait, it might not matter. They're isolating every Feran-run safe house and black site. Even if we're not on a list, the fact we're not moving makes us suspicious."
Ellen met Jane's gaze, the two women holding a silent conversation built on years of violence and compromise. "Best move is to blackout," Ellen said. "Full quiet. Make ourselves boring. Wait for the real play."
Jane looked at Owen, challenging him to argue.
He didn't. Not really. "We prep the fallback. If they breach, we hit the panic tunnels and scatter. Meet up at the Sombra canal in twelve hours. If not, we stay dark."
Hazel nodded. "Agreed. But we have to assume they're coming for us."
Jane exhaled, long and slow, the anger leaving her like blood from a wound. "Mission aborted," she said, the words ugly in her mouth. "Everyone stay put. Get ready for siege."
They moved as one, every gesture sharp and purposeful. Ellen reset the magical alarms, splicing in a cascade of countermeasures that would fry the sensors on anyone trying to hack the door. Owen swept the penthouse for bugs, then ran a passive scan for aerial surveillance. Hazel flicked through every known city feed, eyes darting, searching for any sign of an incoming threat.
Jane went to the bar, poured herself a double, and downed it without ceremony.
The city outside was a living nightmare. Fires in Sombra, tracer rounds sparking over the rooftops, the sound of drones hunting through back alleys. Inside, the penthouse felt like a tomb: too much air, not enough hope.
Hazel's comm pinged—a single, low-priority ping from a hidden contact. She opened it. The message was two words, burned into the feed in simple black text: "Stay down."
She didn't say anything. Just nodded to herself, and to the world that now contained her.
Ellen sat at the edge of the table, hands resting on her knees, breathing slow and even. Jane finished her drink, then started another.
Owen paced the perimeter, watching the skyline with a soldier's fatalism.
For the first time in years, UMBRA had no plan but to survive the night.
The city howled on, uncaring.