I found the first needle on a Thursday afternoon, tucked in a compartmen...
Suddenly, a deafening mechanical groan shook the ice around them. The massive, insulated pipes lining the walls began to frost over rapidly, hissing with lethal intent.
👉 "He found us," Natalia gasped, as a wall of blinding, sub-zero liquid nitrogen began rushing down the corridor directly toward them, threatening to freeze them solid in seconds.
The wall of sub-zero liquid nitrogen roared down the narrow maintenance tunnel like a white avalanche. The temperature plummeted instantly, frosting the lenses of Olga’s tactical flashlight and turning the moisture in her breath into falling ice crystals.
"Run!" Victor yelled, sprinting in the opposite direction.
"We can't outrun a pressurized purge!" Olga shouted over the deafening hiss. Her forensic mind instantly analyzed the tunnel's architecture. To her left, a massive, heavy iron wheel was attached to a secondary geothermal pressure valve.
"Natalia! The valve!" Olga ordered, diving toward the heavy iron wheel.
The twin didn't hesitate. Her bio-hacked muscles, designed for extreme combat, proved invaluable. Natalia grabbed the frozen iron wheel with Olga, and together, the sisters threw their combined weight into turning it. The rusted metal groaned, fighting them, but the sheer adrenaline and synthetic strength forced it to turn.
With a brutal mechanical clank, the geothermal vent blew open.
A massive blast of boiling, superheated steam from deep within the Svalbard bedrock erupted into the tunnel, colliding head-on with the rushing wall of liquid nitrogen.
The resulting thermal shockwave was catastrophic. The extreme shift in temperature caused the air to rapidly expand, creating a concussive blast that threw Olga, Natalia, and Victor violently backward. The liquid nitrogen instantly vaporized into a thick, harmless white fog, neutralizing the lethal threat.
Olga hit the grating hard, the wind knocked out of her lungs. Victor groaned from the floor, rubbing his ribs.
"Brilliant audit, Olga," Victor wheezed. "But now Richard knows exactly where we are. The thermal sensors will light up this sector like a Christmas tree."
"Good," Olga said, pulling herself up. She looked at Natalia, who was staring at the shattered geothermal pipe with a mix of awe and newly awakened free will. "I want him to know where we are. I want him to send his men down here."
"Why?" Natalia asked, her voice steadying.
"Because we aren't running anymore," Olga stated, her dark eyes flashing with lethal intent. "We are going on the offensive. Richard thinks he controls the board because he has the Apex Engine. But a quantum supercomputer is entirely dependent on its localized power grid. If we sever the primary geothermal conduits on this level, the Apex Engine will starve."
"If you kill the power, the biometric locks on the surface blast doors will engage permanently," Victor warned. "We will be entombed in the Arctic ice."
"I survived Jack Vance's house. I survived your submarine. I can survive a frozen vault," Olga replied coldly.
They moved swiftly through the dissipating fog, guided by Natalia’s internal map of the facility. They reached the primary power junction—a massive, humming cavern filled with towering electrical transformers that fed the quantum core above.
But Richard Vance was a billionaire who learned from his mistakes.
Standing in front of the transformers was a squad of six elite Vanguard mercenaries, heavily armored and equipped with thermal-imaging goggles. They immediately raised their assault rifles, tracking the three intruders through the fog.
"Surrender, Olga!" the lead mercenary barked. "Mr. Vance wants you alive, but he doesn't care if we shoot off your kneecaps to transport you!"
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I found the first needle on a Thursday afternoon, tucked in a compartmen...
Olga didn't raise her hands. She simply looked at Natalia.
👉 "Show them what you were built for, sister," Olga commanded quietly, just as she triggered her EMP compact to plunge the cavern into absolute, pitch-black darkness.
The localized EMP blast instantly fried the mercenaries’ thermal-imaging goggles, plunging the cavern into utter blackness. For the Vanguard elite, the darkness was blinding. For Natalia, it was a hunting ground.
Elena Rostova hadn't just given the clone superhuman strength; she had genetically enhanced Natalia’s spatial awareness and auditory processing. In the pitch black, Natalia moved like a ghost.
The first mercenary barely had time to rip off his useless goggles before Natalia’s combat blade severed the strap of his tactical vest, followed by a brutal palm strike to his chin that dropped him instantly. The sound of his heavy armor crashing to the steel grating caused the others to fire wildly into the dark.
Muzzle flashes strobed like lightning, illuminating flashes of the brutal choreography.
Olga didn't engage in hand-to-hand combat. She used the strobing light to audit the battlefield. She slipped behind a massive transformer, her hands flying over a manual maintenance terminal that had survived the EMP. She wasn't trying to shut the power down anymore—she was overriding the fail-safes to cause a localized surge.
Victor Kaelen stayed low, picking up a dropped rifle and firing precise, calculated single shots into the dark, crippling two mercenaries by shooting out their kneecaps.
"Clear!" Natalia’s voice echoed through the dark after just forty-five seconds.
Olga bypassed the final circuit breaker. The emergency backup lights flickered on, casting a dim red glow over the cavern. All six mercenaries were on the ground, incapacitated. Natalia stood in the center, breathing heavily, her combat suit splattered with blood.
For the first time, Olga saw genuine horror in her twin's eyes as she looked down at the men she had just dismantled.