The breach began with silence.
Y's distraction was elegant in its simplicity—a series of transformer failures cascading through the industrial district, plunging six city blocks into darkness while emergency systems struggled to compensate. In the facility below, backup generators roared to life, creating precisely the sixty-second window of confusion that Webb had calculated.
Eli moved through the east entrance behind two of Webb's operatives, their night vision painting the corridors in shades of phosphor green. The above-ground floors were corporate banality—cubicles, conference rooms, motivational posters about synergy and excellence. The real architecture began with the first basement level, where the walls thickened and the doors acquired biometric locks that Y had already disabled from his remote position.
"Thermal signatures ahead," the point operative whispered. "Three hostiles, stationary, probably guarding the stairwell to sub-level two."
