Chapter 69: Terrified Shock

Chapter 69: Terrified Shock

The monitoring screen went dark. Heinrich's fingers flew across the keyboard, frantically trying to pull up the feed from the altar core chamber.

But the monitor didn't come back. Instead, a single line of red ancient wolf script flashed across the terminal screen.

"What you see is only what I want you to see."

Cole tightened his grip on his short blade.

Old Eric's dying words weren't thrown out carelessly. Odin's greatest weapon was never brute force — it was psychological manipulation.

Cole was certain now. That Kyle on the screen just now, the one who'd looked straight into the camera and curled his lips into a smile — that had been bait. From start to finish.

"That wasn't the real Kyle," Cole said. "Odin set a trap with a holographic projection. He wanted to get under our skin and throw us off."

Marcus crouched beside the blast door, swapping out his magazine, and swore under his breath.

Heinrich's face went dead white. A string of red countdown numbers appeared on his terminal screen — 10:00:00, then 09:59:59, 09:59:58.

At the same moment, every emergency light in the security corridor switched from white to red, and the wall-mounted alarms began a low, droning wail.

"Odin's activated the fortress self-destruct." Heinrich's voice was shaking. "Ten-hour countdown, perfectly synced with the god-making ritual. If we can't destroy the altar before the ritual ends, we'll be blown to ash along with the entire Crow's Nest. This isn't a threat — the self-destruct has been wired into every single circuit in this fortress."

Then Odin's voice filled the room.

"Cole. Your mother died in front of you. Old Eric died in front of you. And now your father is dead too. What you just saw on that monitor — that was the last moment of his life."

Cole didn't move. He stood where he was, hand resting on the hilt of his blade.

Sophia stepped up beside him and placed her hand on his back.

"He's waiting for us to break," Cole said. "The moment we actually do, we've already lost."

"Still a hell of a thing to say, even if it's a lie." Marcus stood up and drove the magazine into his rifle. "So — do we keep moving, or what?"

The temperature display on the ceiling suddenly jumped from 62°F to 89°F. The red warning lights went into a frenzy.

Heinrich snapped his head up to look at the panel, and the color drained from his face instantly. "We've got a problem. Odin just hacked the climate control system remotely. The cultivation bay temperature just crossed 85°F!"

A deafening crash of shattering glass erupted from the direction of sublevel three — hundreds of cultivation pods exploding all at once, glass and nutrient fluid spraying in every direction.

A thousand clones woke up at the same time.

"Marcus, hold the blast door! Sophia, seal the gaps with a fire wall! Everyone else, build a second line!" Cole drew his blade and roared out the orders. "Blades first — save your ammo!"

Sophia summoned phoenix fire in her palms and burned a two-meter wall of flame across the front of the blast door.

Clones that hit the fire were reduced to charcoal on contact. The bodies piled up in the doorway, but the ones behind just climbed over them and kept coming.

"The power grid's been physically destroyed!" Heinrich slammed his fist on the terminal. "Temperature's still climbing — it's at 100°F now! Every single clone is awake! The blast door won't hold more than five more minutes!"

The blast door caved in.

A massive clone's battle axe punched through the hole, swinging in a wide arc and splitting the two front-line werewolf warriors clean in half.

Ordinary clones poured through the gap in a flood, shrieking as they slammed into the defensive line.

Marcus charged forward with his alloy shield, throwing himself bodily against the giant clone's second swing. The axe crashed into the shield and bent it out of shape. His knees drove deep into the concrete floor — but he didn't give ground. He turned his head and shouted at Cole:

"Get them out! Take the ventilation shaft! I'll hold them here!"

Cole drove his blade through the throat of a clone lunging at him and roared back, "We leave together! I'm not leaving you behind!"

The giant clone surged forward. The third axe blow came down on the shield.

Marcus's alloy shield finally gave out. The face of it split down the middle, and the impact launched him off his feet and into the wall. He hit it hard.

He coughed up blood. His left arm twisted at a wrong angle — the bone was broken.

Three warriors rushed in to tie up the giant clone. It cut them down one by one.

The clone tide had broken through the second line. The remaining fighters were pushed back to the far end of the corridor.

Sophia's fire wall went out completely. She staggered against the wall, too spent to even lift her arms.

Cole put himself between her and the clones, drew his last spare blade, and watched the crimson eyes of the oncoming horde reflected in the steel.

Then, from the other end of the corridor — heavy machine gun fire.

Rounds poured into the clone mass at hundreds per minute. The front wave went down in rows.

A rough, hoarse shout came from around the corner: "Cole! Sorry I'm late!"

Gunnar came charging around the bend with a heavy machine gun on his shoulder, more than a dozen fighters behind him, every one of them carrying an assault rifle.

His left leg bandages were soaked through with blood. He walked with a heavy limp. But he carried that machine gun steadier than anyone else in the room.

When the belt ran dry he didn't stop to reload — he just tore a spare belt off his tactical vest and fed it into the receiver, hands moving with the speed of a trained gunner.

"We came in through the drainage pipes — heard the shooting just in time!" Gunnar shouted over the roar of the gun. "All of Odin's clones got pulled toward you. The lower levels are almost empty!"

Heinrich pointed up at a rust-streaked ventilation shaft opening above their heads. "That abandoned duct runs straight to the outer corridor of the altar on sublevel five!"

Marcus pushed himself to his feet with his broken arm pressed against his chest. His face was paper-white. "I can't keep up. I'll stay and cover the rear. Take the others and go."

"No one gets left behind!" Gunnar set the machine gun down on the floor with a heavy thud.

Cole swept a quick look across the battlefield. The blast door was completely destroyed. More clones were pouring through the breach, and from the far end of the security corridor he could already hear more footsteps closing in.

He couldn't leave the wounded behind to die. But he couldn't have everyone bottlenecked at the ventilation shaft waiting to get surrounded either.

Sublevel four had a security control room — independent power supply, independent blast door locks, easy to defend and hard to take.

"Gunnar, leave two people with Marcus." Cole made the call fast. "All of you fall back to the security control room, lock the blast door, hold that room, and clear the clones on the lower levels. The moment we take the altar, we're coming straight down to get you out."

Marcus started to argue.

Cole pressed a hand down on his shoulder. Hard. "That's an order. Holding that control room is the best support you can give us."

Gunnar stripped every spare ammo belt off himself and stacked them at the control room entrance. Two of the less badly wounded fighters took Marcus by the arms and pulled him back toward the room.

Marcus unclipped his combat knife from his belt and threw it to Cole.

Cole caught it.

"Take it. Cut Odin's head off for me." Marcus said. "I'll be here when you get back."

Cole tucked the knife into the side clip of his tactical vest. "Wait for me."

Gunnar took point. Cole kept Sophia close, and with the last eight fighters they climbed up into the ventilation shaft.

Behind them, from the direction of the security control room, came the sound of the heavy machine gun and the screaming of clones. Marcus and Gunnar's people had already met the pursuing wave head-on.

The shaft was thick with dust. The smell of rust and blood mixed together.

They crawled through the dark for nearly twenty minutes. The temperature kept dropping, but the density of the dark, chaotic energy in the air kept rising.

Odin's voice came again. "Didn't expect you to have backup? Doesn't matter. None of you are getting out of here. Marcus and the others have an hour left, at most."

Cole didn't respond. He picked up his pace.

At last they reached the end of the shaft. Cole knocked the grate loose and dropped down.

He landed in the outer corridor of the altar.