She didn't fall; she glided. Using a localized gravity-sink, Angeline descended toward a maintenance hatch three stories down. Cierra followed a second later, her descent controlled and silent, her eyes already scanning the internal schematics she had pulled from the cloud.

Cierra looked at the drive, then at her partner. The analytical strategist and the crimson storm. Separately, they were formidable. Together, they were an inevitability.

They reached the vault door. It was a masterpiece of security—a twelve-stage cryptographic lock paired with a DNA sequencer. Cierra stepped forward, her terminal humming as it began a brute-force injection of ghost-code.

"Bell!" Angeline shouted as a thermal detonator rolled toward her. "Done!" Cierra yelled back.

Cierra walked over and snatched it. "A bit messy, don't you think?"

The vault door hissed open. Cierra didn't run inside; she reached out and grabbed Angeline by the harness, pulling her back just as the detonator hissed. Cierra slammed a manual override on the vault door, sealing them inside a split second before the explosion rocked the hallway.

"You have two," Angeline said, her voice dropping its playful edge. She turned toward the hallway they had just exited. The red lights of the spire were flickering—a sign that the system had detected a heartbeat that shouldn't be there. Heavy footsteps echoed. The elite guard.