SABOTAGE – Book One: The Ghost Protocol (C-1)
✨ CHAPTER 1: "The Upload"
---
Nairobi Sector-9 // 3:42 AM
The rain fell like broken wires.
Lency gripped the throttle of the pulse-bike with one hand, the other pressed against her bleeding side. Lightning stitched the sky as she turned into a narrow alley, the city’s neon veins flickering across puddles of oil and forgotten blood.
The safehouse was exactly where she remembered it: tucked between a collapsed archive building and a long-dead power station. It was barely standing—just brick, rust, and digital ghosts humming faintly in the walls.
She skidded to a stop, swung off the bike, and kicked in the steel door.
---
Inside: cold. Rotten dust. Static in the air.
She limped to the back wall, ripped away a false panel, and revealed a long-forgotten terminal. Ancient tech—hardwired, untraceable, analog enough to trick the modern watchers.
She shoved the blood-stained USB into the port. The screen crackled to life.
> UPLOAD STARTED — 1%…
“Kim,” she whispered into the comm bead, barely audible. “I’m in.”
---
Thirty klicks away, inside a moving stealth van, Kim tapped furiously on a glowing keyboard.
“You’re late,” he said, chewing on a data cable. “Also—why are you bleeding again?”
Lency exhaled. “Alex.”
Kim froze. “They sent him?”
“Division 9 doesn’t forgive memory theft,” she muttered. “You know that.”
---
Back in the safehouse, something shifted in the air.
The screens flickered.
> UPLOAD: 17%…
Lency glanced up.
A shadow passed across the ceiling.
She didn’t breathe.
There it was again—the sound of metal fingers crawling.
Then: silence.
Then: glass shattering.
Then: white flash.
---
She moved on instinct.
Rolled left. Drew both pistols. Smoke bloomed like a thundercloud.
Red dots sliced through it—Division 9 trackers. They were inside.
She fired twice. One body dropped. Another ducked behind a pillar.
> UPLOAD: 76%…
Kim’s voice buzzed in her ear. “They’re jamming me. I’m flying blind. You need to buy ten more seconds.”
“Noted,” she hissed, and grabbed a glass shard from the floor.
---
Then she saw him.
Standing in the smoke.
Not even blinking.
Alex.
His face hadn’t changed. Same scar. Same steady breathing.
Except now, his left eye was replaced by a glowing red interface.
They stared at each other for one long second.
---
He raised his weapon.
So did she.
But neither fired.
Because Alex whispered just loud enough: “Do you even remember who you are, Lency?”
---
> UPLOAD COMPLETE.
---
A blue light blinked on her wrist.
She dove backward through the glass wall just as another flashbang exploded.
Outside, the city roared around her.
But inside her chest, something quieter screamed—a memory trying to break through.
---
TO BE CONTINUED…
Comments
Post a Comment