The descent to the sub-basement nexus takes exactly forty-five seconds. It feels like a lifetime.
The heavy steel doors slide open, and the air hits us. It is no longer just the smell of crushed pine and ozone. It is the smell of burning copper and hot silicon. The biological firewall is under siege. The iridescent emerald moss wrapped around the titanium server racks is pulsing erratically, flashing between deep emerald and a sickly, ashen gray as the polymorphic code batters against the biological lattice.
Morgan is at the central console, her fingers flying across the holographic keyboard so fast they blur. The main holographic display is a nightmare of red trajectory arcs descending from the stratosphere, converging directly on the Academy’s coordinates.
"Kinetic impact in eighteen
