The bunker was crazily cold.

Of course it would be cold as the entire bunker was buried very deep underneath the ground.

It was almost like a tomb. But for Seraph and Draven, they kind of felt safe at the moment.

Seraph stood before a flickering holographic map projected onto the wall. The map showed a section of the industrial district just above them, which showed narrow streets and tall, abandoned factories. A single red line curved and twisted through the area.

"Here," she said, pointing a finger at the red line. "Rook's intel is solid. At 0300 hours, a Syndicate supply convoy will move through this street. It's carrying advanced weaponry for the city's military base." She zoomed in, and a list of the convoy's cargo appeared beside the map. "And something more important. A long range, communications jammer."

Draven, who had been cleaning a newly acquired pulse rifle, looked up. "A jammer," he said, his voice a low rumble. "We could use that to talk to them."

He didn't need to say who "they" were. Jonah and Vanessa. Lost in the dark.

"First, we have to take it," Seraph said, her eyes not leaving the map.

"The plan is simple. We make the street too narrow for them to pass. We stop the first truck. We attack them strongly and quickly from every direction, and then we vanish before they can call for backup."

"Simple is good," Draven said, a wide smile appearing on his face. "Just tell me what to smash."

The tunnels of the Undercroft were dark and had leaking pipes in it. Seraph and Draven, along with a small team of their best soldiers, moved through them in a single line.

They came up through a storm drain into a narrow street. Tall, old factories, covered in rust stains, stood high on both sides, their windows looking empty and dark. The spot was an ideal place to carry out an attack.

They took their positions. Draven hid himself deep inside a loading dock. Seraph and the rest of the crew climbed the outside staircases, blending into the structures and dark corners of the building tops.

Then, they waited.

A low, deep sound that gradually became louder broke the silence. It was the convoy.

An armored truck, with its headlights cutting through the darkness, rolled into the street. It was followed by two smaller escort vehicles, their roofs mounted with machine guns.

Seraph watched them through the scope of her sniper rifle, her breathing slow and steady. She waited until the lead truck was in the middle of the kill zone.

"Now," she whispered into her comms.

Draven did not just step out. He erupted.

He burst from the loading dock like a runaway freight train, a solid wall of golden armor manifesting around him in a flash of light. He slammed into the front of the lead truck with the force of a meteor.

*CRUNCH!*

The sound was a loud noise of tortured metal. The massive truck, which weighed over ten tons, was lifted off its front wheels, its engine block collapsing inward. It skidded to a halt with a loud, grinding screech, completely blocking the narrow street. The bottleneck was in place.

The Syndicate soldiers in the escort vehicles were well trained, but they were trained for open warfare, not for a monster appearing out of thin air. For a split second, they were frozen in pure shock.

That second was all Seraph needed.

*PHUT. PHUT. PHUT.*

From the rooftops, her silenced rifle fired in a quick, precise rhythm. It wasn't loud, just a series of sharp, pneumatic coughs. The first shot blew out the tires of the rear escort vehicle, sending it swerving into a wall. The next two shots, impossibly precise, slammed into the sensitive camera optics of the rooftop machine guns, disabling them with a shower of sparks.

Chaos erupted. The soldiers, now blind and trapped, began firing wildly into the darkness.

It was a mistake.

Draven, roaring with the pure joy of battle, charged the first escort vehicle. He tore the door off its hinges and threw the screaming soldiers out onto the street like dolls.

From above, Seraph and her team provided covering fire, their blue energy bolts pinning the other soldiers down, herding them, controlling the flow of the battle.

The entire ambush was over in less than two minutes. It was not a battle. It was a harvest. Brutal, efficient, and perfect.

"Check the cargo!" Seraph commanded, dropping down from the rooftop and landing silently on the pavement.

Draven, his golden armor already fading, ripped the back door off the main supply truck. Inside were crates of brand new pulse rifles, stacks of medical supplies, and armor. And in the very back, in a heavily padded case, was a large, complex piece of equipment with a folded antenna array.

The jammer.

Seraph gave it a single, satisfied nod. This was their real prize. This was their hope.

In the far background, the sound of emergency sirens started to make a rising, sad noise, and it kept getting louder. It was the incoming military support sent by Sterling.

"That's our cue," Seraph said. "Grab what you can! Go, go, go!"

They worked quickly, hauling crates of weapons and supplies to the open storm drain. They were not conquerors. They were ghosts. And ghosts knew when to disappear.

Minutes later, the street was filled with Syndicate soldiers and armored vehicles. But all they found were the burning wrecks of the convoy and a street littered with unconscious, groaning soldiers.

The rebels were gone, melted back into the dark labyrinth of the Undercroft.

But they had left something behind.

On the grimy, brick wall of one of the factories, hastily painted in a splash of bright, defiant red, was a single, simple symbol.

A phoenix, its wings spread wide, rising from the ashes.

It was not a gang sign. It was not a random act of vandalism. It was a statement. A promise.

The resistance had begun.

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