A cheer, a raw, ragged, and deeply satisfying sound, erupted over the comms channel.

It was a chorus of victory from a dozen different voices, a fragile but powerful moment of shared triumph.

Leo had done it.

The ghost in the machine had delivered his payload.

The ARGUS network was down.

And then, just as the last of the cheer faded away, a new sound filled their ears.

A sound that was far, far more terrifying than the roar of the storm.

It was the sound of silence.

"Leo?" Clara's voice crackled, a sharp, sudden note of concern in the quiet.

"Leo, what's your status?"

Dead air.

The comm channel wasn't filled with static.

It wasn't a scream.

It was just… gone.

Leo,the hero who completed the first mission was lying unconscious due to the shock and stress he had gone through while climbing.

And there was no other information on the two other climbers who followed him.

All of these felt like a mystery to Miles but he had to keep going.

Miles felt his own heart, a frantic, hammering drum against his ribs, seem to stop for a single, heavy beat.

He was still clinging to the side of the tower, the wind and the rain a physical, living thing trying to tear him from his precarious perch.

Clara's weight on his back was a small, warm, and very real anchor in a world that had just been plunged into a cold, terrifying uncertainty.

"No," his internal monologue whispered, the voice no longer sarcastic, no longer amused, but a low, hollow, and deeply personal ache.

"Not him."

"Not the funny one."

"You don't get to take the funny one."

He felt a familiar, hot surge of something ugly and useless.

Rage.

Grief.

He wanted to scream.

He wanted to let go, to fall into the screaming void below and take this whole monstrous, arrogant tower with him.

"Miles."

Clara's voice.

It wasn't a shout.

It wasn't a plea.

It was a command.

A quiet, steady, and unwavering anchor in the middle of his rising storm.

"We honor him by finishing this," she whispered, her voice a firm, grounding presence in his ear.

"Focus."

He looked up, his gaze tracing a path up the sheer, black wall of glass and steel.

The tower's external lights, the ones that had made it a glittering jewel in the city's skyline, were out.

It was a dead, black monolith, a tombstone against the angry, churning sky.

But it wasn't dead.

He could feel it.

New lights began to flicker to life inside, not the warm, welcoming lights of an office building, but the cold, sterile, and deeply angry red of an emergency security protocol.

The ARGUS network, the central brain, was down.

But the tower's body was still fighting back.

Its automated defense systems, the turrets, the drones, the things that were no longer connected to a central intelligence, were reverting to their default programming.

Search and destroy.

Kael's strained, gravelly voice came over the comms, a harsh, guttural sound against the howl of the wind.

"Ghost, what's your status on Beta?" he asked, the professional soldier's term for Leo's team a cold, sharp, and deeply inadequate word for the friend they had just lost.

Miles took a deep, shaky breath, the cold, wet air a welcome shock to his system.

He was the leader.

He had to be the leader.

He had to make the call.

"Status is… unknown," he said, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.

He could feel the weight of Kael's silent, professional assessment on the other end of the line.

He could feel the sudden, hollow silence from the other fighters, the ones who were still bleeding and dying in the lobby below.

He had just lost a soldier.

His soldier.

His friend.

"The mission continues," Miles stated, his voice no longer shaking, but filled with a new, cold, and deeply personal fire.

"Team Alpha, hold your position. Keep them busy."

"Team Gamma is proceeding to the objective."

He didn't wait for a reply.

He just started to climb.

The strain was immense.

He had to divert a part of his concentration, a part of his system's processing power, from maintaining the delicate, vibrating friction field of his [Kinetic Adhesion] to his clone's sensory feed.

He needed to be their eyes.

He needed to see the threats before they saw him.

A section of the glass wall a few feet above them slid open with a soft, mechanical hiss.

A sleek, black, and deeply menacing-looking automated sentry turret emerged from the darkness, its multi-barreled cannon whirring to life, its red optical sensor sweeping the area.

"Okay, new problem," his internal monologue observed, a dry, weary voice that was starting to sound a lot like Leo's.

"A very pointy, very shooty problem."

"I'm starting to think this building has a personal and deeply offensive disagreement with the concept of us being alive."

He didn't have time to be clever.

He didn't have time to be subtle.

He just acted.

He let go with one hand, a terrifying, gut-wrenching moment of instability hundreds of feet in the air.

He pulled back his fist.

[Pulse Break: 10% Power.]

A small, focused, and completely silent bolt of pure kinetic energy shot from his knuckles, a ghost-bullet in the storm.

It hit the turret's optical sensor with a sharp, satisfying crack.

The turret sparked, its cannon seizing up, and it retracted back into the wall with a defeated, grinding sound.

He let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding and placed his hand back on the glass, the adhesion field re-establishing itself with a low, humming vibration.

"Nice shot," Clara whispered into his ear, her voice a mixture of awe and terror.

"Thank you," he thought, his own mind a chaotic whirl of adrenaline and grief. "I was aiming for the other one."

They kept climbing.

The tower fought them every step of the way.

More turrets.

Small, insect-like patrol drones that emerged from hidden ports in the walls, their buzzing rotors almost lost in the howl of the wind.

Each one was a new problem.

Each one was a new, desperate, and deeply draining expenditure of his own dwindling energy reserves.

Each [Pulse Break] sent a jarring, shuddering tremor through his body, a small, violent earthquake that threatened to break his precarious grip, to send them both plummeting into the screaming void below.

He was a bleeding battery, and he was running out of juice.

"I'm not going to make it," he thought, a cold, hard, and deeply logical certainty settling in his gut.

The exhaustion was a physical weight, a crushing, suffocating thing.

His arms were screaming.

His legs were trembling.

The system in his head, his constant, silent partner, was a frantic, screaming cascade of low-power warnings and system strain alerts.

He was at his limit.

He was going to fail.

And then, he felt it.

A small, quiet pressure on the back of his neck.

Clara.

She was leaning her head against his, her breath a warm, steady presence against his cold, wet skin.

"I'm here, Miles," she whispered, her voice a simple, unwavering promise.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Just a little further."

Her voice was not a command.

It was not a plea.

It was an anchor.

And in that moment, in that shared, quiet space in the middle of a hurricane, he found something new.

A new well of strength.

A new reason to keep climbing.

He looked up.

The penthouse levels.

They were almost there.

Just a few more feet.

He let out a raw, ragged, and deeply defiant roar that was ripped away by the wind.

He pulled himself up, one last, desperate, and deeply impossible heave.

He reached the dark, opulent, and mercifully solid-looking balcony of what looked like a corporate lounge.

He didn't have the energy for a subtle entry.

He didn't have the finesse for a ghost-like infiltration.

He just had one last punch.

He pulled his fist back, gathering the last, sputtering dregs of his power.

[Pulse Break: Full Power.]

He slammed his fist into the reinforced, floor-to-ceiling window.

The glass did not shatter.

It didn't explode.

It simply ceased to exist.

It dissolved into a fine, crystalline dust that was instantly swept away by the storm.

He hauled himself, and Clara, over the edge and into the room, collapsing onto the cold, hard, and beautifully, wonderfully solid marble floor.

He lay there for a long, heavy moment, his chest heaving, his body a single, screaming symphony of pain and exhaustion.

He was in.

He was in the heart of the beast.

The room was dark.

It was silent.

The only sound was the howl of the storm outside, a distant, muffled roar now.

The silence was a stark, eerie, and deeply unsettling contrast to the chaos they had just left behind.

It was the quiet of a tomb.

It was the quiet of a cage.

And he had a terrible, sinking feeling that they had just walked right into it.

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