Elena kept her gun level, but her fingers were trembling slightly on the grip.

“Do it, Caleb,” she muttered into the radio.

“Verify the connection.”

The silence in the boiler room was heavy.

Only the steady drip of water from a overhead pipe broke the quiet.

Marcus stood beside me like a shadow, his breathing shallow and silent.

He was waiting for my signal.

But we were outnumbered, and the doorway was entirely blocked by Elena’s men.

Any sudden move would end with us caught in a crossfire in a confined space.

We needed a disruption.

We needed the lights to go out, or the alarms to sound.

The radio crackled again.

Caleb’s voice was different this time.

The confidence was gone, replaced by a sharp, cold anger.

“The terminal isn’t responding,” Caleb said.

“The screen just went black.”

“Elena, what did he do?”

Elena’s face went pale under the beam of her own flashlight.

“I didn’t do anything,” I said softly.

“But someone did.”

On the ceiling, the backup generator light flickered once and died.

The boiler room fell into complete, pitch-black darkness.