From his spot in the vent, Dax scanned the server room below, rows of machines lined like skeletal towers, humming softly with corporate secrets. He exhaled slowly, then kicked the grate loose. It clattered onto the floor below with a hollow clang.
"So much for subtle," Milo muttered.
Dax dropped in behind it, rolling onto the ground and rising in one smooth motion.
"I've got style. Subtle's your thing."
He moved like smoke, weaving between columns of circuitry and climate units. Cables coiled like vines underfoot. Near the center of the room, a reinforced terminal waited, sleek, pulsing, isolated from remote access.
"That's your mark," Milo said. "Pull the casing, slot the spike, let it run for twenty seconds."
"Twenty's too long," Dax whispered, fingers already moving.
"Twenty is the safe limit," Milo replied flatly. "Any less and it might trigger an—"
Click.
Dax jammed the spike in and waited ten.
The lights went red.
Sirens screamed overhead as panels along the wall hissed open, security shutters retracting to reveal sentry turrets and slamming steel doors behind him.
Dax blinked once. "Oops."
"You tripped the alarm," Milo said, just as calm as ever.
Dax (already sprinting): "Don't say it."
Milo (smug): "I told you so."
Dax: "I'm sure you're smiling your ass off right now."
Milo (with a crunch he was definitely chewing something): "Only a little. I'd keep running if I were you. And, uh… watch your step."
On cue, Dax's foot hit a pressure plate. The floor hissed, jolting beneath him, but he launched forward before it could rise. A turret swiveled to track him, it fired and missed by inches as Dax ducked, flipped over a pipe, and crashed through a side door shoulder first.
Gunfire echoed behind him.
"You know," Dax panted, skidding down a stairwell, "maybe next time you try fieldwork, and I'll sit at home munching."
"Too much cardio," Milo replied dryly. "And I hate heights."
Dax landed on the second floor with a thud and kept moving performing parkour steps up the wall, rebounding off a steel beam to grab a ceiling pipe and swing across a chasm that had opened mid-hall.
"Exit's three floors up, northwest corner. Grapple point should still be active."
"Should be?"
"Mostly sure."
As Dax sprinted toward the last flight of stairs, Milo leaned back at HQ, slurping from a soda.
"You really should follow the plan one of these days."
Dax smirked.
"Nah. I like keeping you on your toes."