The storm came in fast.
Thunder cracked through the sky like artillery fire, sending tremors through the muddy earth. Wind lashed the outer fences of the camp, howling like the creatures we feared beyond the treeline. Sheets of rain hammered down, turning the walkways to slush and flooding the trenches we'd dug for drainage.
Then everything went black.
Not just dim.
Gone.
The hum of the main generator choked into silence. Emergency lights didn't flicker on. Radios died. Screens went blank. For one horrifying heartbeat, it was like the camp stopped breathing.
I was in the command tent, reviewing patrol logs, when the darkness hit. The screen in front of me sizzled, then faded. A deep, mechanical whine echoed from outside—the generator winding down into silence.
"Shit," I muttered, already on my feet.
Ray burst through the tent flap a second later, flashlight cutting through the dark. "All systems just dropped. Every damn one. Even backups."
"EMP?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No electromagnetic pulse. Radios didn't pop. Feels like... sabotage."
My gut twisted.
The camp wasn't built to go dark. We had redundancies. Fail-safes. If every layer of power failed at once, it meant someone knew how to tear us apart from the inside.
A traitor.
Again.
The System remained silent. No notifications, no guidance. Just a quiet hum in the back of my head, like it too was watching.
I grabbed my rifle and nodded to Ray. "Lock the gates. No one in or out. I want all teams on foot patrol. Flashlights only. Keep squads small. Two people per quadrant."
Ray didn't argue. He vanished into the storm.
---
The camp in darkness felt alien.
Without the lights, the shadows of tents became hunched silhouettes. The once-safe perimeter was now a hunting ground. Every step was a risk.
I moved through the main path with my flashlight low to the ground, casting narrow beams. I knew this place by memory, but the darkness turned everything unfamiliar.
Vivian met me near the comms tent. Her face was pale, soaked with rain, eyes sharp.
"Supplies hit," she said grimly. "Someone cut through the outer tent wall. Sabotaged our backup rations. Flooded half the medical inventory with creek water."
"Explosives?" I asked.
"Nothing obvious. But it felt like a distraction."
She handed me a soaked clipboard.
"Three people are unaccounted for. One guard near the armory. Two engineers working on power grids."
"Find them," I said. "Quietly."
---
I headed toward the heart of the camp, where the central fuel storage was hidden beneath a false floor in a shed we called the "cold box."
Only five people knew about it.
I was one of them.
The door was ajar.
I froze.
Rainwater dripped from the edge of the roof. My flashlight flicked across the frame. No footprints—the mud had washed them away.
I stepped inside, raising my rifle.
The room was still. Cold. The fake freezer door that led to the fuel chamber was cracked open.
I slid it wider with the barrel of my gun.
Inside, someone had rigged a timed detonation pack—an improvised explosive tied to the main fuel line. Simple, but deadly. It could have taken out half the camp.
The timer read: 00:18:24.
"Damn it," I hissed.
I reached into my jacket, sliding out the small multitool kit hidden in the inner pocket. I didn't need the System for this. I knew how to disarm a basic fuel line charge. Twist the wrong wire, though, and it wouldn't matter.
With trembling fingers, I clipped the ignition wire and froze as the timer blinked—then stopped.
00:12:02.
I exhaled.
---
Ray returned with two missing engineers, both tied up and drugged behind the old greenhouse.
"Kayden found them," he said. "Someone jumped them, stole uniforms, access keys."
"And the imposter?"
"Still out there."
A flash of realization hit me.
"They'll hit the armory next."
We ran.
---
The armory was locked down tight. But as we arrived, I saw movement.
A figure in a rain poncho, crouched beside the keypad. Cutting wires.
I leveled my rifle. "Hands up. Now."
The figure froze.
Then bolted.
Ray chased. I cut left, flanking through the tents.
The figure made for the outer fence, weaving through shadows. I recognized the gait. The height. Too small to be Jared or Thom.
Erika.
No. Not Erika. Someone using her face. Her voice.
A planted agent.
She ducked under a tarp and vanished into a storage tent.
I followed, careful.
Inside, it was pitch black.
"You won't stop it," a voice whispered.
She stepped out from the shadows, a flare in one hand, gun in the other.
"UNO is coming. You're just a delay."
I raised my rifle, but she dropped the flare.
Flames licked up the plastic boxes of old rations. Fuel leaked nearby.
She laughed, stepping back.
I fired.
The bullet caught her shoulder. She spun and hit the ground hard.
I grabbed the flare with a gloved hand, snuffing it in the mud just as the fire kissed the fuel.
Smoke billowed. I dragged her out.
---
She didn't break under interrogation. But we had enough.
She wasn't Erika. She was a plant. A skilled mimic, trained to blend in and destroy camps from the inside.
Ray spit in the mud beside her chair. "How many more like her are out there?"
"Too many," I said. "And we just showed them we're not as blind as they think."
Vivian shook her head. "She nearly killed us all."
"And she failed."
The System finally chimed.
---
System Notification: [Sabotage Prevented: +200 EXP] [New Blueprint Available: Motion-Sensor Perimeter Defense]
---
The power was restored an hour before dawn.
We stood outside the generator shack, staring at the flickering lights.
"It was close," Ray muttered.
"Too close," I said.
But we weren't dead.
And the message was clear:
The war wasn't just outside the walls anymore. It had crawled inside.