The air was heavy with the smell of blood, sweat, and dust. Both Alpha and Bravo Team stood in the aftermath of their brutal clash, silent but breathing hard. Cuts bled freely. Bones ached. Faces were bruised and bloodied, but there was something in their eyes that hadn't been there before: understanding.
They had come to kill each other, but in the fire of battle, something deeper had been exposed—shared pain, mutual betrayal, and a fury that no longer belonged to just one side. Osiris Corporation had manipulated all of them.
Now, standing in the rubble of their fight, they would turn that fury outward—together.
The farmhouse basement, once Bravo's hideout, became neutral ground. Lanterns flickered along concrete walls as the wounded were tended to. Isabelle patched up Miya's split brow. Jackson tightened the brace on Maxi's arm. Josie handed out ration bars, not saying much, but watching everyone closely.
Elias sat across from Griffen at a rusted steel table.
"Talk to me straight," Elias said. "Why are you still wearing Osiris colors?"
Griffen leaned forward, the swelling around his left eye making it hard to keep it open. "Because if I didn't, they would've put bullets in the backs of my team's heads. We've been operating under surveillance since Shanghai. You think I liked watching them deploy chemical drones on civilians?"
Elias studied him. "Then why follow orders?"
Griffen's jaw tightened. "To stay alive long enough to stop following them."
Adrian Mercer, sitting silently nearby with a datapad in his lap, finally spoke up. "They were setting Alpha Team up to be martyrs. Operation Thunderveil—Griffen, does that ring any bells?"
Griffen's head snapped toward him. "They said it was a clearance-level black op. Berlin, Cairo, and São Paulo. Simultaneous operations."
Mercer nodded grimly. "Osiris intends to start wars on every continent. Mass destabilization. Economic collapse. They're ready to deploy next-gen neural warfare and AI-directed strike swarms. You're not a soldier to them, Griff—you're a walking warhead."
Hours passed. A cold mist settled outside the farmhouse as sunrise approached. Everyone gathered in the main room, bruised and tired, but attentive.
Mercer pulled up a tactical holo-map on his device, projecting it into the air. Dots scattered across Europe—Osiris installations, R&D labs, drone hubs.
"We have two weeks before Thunderveil goes active," Mercer began. "Their command and control node is buried in a deep network hub beneath the Black Sea, accessible via an old Soviet-era tunnel system outside Varna, Bulgaria. That's our endgame. But we won't get near it without first disabling their comm relays across Eastern Europe."
He zoomed in. A red mark glowed near Galati.
"This is a mobile transmission tower. Semi-autonomous. Heavily armored. It's the keystone of their Balkan command relay. We hit that first."
Griffen crossed his arms. "What kind of defense?"
"Heavy mechanized patrols. Drone nests. Auto-turrets. Internal power core is sealed behind three blast doors."
Elias turned to his team. "We'll need stealth, precision, and a lot of firepower."
Gaz cracked his knuckles. "You had me at firepower."
Jackson glanced at Karlo. "You in?"
Karlo didn't respond at first. Then, slowly, he nodded. "We started this together. We finish it the same way."
As plans solidified, cracks beneath the surface of both teams bubbled up.
In the hallway, Irina found Miya smoking silently near a window. Rain tapped the glass like a metronome.
"You were going to kill me back there," Irina said.
Miya blew out smoke, then handed the cigarette to her. "I thought you'd do the same."
"I thought about it."
They both laughed bitterly.
"Do you think we can really work together after all this?" Miya asked.
Irina shrugged. "We don't have a choice. We either pull together—or Osiris burns the world."
In the cellar, Isabelle cleaned her rifle when Maxi sat across from her. The silence stretched uncomfortably.
"You still don't trust me, do you?" he asked.
She didn't look up. "Trust is earned. Not given."
Maxi leaned forward. "Then let me earn it. I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of. Some under orders. Some... not. But I'm here now. I want to take them down. Not for redemption. Not for forgiveness. Just because it's right."
Isabelle met his eyes. Slowly, she nodded.
In the barn, Griffen and Elias spoke privately.
"You realize we may not walk away from this," Elias said.
Griffen wiped blood from his brow. "We're not supposed to. That's the point."
"What about your team?"
"They've been walking ghosts since Istanbul. If they can take down the thing that made them that way... it'll be enough."
Elias looked out into the mist. "Then let's give them something to believe in again."
Back in the farmhouse, Mercer adjusted the holo-map.
"I suggest a joint task force. Operate independently from resistance cells but coordinate their strikes. No call signs. No tags."
Gaz snorted. "We need a name. Something they'll remember."
Elias exchanged a look with Griffen.
"Reaper Prime," Griffen said. "Both our legacies. One objective."
The room went quiet. Then Jackson nodded.
"Reaper Prime it is."
Final Preparations
Weapons were checked. Ammunition distributed. Caches loaded into trucks. Drone jammers were tuned. Everyone knew what was coming.
Dr. Mercer passed Elias a drive.
"This has Osiris' backup node schematics. Keep it offline until we hit Galati."
"Understood."
As the group gathered at the barn doors, ready to ride for war, Isabelle turned to Karlo.
"You ready for this?"
He gave a rare smile. "Wasn't ready for the last fight. Doesn't mean I'm not still standing."
"Let's keep it that way."
Chapter 18: Strikepoint Galați
Infiltration
The road to Galați was cold and soaked with fog.
The convoy of three trucks moved without lights, weaving through side roads and abandoned farm routes. Ahead of them, nestled deep within the Romanian wetlands and shielded by old Soviet infrastructure, was the Osiris Balkan Relay Node—one of the last functioning command uplinks before the Black Sea command complex. If they took it offline, it would blind Osiris in Eastern Europe.
Bravo and Alpha Team—now unified as Reaper Prime—rode in silence. The last few hours had been spent reviewing blueprints, drone footage, and Dr. Mercer's decryption of Osiris defense protocols.
In the back of the lead truck, Captain Elias Scott stood near a small tactical screen with Mercer and Irina Vinogradova, plotting final movements. Across from them, Captain Griffen Smith hunched over an ammo crate, checking the mag feed of his modified OS-14 rifle.
Elias pointed at the schematic. "The comm relay's power core is located in Sublevel 3. If we get past the central access shaft, we split. Bravo clears the uplink servers. Alpha plants the thermite charges in the power tunnel."
Griffen nodded. "And the kill switch?"
Mercer handed over a small encrypted device. "That'll overload the command protocols and send a dummy return ping to Osiris HQ. It'll make it look like normal maintenance… for about seven minutes."
Irina raised an eyebrow. "And after seven?"
Mercer exhaled. "After seven, it burns."
The trucks halted near an overgrown drainage canal two kilometers from the objective.
Fog clung low as Bravo and Alpha dismounted into the marsh, the only sound being the soft splash of boots in mud. Reaper Prime was split into two infiltration teams:
Team One (Bravo): Elias, Jackson, Irina, Isabelle, and Gaz
Team Two (Alpha): Griffen, Maxi, Miya, Josie, Karlo
They would breach through two access points—one via an abandoned rail tunnel below the complex, the other from a ventilation shaft positioned in the western hills. The goal: breach from both ends and rendezvous in the central shaft chamber.
Jackson slung his M7 rifle across his chest and pulled down his NVG visor. "Drones are cycling. We've got a sixty-second gap every six minutes."
"Plenty of time," Karlo muttered.
From the far hill, Maxi gave the thumbs-up. "Shaft's open. We're in position."
Elias nodded. "Reaper Prime, move."
The tunnel was dark and moldy, smelling of iron and decay. Elias led his team through the dripping passage until it gave way to a hidden maintenance corridor. Thick steel doors—some still bearing Soviet markings—lined the path ahead.
Irina silently motioned "two guards."
They waited for the drone cycle, then moved. Gaz hit the first one in the throat with his elbow while Irina knifed the second under the chin. The bodies dropped without sound. Isabelle dragged them into the shadows as Jackson began disabling a camera node.
Meanwhile, Alpha moved swiftly through their shaft access. Griffen and Miya cleared a turret station and disabled the security override.
Maxi whispered, "Ten o'clock, two hostiles."
"Non-lethal if we can help it," Griffen ordered.
Josie responded with two rubberized dart shots from his suppressed pistol. The men dropped instantly.
They kept moving.
Thirty-five minutes in, both teams converged on the central shaft—a towering chamber of steel and concrete with walkways spiraling downward. Below, the whine of energy coils hummed with power.
A patrol moved across the catwalk.
Griffen signaled to Elias silently across the gap.
They moved in unison.
Bravo's overwatch from above provided suppressive sniper support as Alpha rappelled down. Karlo planted the first two charges. Josie covered him while Miya hacked into the access console. Isabelle joined her moments later, flipping open the encrypted kill switch.
"Mercer said it'll trip three emergency bypasses," she said. "We'll have to burn all of them."
Miya nodded. "Then let's light it up."
As the final charges were being set, alarms shrieked—one of the drones had rerouted early.
"They're onto us," Irina growled, flipping her rifle to full-auto.
From the lower levels, the sound of stomping boots and mechanical whirs echoed—Osiris juggernaut units, reinforced synthetic exo-suits, began pouring into the shaft from auxiliary corridors.
"Contact front!" shouted Jackson, laying down suppressive fire.
"Josie, Karlo, get those charges armed now!" Griffen bellowed.
"Thirty seconds!" Karlo roared back.
Isabelle dropped two drones with precise shots while Gaz launched an EMP grenade that fried a cluster of inbound bots.
From the upper catwalks, Elias fired down at the Osiris synthetic units. "Maxi, flank left. We need that last bypass trigger now!"
Maxi nodded, vaulting over the side to the catwalk below and sprinting under a hail of gunfire.
As the last of the charges went live, Irina detonated the uplink terminal. Fire burst upward in a column of light. A tremor shook the base.
"Reaper Prime! Exfil route C!" Elias shouted over the chaos.
The team fell back toward the north access tunnel, with Miya and Josie covering the rear. Griffen dragged an injured Jackson as drones swarmed behind them.
"Come on!" Isabelle shouted, laying down cover fire beside Gaz.
They hit the tunnel just as the thermite charges blew the relay core—an eruption of heat and light swallowing the shaft.
Outside, the marsh was on fire. Floodlights searched from the sky, and Osiris air patrols closed in fast.
A hidden resistance transport—a retrofitted APC—was waiting behind a ridge.
"Go go go!" Elias barked, throwing open the hatch as Karlo fired one last grenade back at the tunnel entrance.
The hatch slammed shut. The APC roared into gear.
They had done it.
The Galați relay was down.