Raven's boot hit the door with a deep metallic thud. The frame gave instantly, swinging open just long enough for her to throw the smoke grenade low across the floor. It rolled, bounced once, then hissed.
Both men inside reacted the same way.
"Shit" one of them started.
"Grenade!" the other barked.
But it was already too late. A thick wave of smoke erupted, cloaking the cramped space in seconds. The lights flickered uselessly against the growing smoke. The guards raised their rifles blindly—AK-47s, shoulder slung and moving too slow—trying to make out anything through the fog.
They couldn't see her.
But she could see them.
Her infrared goggles mapped their heat signatures perfectly, two glowing silhouettes flailing in the center of the room. She didn't hesitate.
Two pulls of the trigger. Two sharp whispers of suppressed fire.
Pew. Pew
Both men dropped instantly. One crumpled sideways into a sink. The other collapsed onto a bench, head tilted awkwardly from the bullet that had torn through his temple.
Raven stepped in, sweeping the space with her MP5. Her breath remained steady. Her boots silent. The smoke shifted around her like a living coil.
Raven did not see any other targets. No movement which meant the bathroom was clear.
She moved quickly to the corpses, kneeling beside each in turn. She pressed her hand to the nearest AK-47 and absorbed it into her system, followed by their magazine pouches, sidearms, and spare mags from his belt. She did the same for the other.
"Waste not, want not," she muttered.
She rose, turning her focus to the thing they were guarding: the steel elevator tucked behind the false wall.
Its presence wasn't surprising. In fact, it only confirmed everything she'd suspected. Nobody put this much effort into guarding a bathroom stall unless something vital was underneath it.
She stepped forward and pressed the call button. It lit up, but nothing happened. A red light blinked above the door, and a low beep vibrated from the card reader to her right.
Security locked.
Raven let out a quiet whistle. "They've got a large operation going here."
She slung her MP5 against her hip, unscrewed the panel cover on the card reader, and pulled out her phone. The wires inside were old but familiar—standard embedded scanner interface with limited override capabilities.
She began typing.
Lines of code danced across her phone. One tap rerouted the internal camera feeds, cycling them in an infinite loop. To anyone watching remotely, the hallway was undisturbed. She followed that with a soft command to cut outbound alarms and kill alert responses.
Nobody would be calling for help. Not from down here. Not through a concrete jungle.
Within seconds, the panel light turned green. The elevator responded.
She stepped back as the doors slid open.
Inside, it was barren. No surveillance. No signs. Just black steel walls and a single floor selection panel already set to SUB-1.
She stepped in, checking her corners.
As the doors closed behind her, she topped off both magazines, sliding fresh rounds into place. She adjusted her helmet, flipped her goggles back to active, and pulled a second smoke grenade from her system space.
If the two guards up top were just lookouts, then whatever waited down below would be worse. More men. More guns. Maybe even hardware she hadn't seen before.
But it didn't matter.
The elevator groaned into motion.
Raven remained calm, composed just another dog fight nothing new about this shit. The slight vibration of the lift was the only sound of movement it made.
She watched the floor count flicker from LOBBY to SUB-1.
And kept her finger near the pin of her smoke grenade.
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