The transition from the freezing, mechanical gut of the cooling vents to the pressurized silence of the upper tiers was like stepping from a battlefield into a vacuum. Maricha Sonoko didn’t waste a heartbeat. As the last echoes of her own warning “We need to move. Now” faded into the humming machinery, the narrow catwalk turned into a kill zone in an instant. The flash bang she had hurled detonated with a bone shaking, magnesium crack, sending a blinding sphere of white light and jagged sparks through the narrow shaft. For a human, the effect was debilitating; for the Sentinels, it was a sensory apocalypse that momentarily scrambled their thermal arrays.
"Move! Up the ladder, now!" Elisha roared, his voice a raw, commanding rasp. His pulse rifle barked with rhythmic ferocity, sending a bu
