The incendiary charge hissed, a tiny sun of magnesium-white light clinging to the central relay rack. Sarah turned and dove behind a stack of shielding crates just as the room detonated. The sound was not a bang, but a long, agonizing tear in the fabric of the Archive. Physical servers, heavy with terabytes of manufactured history, burst into showers of burning plastic and warped silicon.
She did not wait to admire the destruction. The ventilation system groaned as the fire suppression protocols kicked in, dumping clouds of freezing halon gas into the vault. She crawled toward the rear maintenance shaft, her lungs burning, her eyes stinging from the acrid smoke of melting motherboards.
Behind her, the Sentinels were screeching. Their logic processors were likely failing as the Archive’s
