---
Chapter 38 – The Shattered Grid
The Bastion Facility’s lower decks thrummed with a mechanical heartbeat—an irregular pulse of failing power conduits and sparking data cores. Emergency lights bathed the corridor in a deep crimson wash, pulsing in sync with the alarm klaxons. For years, the Grid—Bastion’s neural surveillance network—had been the untouchable nerve center of the empire’s black operations. Now, for the first time in its history, it was breaking apart.
Dante pressed himself against the shadowed wall, the heat of a ruptured conduit sizzling against his arm. “Lira, where’s the next relay junction?” he called over the comm, his voice barely audible over the grinding roar of collapsing systems.
Her reply crackled with static.
“Two corridors down. But we have a problem—the r
