From Billionaire to Lab Rat: My Cyborg Life

The Elevator Ride

He had no time for stealth that night. He moved like a mad dog — fast, loud, and unpredictable. He kept the device in his fist, but he used it only when absolutely necessary. Every time he activated it he risked leaving a trace. The facility was updating codes as they rolled out patches; a single overuse could alert the watchdogs to his exact corridor.

He took the route that gave him the best chance of not being boxed in. Maintenance ladders first — they were narrow, vertical, and rarely swept quickly. Cable trays next, because they carried thermal noise and made drones’ thermal scans less reliable. Then ventilation splits to cut across a sector or two, and finally old service shafts that led toward the southern maintenance deck where the elevator bay lived. He knew the path because he had been watching the maintenance feeds, and he’d memorized the timing of the patrols. He also knew he might get lucky — patrols had to cover so much ground.

He ran. That’s the simplest way to put it. He ran when a drone’s whine got too close. He ran when a guard shouted down the corridor. He ran without trying to be quiet. If a drone saw him, he flashed a low-profile route through an adjacent shaft. If a guard came around a blind corner, he ducked under a service door or pushed a cart into the path to slow them down. He used the environment. He used timing. He accepted that he would look like a man without a plan and pretended he was unpredictable on purpose.

It was luck as much as skill that kept him alive. He missed guards by seconds. Patrol drones scanned corridors he’d just left. A maintenance bot blocked a doorway at exactly the right moment. He kept moving until the long corridors started to thin and the signs of engineering traffic increased: thicker cables, labeled access panels, the smell of coolant and oil. He was close.

When he reached the elevator bay, he finally slowed enough to breathe. The CORE-LIFT elevator stood there, bulkier than the service lifts, its doors heavy and the access panel glowing in a different tone. ENGINEERS ONLY, read the stencil above. Authorization required, of course.

He didn’t hesitate. He pulled the device out and aimed it at the panel. His hand trembled a little — not from fear so much as the adrenaline that never left him now. He turned the wheel.

For a moment nothing happened. He thought the sector had patched the auth like before. He tightened his grip, fed it the exact handshake he’d forced into the device earlier, and then the panel blinked. The light turned green. The latch released with a soft, almost apologetic hiss. The doors slid open.

He got inside, and the doors closed behind him. The panel showed the elevator status: awaiting authorization. He felt the device warm in his palm. This time his spoof worked. The elevator acknowledged the forged token as if it were an engineer’s badge. The car hummed, and the floor indicator started to move.

He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. For the first time in hours, he felt like a plan might actually work.

Then the descent began.

The elevator began to descend, slow at first, then steady. Damian watched the floor indicator tick down — Sector 12… Sector 15… Sector 18. The air grew colder as the car dropped deeper into the pillar. The hum of the cables echoed through the shaft, a constant reminder that he was thousands of meters above a dark pit with only thin steel between him and a fatal fall.

He stayed close to the control panel, eyes locked on the device clutched in his hand. It still emitted a faint blue glow — his fake authorization handshake. Without it, the system would instantly recognize the intrusion and stop the lift mid-descent.

Halfway through the drop, the panel beeped. Red text flashed:“Unauthorized Command Detected. Security Override Engaged.”

“Damn it,” he muttered. They’d found him.

Up top, operators in the control hub had flagged the lift as compromised. He imagined them rushing across the command deck — technicians shouting, alarms going off, feeds lighting up with his last-known ID.

From her office, Rhea Corvin could be heard barking orders: “Lock the shaft. Cut the line. Deploy intercept drones to mid-level.”

The elevator shuddered. Then again. Remote cut attempts. They were trying to stop the motor, maybe even reverse it. Damian clenched his jaw and quickly adjusted the dial on his device, feeding a spoofed “priority override” to trick the system into thinking a senior engineer was onboard. For a few seconds, the warning lights flickered yellow, then faded. The descent resumed.

He exhaled hard, trying to calm the pounding in his chest.

Then came the second countermeasure. The emergency brakes. The car jolted violently as magnetic clamps tried to seize the guide rails. Sparks sprayed up the glass wall like lightning. Damian fell to one knee, clutching a side rail. He forced the device to send another signal — this time mimicking a safety bypass.

The system hesitated. Then, mercifully, the brakes released.

The indicator ticked past Sector 30.

But he wasn’t safe yet. The feed was still active. Somewhere above him, drones had been dispatched. Probably a dozen or more, fast and armed with retractable tethers. The shaft wasn’t just a straight drop — there were landing decks every few hundred meters. He figured they’d try to intercept him there.

The next few minutes were pure noise: the creak of the cables, the hum of the motor, the crackle of radio chatter faintly bleeding through the comms system. Then the sound changed — a deeper metallic vibration. He frowned. That wasn’t the elevator.

The roof above him buckled.

A loud crash followed. Something heavy slammed onto the car’s top plate, bending it inward slightly. The whole lift swayed. A second later, mechanical claws tore through the metal. Sparks rained down as a drone forced its way in.

“Not now,” Damian hissed.

The drone’s grappling arm shot down through the hole, aiming to snatch him. He dodged left, grabbed a pipe, and swung his other hand toward the tether, trying to yank it loose. It caught him around the torso and pulled. The force lifted him off his feet and dragged him upward through the torn roof.

He hit the roof hard. The metal was hot from the sparks, his palms burned as he tried to steady himself. The drone’s engines screamed inches away, pushing air so violently it was hard to breathe. He rolled, kicked at the tether, and managed to grab onto the edge of the car’s top plate.

Then he realized the scale of it — he was hanging above a 2,950-meter shaft. If he slipped, that was it.

The drone adjusted, pulling him higher. Its secondary tethers wrapped around his arm. He struggled against it, kicking and twisting, trying to pull free. The machine wasn’t built for gentleness; it just hauled him up, spinning him midair. His shoulder screamed in pain.

Below him, the elevator was still descending, now a shrinking box of metal sliding into darkness. More drones were coming — their red optics glowed as they dropped the shaft, closing fast.

He needed to do something now.

Damian managed to get one knee against the drone’s frame and slammed his elbow into its casing. A panel cracked open, exposing wiring and a blinking capacitor unit. He yanked one wire free, then another. The drone sputtered. Its thrusters flickered. The engine whine stuttered — and then the whole thing went dead.

For half a second, everything went silent.

Then he started to fall.

The drone’s dead weight came with him, spinning end over end as they plummeted through the shaft. Wind screamed in his ears, pressure built in his chest, and the world turned into a blur of shadows and streaking metal.

He forced his shaking hands toward the drone’s belly. The exposed battery cable dangled in front of him. His brain worked faster than his fear — if he could reconnect it, maybe the thrusters would reactivate, slow the fall, buy him seconds.

Seconds were life.

The drone kept tumbling, his fingers scraping metal as he fought to grab the wire. He ripped the connector with his teeth, jammed it back into its slot, and prayed the charge would still hold.

The engine coughed once. Twice.

Then it roared back to life.

The sudden thrust nearly tore him off. He clung tighter, body trembling from the force. The drone fought gravity, its rotors howling in protest, struggling to balance their combined weight. It wasn’t graceful — but it slowed him down.

Not enough to stop. But maybe enough to survive.