The vault door finished opening.
Light spilled from the armory chamber beyond.
Inside, the soldiers were already waiting.
Thirty, perhaps forty of them, arranged in a disciplined firing formation that filled the interior of the chamber. Heavy armor, reinforced helmets, rifles angled with practiced precision.
They did not fire.
They watched.
The bodies in the corridor behind Amina and Jin told them everything they needed to know. Whoever these intruders were, they had already broken through layers of security that ordinary enemies never reached.
The elites understood exactly what that meant.
Danger.
But danger did not require panic.
The formation held.
Rifles remained steady.
They expected hesitation.
Any rational opponent would stop at the threshold, analyze the situation, and try to locate weaknesses in the formation.
That was the moment the elites intended to exploit.
Amina saw it immediately.
Their stillness.
Their patience.
Their trap.
She stepped forward.
Behind her, Jin moved at the exact same moment.
The elites' commander felt the shift in the air a fraction of a second before it happened.
They're attacking.
Too soon.
The formation reacted instantly.
Rifles adjusted.
Angles shifted.
The soldiers moved to collapse the corridor entrance, funneling the intruders into the narrow kill zone just inside the armory.
Exactly where they wanted them.
Amina crossed the threshold.
The trap triggered.
Three rifles fired simultaneously.
The bullets should have struck her center mass.
Instead her body twisted in motion that seemed almost impossibly fast.
The first bullet scraped across the steel shaft of her spear.
The second struck empty air.
The third shattered against the concrete wall behind her.
For a moment the elites felt something unfamiliar.
Confusion.
Jin entered the room beside her.
The twin katanas were already in motion.
The first soldier in the formation barely managed to raise his rifle before the blade cut through the narrow seam beneath his helmet.
Blood sprayed across the polished armory floor.
The formation shifted instantly.
These men were professionals.
They did not panic when one of their own fell.
They adapted.
The soldiers began moving in coordinated pairs, rifles switching angles to deny space while others repositioned to flank.
The trap had not failed.
It had simply become more complicated.
Amina advanced directly into them.
Her spear flashed forward.
The red tassel blurred through the air as the blade drove through a soldier's throat where armor left the smallest exposed gap.
She tore the weapon free and pivoted.
A rack of rifles beside her vanished.
One moment it existed.
The next it was gone.
Several soldiers noticed.
Their eyes widened.
The commander understood the implication immediately.
She's taking the weapons.
Not after the fight.
During it.
The formation began to compress toward the center of the chamber, trying to limit her movement through the armory aisles.
Jin disrupted the maneuver before it finished.
His blades moved with terrifying precision.
One sword knocked a rifle barrel aside.
The second blade split a soldier's collarbone.
He stepped through the collapsing body and continued moving.
Amina passed another weapons rack.
It disappeared.
Then another.
Steel shelving that had filled the armory seconds earlier vanished piece by piece as she moved through the battlefield.
The space around the combatants began opening.
The soldiers felt the psychological shift immediately.
Their battlefield was literally being erased.
One of the elites lunged forward, attempting to close the distance before she could reach the next rack.
Amina rotated the spear.
The shaft struck his wrist with a sharp crack.
Bone snapped.
The returning blade opened his throat.
She moved again.
Another rack vanished.
Gunfire erupted.
The soldiers had adjusted their tactics.
Instead of focusing on killing her immediately, they began forcing her movement away from the remaining supply areas.
They understood the threat now.
The intruder wasn't just fighting.
She was looting the armory in real time.
Jin cut down another guard who tried to flank her.
His blades moved faster now.
The air around him had changed.
The aura of controlled violence had intensified into something darker.
Then the system spoke.
SYSTEM ALERT
Armory security unit failed scheduled communication check.
Control center has alerted auxiliary forces.
Estimated arrival: ten minutes.
The words appeared across Amina's vision at the exact moment her spear pierced another soldier's neck.
Blood ran down the blade.
She glanced at Jin.
"Ten minutes."
That was all.
He understood.
Jin's killing speed doubled.
The elites felt the change immediately.
The intruders were no longer pacing the fight.
They were accelerating it.
Jin moved through the formation like a blade through cloth.
One soldier attempted to grapple him, believing the swords would lose effectiveness in close quarters.
Jin drove a knee into the man's ribs, twisted his torso sideways, and buried both blades into the exposed seam under the helmet.
The soldier collapsed instantly.
Across the chamber, Amina reached the largest weapons rack in the armory.
Assault rifles.
Ammunition crates.
Grenade containers.
Her hand brushed the metal shelf.
The entire structure vanished.
The commander saw it.
His mind calculated the time left.
Ten minutes.
Their only objective now was simple.
Delay.
If they could slow the intruders long enough, reinforcement would overwhelm them.
He raised his rifle.
"Hold formation."
The remaining elites tightened their circle.
They began forcing Amina and Jin toward the center of the chamber.
Bullets ricocheted off concrete and steel.
The battlefield shrank.
But Amina did not retreat.
She stepped deeper into the formation.
Another rack disappeared.
Then another.
The armory was rapidly becoming empty space.
The soldiers realized something terrifying.
They were no longer defending their resources.
They were defending nothing.
And they still had nine minutes left.