04:15 AM. Exactly forty-five minutes remained before Draco's third and final cell synchronized a complete systemic blackout across the city's power and communication infrastructure. Abir pinned the throttle of his **H2R**, the supercharger screaming as the machine sliced through the heavy morning fog like a scalpel. Behind him, Arisa held on tight, her tablet secured in her tactical sling, her sidearm holstered at her waist.
When they drifted to a halt outside the primary electrical sub-station, the perimeter was pitch black. The civilian security guards lay incapacitated on the gravel. Inside the main control hub, eight of Draco's technical saboteurs were already hard-wiring localized thermite charges and military-grade frequency dampeners.
Abir cut the ignition behind a massive grid transformer and turned to Arisa. "Arisa, secure the auxiliary manual override vault. If they sever the main relays, you'll have to hold the city's power grid open by hand."
"Abir," Arisa said, gripping his tactical vest, her eyes locked onto his. "The dampener they are configuring is a high-yield array. If that sequence finishes, our localized comms drop entirely. Rider won't be able to track us. We are completely on our own."
"Rider won't be needed, brother," Abir whispered, his teeth flashing in the dim light as he racked the slide of his chrome Desert Eagle. "When the devil comes home, he doesn't bring an army."
Abir breached the facility through a shattered glass pane, moving with lethal fluid grace. In the center of the control terminal, a glowing red digital interface was counting down: **00:08:42**. Eight minutes.
"Movement!" a mercenary shouted, spotting a shadow silhouetted against the terminal lights.
Abir didn't give him the breath to alert the others. His Desert Eagle barked once, planting a heavy round squarely into the man's chest, throwing him back onto the server racks. The remaining seven mercenaries immediately opened fire. The control room erupted into a chaos of shattered monitors, sparks, and high-velocity lead chewing through expensive hardware.
Abir dove behind a heavy reinforced steel filing cabinet. Arisa's voice cracked through his earpiece over the din of gunfire, "Abir! They've initiated the execution script on the dampener! You have less than three minutes before the city goes completely dark!"
Stepping out from cover, Abir went completely offensive, dual-wielding his chrome sidearms, walking forward like an unstoppable force of nature. The sheer stopping power of his weapons tore through the mercenaries' light tactical cover. Three more went down, their weapons clattering to the floor. Desperate, two of the surviving operatives pulled fragmentation grenades while their tech leader rushed to throw the final manual breaker.
Abir saw the grenade leave the mercenary's hand. In a fraction of a second, he kicked a heavy steel work table upward, flipping it onto its side. The grenade detonated against the underside of the table, the shockwave shattering the remaining glass and filling the room with thick, blinding smoke.
Before the smoke could clear, Abir materialized like a wraith. Just as the tech leader reached for the master switch, a .50 caliber round from Abir's pistol shattered his wrist, sending him screaming to the floor. The remaining two mercenaries were eliminated with two surgical double-taps.
The terminal timer read **00:00:12**.
Abir lunged forward, ripping the hardwired dampener cables from the motherboard and slamming Arisa's custom logic override drive into the main console. The countdown froze at exactly **00:00:02**. The grid stabilized. The city's lights remained on.
Outside, the first faint amber hues of dawn began to break through the horizon. Abir walked back over to the groaning tech leader, grabbing him by his collar and hoisting him up.
"Call Draco," Abir said, his voice dropping to a freezing whisper. "Tell him all three of his elite squads are currently fertilizing the soil of my city. And tell him Abir Khan is booking a one-way flight to Mexico to collect his debt."
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