“This way,” Eunice called out.

  Aside from the heavy breathing, the party of four moved quickly in silence.

  For her part, Eunice was busy using the system to navigate the structure.

  This path should take about 13 minutes to traverse and we’re out, she thought to herself. There were multiple other paths, but the collapsed tunnels and debris made them unpassable. She just had to hope her calculations were wrong and the party could make it out safely.

  Even with the threat of impending death, her thoughts were elsewhere: the armored stranger. Try as she might, the System refused to give her details on the stranger or the weapon she carried

  She attempted to force the System to give her information, but there were no details returned and any readouts that did appear were heavily redacted. In the end, Eunice only had her eyes to go by.

  The armor wasn’t any design that Eunice had ever encountered and the weapon was beyond the means of any blacksmith or armorer’s designs.

  Which left only one option: the stranger and the weapon she carried weren’t from their world.

  “Ahoy, down there!!”

  The shout from above echoed down from the opening of the silo. Eunice could barely make out a wizened face peeking over the edge.

  Willow waved back hurriedly. “Halmae!”

  Youngho raised a hand in recognition and grunted.

  “Head up to the next level and move east! There’s a way out there!” the woman shouted.

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  Eunice followed the old woman’s gestures and picked out a dark tunnel leading out from the third level of the silo. She queried the System for a local map and saw that there was indeed an elevation hinting at an above ground entrance.

  Eunice recalculated their trajectory and came up with a 6 minute path to the exit. The problem was a pile of rubble that completely blocked the exit.

  “No, good! It’s blocked off!” she shouted back.

  As if to respond, a resounding BOOM echoed through the structure and shook the foundations. A shower of rubble rained down around them.

  The party paused, waiting to see if the structure would collapse but it held steady.

  The old man raised his voice and spoke sternly. “Are we just going to sit around or are we going to get out of here?”

  Eunice? Do you read me?

  Director?

  As a technomancer, she had extended range for the clan chat, but even she had her limits. So it caught her off-guard when the clan chat activated.

  Eunice laughed to herself. I’ve got a hell of a report for you when we get back, director.

  I look forward to seeing it, what’s your current position?

  Getting out of the silo was significantly harder than getting in. portions of the structure had collapsed in on itself while other sections were beyond human navigation.

  Whether by sheer luck or foolishness, the Northern Barony had built their laboratory in an aging structure near the end of its life.

  We’re about three levels underground, maybe about 8 minutes from the surface. It’ll take another few minutes to get clear of the blast radius.

  ‘Blast radius’?

  The Cradle was designed with a shield. It protected the device from outside interference, but the energy required to power the shield rivaled the energy of the gate itself.

  There wasn’t any way to shutdown the generator for the shield gate. The best I could do was reverse the circuit so that the power for the shield flows back into the generator. We’ll have one or two minutes at best before the generator overloads.

  Seah responded carefully. And then?

  Eunice was silent for a moment. Director, you have to be close if I can hear you. Are you… en route?

  She regretted the question as soon as it was out of her mouth. And the silence afterwards said more than Eunice wanted to hear.

  Jinyoung is located in the sub-basement under the silo. But, you’re going to have to hurry, Director.

  Understood, Eunice. Get out of there. I’m nearly there.