Echoing Betrayal, pt I

The job had sounded simple enough, at least by the standards Echo’s team usually worked by—breaking into an abandoned nuclear power plant, slipping past whatever automated security still lingered, and snatching an arc resonator, a rare piece of tech buried somewhere in the reactor’s depths. The plant was an ancient relic, long disused, and the arc resonator was worth a fortune to the right buyers. But Echo should’ve known—jobs like this were never as straightforward as they seemed.

She moved with her team through the shadowed corridors of the facility, her ravens hovering silently around her, their cloaking fields active. The old walls hummed faintly, a reminder of the dormant power that lingered here, even after all these years. Everything smelled of stale metal and ozone. She kept to the rear, as was her usual role, monitoring their six with the precision her augment-enhanced senses allowed. There was a tension in the air, but she chalked it up to nerves—nuclear plants had a way of putting everyone on edge.

They descended deeper, moving through rusted stairwells and narrow maintenance shafts, until finally, they reached the heart of the plant: the reactor chamber. It was an imposing sight, a vast circular room filled with towering machinery and a central reactor that looked like a sleeping giant. The arc resonator they sought was nestled against the core, suspended in a containment field to avoid the residual radiation.

Echo didn’t realize something was off until her teammates began moving just a little too quickly, keeping just out of her reach as she secured the resonator, packing it carefully to avoid triggering any dormant alarms. She glanced up, catching the last of her team slipping through a door on the far side of the chamber. A chill settled in her gut.

“Hey, wait—” she called out, but her voice echoed into emptiness. They were already gone.

“Alpha One, what's going on?” She demanded over the commnet.

“... I'm sorry, Echo. Good luck - you'll need it.” Came the muffled response, followed by a notification that the commnet had been disbanded.

Then the door clanged shut, a heavy, mechanical finality that sent adrenaline rushing through her veins. Her ravens flitted to her side, sensing her alarm, and she tapped into the network to command one to check the door. As it hovered near, she heard the whir of servos locking into place, followed by a deep hum as the reactor began to stir.

“Reactor initiating overload sequence. Please evacuate immediately.”

The automated voice droned through the chamber, cold and indifferent. She could see a timer beginning to count down on one of the old control panels: five minutes. Panic clawed at her throat, but she forced it down. She didn’t have time for anger, for betrayal. All that mattered was getting out.

Echo sprinted toward the door, pulling out her rail gun and blasting at the lock, but it was reinforced—a standard industrial door, far thicker than she could handle without heavy explosives. Her mind raced. If she didn’t find another way out, she’d be vaporized when the reactor went critical. She had three minutes left, tops.

“Ravens, scan for exits,” she whispered, her voice steady despite the fear that gnawed at her. The drones flitted around her, scanning walls, vents, anything that might provide an escape. The seconds ticked down, her heartbeat pounding in her ears as her ravens analyzed every inch of the chamber.

Then, one of them found something—a service hatch, hidden in the shadows near the floor on the far side of the room. It was small, barely wide enough for her to crawl through, but it led to a maintenance tunnel that snaked its way back to the upper levels.

“Go,” she whispered to her ravens, sending them ahead to scout the path, clearing her escape route as best they could.

With no time to spare, she dropped down, wriggling through the narrow hatch, feeling the heat of the reactor building behind her. She was nearly halfway through when she felt a searing pain on her arm—an edge of metal had sliced her skin, and blood was already pooling around her elbow. She ignored it, her mind focused solely on reaching the surface.

The seconds stretched endlessly as she crawled, gasping for breath as the tunnel narrowed and twisted. Her ravens provided status updates, pinging her with every inch of progress. The vibrations in the walls grew, and she knew she had only moments left before the entire structure would be engulfed in a catastrophic burst of energy.

Finally, she emerged into a derelict corridor, barely managing to haul herself up as the countdown hit zero. She threw herself behind a concrete pillar as the explosion roared through the complex. The shockwave rattled her bones, the blast so powerful it shook the ground, sending debris raining down around her.

For a moment, she lay there, trembling, her body aching from the crawl, from the burns and scrapes, from the searing realization that her team—the people she’d trusted with her life—had left her to die. The ravens hovered close, their circuits humming in worry, almost as if they were comforting her.

Echo didn’t cry. She didn’t scream. She simply pushed herself up, gritting her teeth as she activated her cloaking field and disappeared into the shadows. If her team thought she was dead, they wouldn’t be looking over their shoulders for her.

But they’d underestimated her. And in the days to come, she would make sure they knew—no one betrayed Echo and walked away unscathed.