Chapter 17 - The Shadow Facility
The tactical helicopter flew through the raging storm for three hours before descending into a hidden, fortified valley.
Built directly into the side of a massive, jagged mountain, the Syndicate’s headquarters looked like a concrete fortress of doom.
Heavy steel doors the size of a commercial airplane hangar ground open, swallowing the chopper into the brightly lit, sterile depths of the mountain.
Elara was dragged out of the aircraft by four heavily armored guards wielding lethal shock batons.
They marched her down endless corridors of reinforced glass, where brilliant scientists in white coats watched her like a prized laboratory rat.
Graves led the procession into a massive, circular containment chamber completely lined with thick, impenetrable lead walls.
At the center of the room was a heavy steel chair equipped with terrifying, invasive medical monitoring equipment.
Strap her in and initiate the extraction protocol.
The guards forced Elara into the chair, locking heavy metal braces over her chest, arms, and legs.
A team of scientists immediately descended on her, attaching painful, cold electrodes to her temples and the base of her neck.
Graves walked up to the control panel, looking at Elara through a thick wall of reinforced observation glass.
We are not just going to teach you how to use your power, Elara, we are going to synthesize it and put it into our own elite soldiers.
A sharp, mechanical hum echoed through the chamber as massive, robotic syringes lowered from the ceiling directly toward her arms.
Elara felt a spike of pure, unadulterated terror, which immediately triggered the violent defense mechanism hiding in her blood.
The purple energy erupted from her skin in a blinding, catastrophic wave of lethal heat and raw destruction.
The robotic syringes instantly rusted and snapped in half before the needles could even touch her skin.
The heavy metal braces holding her to the chair melted like hot wax, dripping harmlessly onto the concrete floor.
The scientists screamed, scrambling over each other desperately trying to escape the containment chamber as the air itself turned toxic.
Elara stood up from the ruined chair, the purple aura around her flaring brighter and hotter than it ever had before.
She placed her bare hand flat against the thick, impenetrable lead wall separating her from the observation deck.
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The solid lead instantly began to bubble, warp, and turn to black ash under the terrifying force of her molecular rot.
Graves backed away from the glass, her cybernetic eye spinning wildly as the facility's alarms began wailing in total panic.
