STARLIGHT UNBOUND by Deus Ex Machina - HTML preview

STARLIGHT UNBOUND

breathing steady.

Lyra ’s voice, steady but tense, sliced through the room. “How much time?”

Harun glanced at the screen. “Five minutes. Maybe less if we’re lucky.”

Lucien's hands clenched into fists. “It won’t be that easy.” His eyes darted across the display. “This terminal still pings the main network periodically. We’ve got maybe two minutes before it sends an alert up the chain.”

Lucien ’s mind raced, searching for a solution. Then, an idea struck. He turned to Harun and Lyra, urgency creeping into his voice. “I can delay the alert. ”

Both of them stared at him, skepticism written on their faces. “How?”

He leaned over the console again, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “The system prioritizes internal reports over external ones. If I redirect the alert to a different sector—say, a minor maintenance node—it’ll delay the escalation. The Order will think it’s another routine glitch.”

The screen stuttered, lines of code cascading down as he rewrote the priority protocol.

Harun whistled low. “You might save our asses yet.”

He didn ’t respond, his focus locked on the screen as it confirmed his command. The warning flag now pointed elsewhere. The delay wouldn’t last forever, but it would buy them time.

Lyra stepped closer, watching him work. Her eyes softened —a flicker of something beneath the usual guarded exterior. Respect, perhaps, or something like it.

“There. That should give us an extra minute or two.”

Harun gave him a grin, slapping him on the shoulder. “Looks like you’re not completely useless after all.”

Lucien allowed himself a small smirk, but it faded quickly when the terminal beeped again. The progress bar edged forward—fifty percent. Not fast enough.

Lyra turned back toward the passage. “Corin, report. Any movement?”

Corin ’s voice crackled in their earpieces, tinged with static. “No patrols in your sector yet, but I’m seeing increased drone activity. They might be shifting patterns.”

“We need to move faster.”

Lucien felt the pressure. The data scrolled across the screen—charts, names, trajectories that no longer existed. Each one a life erased, each one proof of the Order’s lies.

He swallowed, forcing his voice to stay steady. “Almost there. A little

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