Chapter 156: The Decoy
Vanessa’s voice sounded scared over the comms. "Jonah, you are being followed! They’re watching you!"
The words made Jonah instantly alert. He was holding on to a metal beam high over the brightly lit lab floor. His mind, which had been focused on scouting, became very clear. He quickly made Trace press its small body tightly against the beam. Its dark body blended into the shadows, making it almost invisible. He stretched his senses, using Trace’s powerful eyes to look for who was watching him.
For a long scary moment, he couldn’t see anything. The ceiling was a dark mess of pipes and beams.
Then, there was a quick movement. A small, black, spider-like drone was moving slowly on the beam just a few feet behind him. You could barely see it against the dark steel. It was a perfect, deadly machine, a robot hunter that was made to be sneaky and silent. Its single red eye glowed with a focused light as it searched for him.
"I see it," Jonah said in a low voice. "It’s on me."
"Can you lose it?" Seraph’s voice was tense, all business.
"It’s fast," Jonah replied, looking closely at the enemy drone. He could tell by the way it moved, by its quick, efficient actions, that it was a more advanced model than his own small creature, Trace. He couldn’t win in a straight race. "And it’s not trying to attack me," he added, a sense of confusion in his voice. "It’s just... following."
Back in the safe house, Vanessa was in a different kind of fight. She was in a battle of minds and machines. "I’m trying to get into its system," she said quietly, trying hard to concentrate. Her fingers were moving very fast over the glowing surface of her console. "But they’re good. It’s like they have their own hacker fighting me. Every time I try to run a scan on the drone, they throw up a new wall of defensive code. It’s a cyber-warfare battle."
The small red dot on her map was getting closer and closer to the blue dot that was Jonah.
"Jonah, you need to move, now!" she urged.
Jonah didn’t need to be told twice. He sent Trace running, the Bureau’s drone chased after it right away, its thin legs making a soft scraping sound on the metal beam.
A tense chase began high up in the dark ceiling of the secret lab.
Jonah pushed Trace to make sharp turns the drone would not expect, going behind large pipes and crawling through small gaps. The other drone was nonstop, and it copied his every move. It was faster, it pushed harder, and it was slowly catching up.
Below them, the scientists in their white coats moved about, completely unaware of the serious battle happening just a hundred feet above their heads.
Draven, with his big body, stood angrily by the safe house window. "This is killing me," he said, gripping the binoculars hard. "We’re just sitting here while he’s in there all alone."
"He is not alone," Seraph corrected him, her eyes fixed on Vanessa’s map. "He is the one leading the way. We are the ones who guide him. Stay focused. Tell us what you see."
Draven grunted but turned his attention back to the warehouse. He checked every door, window, and dark spot. He was a protector, a guard. It was very hard for him to only be able to watch.
The chase up in the ceiling was becoming more serious. The Bureau drone was getting smarter. It wasn’t just following anymore. It was trying to trap Trace by blocking its ways out.
"Jonah, I can’t break their encryption," Vanessa said, her voice showing how hard she was working. "But I’m picking up on their strategy. They’re not trying to destroy Trace. They’re trying to plant a tracker on it. If they succeed, it will lead them right back to us."
Jonah’s mind raced. He was trapped. He couldn’t outrun it and he couldn’t let it touch him. He was locked in a high-tech battle that he was slowly losing.
And then, Draven’s serious voice broke the tension.
"Movement," he said.
Seraph and Vanessa both looked up from the console. "What is it?" Seraph asked.
"Ground level," Draven reported, his binoculars pressed tight to his eyes. "South side of the building. A section of the wall just... slid open. There was no door there a second ago. It’s a hidden exit that goes underground."
"Underground?" Vanessa asked again, feeling suddenly scared. "Like a hidden tunnel?"
"Exactly," Draven confirmed. "And something is coming out."
A vehicle came out from the newly opened section in the wall. It looked like an armored transport truck, the kind used for moving extremely valuable or dangerous cargo. You could barely hear its powerful engines over the sound of the rain.
"They’re moving something," Draven said, his voice showing a growing horror..
And in that moment, everyone in the safe house understood.
The spider drone. The high-tech chase. The cyber-warfare battle.
It was all a distraction. A show to fool them. It was a smart way to keep them looking up at the ceiling, to keep Jonah’s sharp senses busy with a serious fight.
"It’s a trap!" Draven yelled, his voice so loud it filled the small room. "The spider is just a decoy! They’re moving the real target out of the building right now!"
On Vanessa’s map, the red dot was still chasing the blue dot. It was a useless chase high up in the dark lab. But outside, the armored truck was driving away from the building. Its wheels threw up water as it drove down a dark, empty alley.
The team was split.
Jonah and Vanessa were deep in a fight of skill and technology, and were also completely fooled by the decoy.
While that was happening, the real prize was getting away. They had to stop it. And they were running out of time to stop it.