CHAPTER 44: PLAN B IS ALWAYS ’BOOM’

The safe house was quiet, but it was the kind of quiet that comes after a bomb has gone off, when everyone is still checking to see if they have all their limbs.

The holographic blueprint of Conduit Zero floated in the center of the room, a silent, three-dimensional testament to their upcoming suicide mission.

It was time for the first official strategy session of Team Misfit Toys.

Chloe stood at the head of the table, her posture rigid, her face a mask of cold, hard logic.

She was in her element.

"The infiltration parameters are clear," she began, her voice crisp and clinical, leaving no room for argument.

"Our entry point will be this maintenance conduit in the sub-basement."

She highlighted a thin, unassuming line on the blueprint.

"Phase one will be a complete stealth insertion."

"Jinx, your role is primary infiltration and lock bypass on the initial security checkpoints."

"Jax, you will provide localized electronic countermeasures to mask our approach from their internal sensors."

"Michael," she said, her gray eyes flicking to him, "you will use your... unique senses to detect and navigate around any dormant energy traps that are not on these schematics."

Her gaze lingered on him for a fraction of a second too long.

"I will coordinate our movements from here, providing real-time tactical data and managing our exit strategy."

She looked at the assembled team, her expression that of a master chess player who had already calculated every possible move.

"The plan is surgical. Silent. In and out before they even know we were there."

It was a beautiful plan.

It was a work of art.

Jax, who had been leaning against a workbench and juggling a small, deactivated EMP grenade, let out a cheerful, booming laugh.

"Boss Lady, that is a fantastic plan," he declared, his grin so wide it looked like it was going to split his face in two.

"It’s elegant. It’s precise. It’s a masterpiece of tactical thinking."

He tossed the grenade in the air and caught it with a soft smack.

"It’s also gonna get us all killed."

Chloe’s eye twitched. It was a minuscule, almost imperceptible movement, but in the sterile silence of the safe house, it was as loud as a gunshot.

"Explain, Mr. Davies," she said, her voice dropping a full octave, a clear sign of impending doom.

"Happily!" Jax chirped, completely oblivious to the danger.

He bounded over to the holographic table, his lanky frame radiating a manic, infectious energy.

"Your stealth plan is perfect for getting past the front door," he said, waving a hand dismissively at the outer layers of the blueprint. "But the real party is in here."

He zoomed in on the lab’s core, on the dense, overlapping red circles that marked the automated defenses.

"See these little beauties?" he asked, pointing at the schematics for the pressure plates. "OmniCorp Gen-4s. The best in the business. And you’re right, Boss Lady, they have explosive tripwires."

"But you missed the fine print."

He tapped the schematic, pulling up a sub-file Chloe hadn’t prioritized.

"They’re not just wired to blow. They’re wired to a secondary, independent alarm system. A silent one. You try to bypass one plate, and it sends a nice little ’hello, we’re robbing you’ message to every guard in a five-block radius."

Jinx let out a low whistle. "He’s right. That’s a classic OmniCorp screw-you design."

Chloe stared at the sub-file, her face unreadable, but Michael could feel a faint, prickly wave of professional indignation rolling off her.

She had missed a variable.

And she did not like missing variables.

"So, stealth is out," Jax declared triumphantly. "Which brings us to my favorite plan. Plan B."

"And what," Chloe asked, her voice dangerously quiet, "is Plan B?"

Jax’s grin turned feral.

"Plan B is always ’Boom’."

He waved his hands over the schematic, his movements a symphony of creative chaos.

"We don’t sneak past the system. We crash the whole damn thing."

"Michael, my spooky friend, said the lab’s power grid is old, right? Brittle?"

Michael nodded slowly. "It feels... unstable. Like old glass."

"Exactly!" Jax exclaimed. "So, we don’t tiptoe around on the glass. We hit it with a big, f*cking hammer."

"I can build a custom EMP pulse generator," he explained, his words coming in a rapid-fire burst of pure genius. "Not a big, dumb blast. A targeted, resonant pulse. Tuned to the exact frequency of their old-ass power conduits."

"We hit them with it, and for a few seconds, the entire lab’s electrical system will have a seizure. A system-wide ’brown out’."

"The turrets go down. The sensors go blind. The locks disengage."

"And the pressure plates?" Chloe asked, her skepticism a palpable force.

Jax’s grin widened.

"They’ll be as harmless as a bunch of fancy floor tiles."

"It would give us a window," he finished, his eyes sparkling. "Maybe four, five seconds if I get the harmonics right. A perfect, beautiful window of pure, blissful chaos."

Chloe stared at him, her analytical mind processing the sheer, reckless audacity of his plan.

It was insane.

It was unpredictable.

It was... brilliant.

Jinx, who had been listening with a cynical smirk, finally spoke up.

"I like the boom plan better than the sneaky-sneaky plan," she said. "Less tiptoeing, more running."

Chloe let out a long, slow breath, a sound of profound frustration.

She was a creature of control. Jax was an agent of chaos.

And right now, chaos was their only viable path forward.

"Fine," she conceded, the word tasting like defeat. "We will attempt a hybrid approach."

"Jax, you will create the window. The rest of us will execute the infiltration within that window."

"Yes!" Jax whisper-shouted, pumping a fist in the air.

"However," he added, his cheerful expression suddenly dimming just a little.

"There’s a teensy-weensy problem."

"My beautiful EMP of Doom needs a very specific, very rare component to stabilize the pulse."

He looked at them, his face a mask of tragic, theatrical sorrow.

"I need a Resonance Core."

"And they only drop from one type of D-Rank monster."

"A Ghoul Alchemist."

Jinx swore under her breath. "Those things are rarer than a DGC agent with a sense of humor."

It was a dead end.

Their brilliant, insane plan was dead on arrival.

Right on cue, a soft, insistent beep echoed through the safe house.

An alert.

Chloe turned to her console, her fingers flying across the keyboard.

She pulled up the alert on the main holographic display.

It was a live feed from an Undercroft informant network.

A new Gate had just opened.

An unstable D-Rank rift, in a derelict warehouse district on the outskirts of Queens.

The initial energy readings were consistent with a ghoul infestation.

It was their only chance.

Chloe looked up from the console, her face grim.

"Gear up," she said, her voice a low, final command.

"Your practice run starts now."