The rhythmic drip of water from a leaky utility pipe in the underground drain whispered quietly, leaving a tense silence as Gilang, Renata, Nara, and Rania crawled out from behind the secret maintenance access panel. They had successfully slipped past the city's outermost defense perimeter, landing directly on the basement floor of the Ant Corp central tower—a hundred-story monument to human greed standing tall against the night sky.

"Phew... I feel like I just crawled straight out of hell's belly," Nara whispered breathlessly, adjusting her glasses while tightly clutching her computer bag loaded with hacking gear. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with her jacket sleeve. "If we fail here, my name won't just be Nara—it'll be an epitaph."

"Save your breath for running, Nara. We haven't walked into the lion's den yet; we've only stepped on its welcome mat," Gilang replied flatly.

He stood tall, dusting off his bomber jacket, and instinctively brushed his hand against the hilt of the salt-lined short sword at his back. Beside him, Rania clutched the sleeve of Gilang's jacket with slightly trembling fingers. After the previous tunnel collapse, she refused to let Gilang out of her sight for even a second.

Renata stepped forward toward the secret service elevator hidden behind a thick concrete wall. The sharply suited woman pressed her right palm against the emergency biometric scanner panel, then punched a lengthy sequence of numbers into the keypad from memory.

Bzzzt... click!

The indicator light above the panel shifted from red to a brilliant green. The service elevator doors slid open silently, revealing a polished metal cabin that would carry them straight up into the tower's main lobby levels.

"My primary director authorization codes are still active for the lower service lines," Renata said calmly, sparing a brief glance at Gilang and the others. "Get in. The moment these doors open on the ground floor, we'll be right at the beating heart of corporate luxury."

Seconds later, a small chime signaled their arrival at the ground floor.

Ding.

The elevator doors slowly parted wide. Instead of the quiet, sterile, and empty corporate lobby they expected at this hour of the night, the sight that met their eyes froze their breath in an instant.

The Ant Corp tower's main lobby was a massive masterpiece of modern architecture. Its floors were made of immaculate, spotless white marble that reflected the brilliance of a giant crystal chandelier hanging from a ten-meter-high ceiling. A gigantic gold-plated bronze statue of an ant stood proudly in the center of the room, ringed by reception desks carved from crystal-quartz glass.

Yet, this majestic space had been converted into a private military barracks.

Dozens of burly men in sharp black suits and neat ties—looking like ordinary junior executives by day—stood on patrol with unnaturally rigid postures. The moment the elevator doors parted, their heads snapped in unison toward Gilang's group with a horrifyingly mechanical jerk.

Even more terrifying, beneath the collars of their expensive suits, pulsing purple veins slithered across the skin of their throats, and their eyes glowed with a feral red light. These were corporate demon enforcers born from advanced genetic and cybernetic modification—humans who had surrendered their souls entirely to the company's network.

"Well... a remarkably warm welcome from today's board of directors," Gilang sneered quietly, smoothly drawing the short sword from his back. The blade hissed to life, casting a pure white holy light across the sterile white marble floor.

"They're no longer human, Gilang," Renata whispered sharply, reaching into her suit pocket to draw her energy pistol. "They're corporate enforcers—hybrid soldiers controlled directly by the central server network."

The largest of the hybrid executives near the reception desk stepped forward. His voice emerged with a chilling, dual-toned drone, half-human and half-digital machine: “Intruder detected in the main lobby sector. Director authority revoked. Eliminate all subjects without exception.”

"Seal the exit behind us!" Gilang shouted. "Nara, protect Rania inside the elevator cabin!"

Without waiting for a second command, battle erupted in an instant.

Bang! Szing!

The clash was a strikingly stark and brutal visual contrast. Upon the clean, sterile white marble floor, fresh blood began to splatter, staining the luxury white tiles a deep crimson. The hybrid executives lunged forward with supernatural speed, relying on retractable steel claws hidden inside their suit sleeves.

Gilang vaulted forward with wild reflexes. He ducked an enemy claw swipe by twisting his body mid-air, then drove his salt sword straight into the chest of one of the attackers.

A blue flash exploded!

The curse energy inside the hybrid's body revolted against the holy salt, sending the executive hurtling backward to crash hard onto the slick marble floor.

"Don't zone out, Gilang! To your left!" Renata warned sharply from a few meters away.

Firing with military precision, Renata unleashed a rapid stream of blue plasma bolts from her pistol, dropping two guards lunging at Gilang's flank. Her movements were graceful yet lethal, proving why she had once held the highest position as Director of Operations in the company.

"Madam Renata is amazing..." Rania whispered in awe, hiding behind the elevator doorframe alongside Nara, who was furiously typing emergency shortcut codes into her tablet.

"Focus, Rania! Don't treat an action sequence like a movie night!" Nara protested in a panic, though her own eyes remained glued to the unfolding tension ahead. Nara tapped her tablet screen rapidly, sending out an electromagnetic interference wave to blind the wall-mounted security cameras. "Renata! I've jammed the camera defense grid in the main corridor! Clear the front line fast!"

Gilang pressed the advance, swatting aside an iron-fisted blow from a hybrid executive before sweeping his leg out to knock the enemy hard to the floor. In less than three minutes, over a dozen hybrid troopers in the main lobby lay scattered across pools of blood and torn shards of expensive suiting.

Gilang's breath hitched, sweat and dust streaking across his face. He wiped a small cut on his temple with the back of his hand. "Hah... these corporate bigwigs have terrible fashion sense. At least their uniforms are a pain to wash."

"Don't celebrate yet, Gilang," Renata's voice rang out with urgency. The woman stood before the main elevator wall panel on the opposite side of the lobby. "The main elevators to the upper floors... their security systems have been automatically locked down by central emergency protocols."

Gilang, Nara, and Rania hurried over to join Renata. Before the main elevator panel, a red indicator light flashed wildly, and a digital message glared across the screen: “Access Denied. Level Omega Emergency Lockdown Active. Use Alternative Route.”

Nara immediately reached into her bag, pulling out a specialized decoder cable and jacking it straight into the elevator panel port. The girl punched in several code strings rapidly, but the panel merely sparked with a tiny arc of electricity and buzzed loudly: Bzzzt... Error 404: Access Terminated.

"Damn it!" Nara cursed angrily, giving the panel a light slap. "No good! These main elevator doors are locked straight from the hundredth-floor core terminal! The encryption is quantum-layered; it'd take at least an hour to crack it from the outside!"

"We don't have an hour, Nara!" Rania cried anxiously, whipping her head back upon hearing the blare of enemy reinforcement sirens echoing from the lobby's side corridors. "They're definitely sending extra troops!"

Gilang clenched his jaw tight, sweeping his gaze across the lobby. To the right of the marble wall stood an emergency steel-framed fire door with a dimly glowing green light, leading to the tower's vertical emergency stairwell.

"If the elevators are locked, we take the stairs," Gilang stated firmly, pointing toward the fire exit. "Through the stairs."

Renata followed Gilang's line of sight, then nodded in grim agreement. "The main emergency stairwell... but you need to know, that path isn't just an ordinary flight of stairs."

"What do you mean?" Nara asked hesitantly.

"To stop employees or trespassers from walking up manually, the board of directors installed an autonomous defense grid all along that stairwell corridor," Renata explained gravely. "Molecular-cutting laser traps, floor pressure sensors, and hidden curse-wave mines on every single step."

Gilang let out a soft huff, taking a deep breath as he rolled his shoulders to loosen his stiff muscles. He offered a faint smirk, raising his salt sword forward.

"Laser traps or not, the point is the door isn't locked," Gilang said casually, though his eyes flashed with razor-sharp vigilance. "Let's go find out how sharp corporate lasers are compared to my blade."

Without a moment to waste, Gilang kicked the heavy iron stairwell door open, letting a blaring local alarm shriek a welcome as they stepped into the dark, narrow stair corridor.

They began climbing flight after flight at a brisk pace. Yet, no sooner had they cleared the landing on the tenth floor than the atmosphere in the corridor shifted dramatically.

Along the narrow concrete stair walls, the faint glow of red lines suddenly flickered to life, projecting molecular-cutting laser beams that swept up and down, slicing across the stairwell path in erratic patterns.

"Watch out! Lasers!" Renata shouted a warning.

Gilang moved in a fraction of a second. With blinding reflexes, he pulled Rania into his embrace and dropped into a slide beneath a web of fast-moving lasers shearing the air right above their heads.

Zzzzt!

A laser beam grazed the hem of Nara's jacket, leaving it scorched and smoking, drawing a stifled shriek from the hacker.

"My backside almost got roasted!" Nara squeaked in panic, scrambling quickly behind Gilang.

"This is only the tenth floor, and we still have to climb to the ninetieth!" Nara complained, huffing and puffing as sweat poured down her face. "If the trap systems get any crazier upstairs, we're gonna be cyber-diced before we even meet the big boss!"

Gilang took point at the front, his eyes alert for laser movement patterns and pressure plates on every stair tile. Behind him, Renata and Nara coordinated to shield Rania in the center pack.

However, just as they reached the fiftieth floor, the sound of heavy boots began echoing from the stairs above, descending toward them. Additional security forces from the upper floors were clearly moving down to pincer them from both ends.

"Damn it, we're trapped!" Gilang growled, freezing dead in the center of a stairwell landing choked with lethal laser webbing, caught between closing threats from above and below simultaneously.