“I’m not here to save them,” Maverick said, calm as a frozen lake. “I’m here to save you from yourself.”
“Brother!” Fenris’s voice boomed as his eyes locked onto Maverick. “I knew you’d come. Take off that coat. Let them see the wolf.” maverick igi
Maverick threw a single dart—not at Fenris, but at the power relay behind him. The smart-dart curved mid-flight, struck the switch, and the entire gallery plunged into emergency darkness. Red lights flickered. Alarms blared. The cryo-vault’s magnetic seals began to fail. “I’m not here to save them,” Maverick said,
Maverick shuffled forward, eyes scanning. He spotted the master power relay for the cryo-vault—a red switch behind Fenris, ten meters away. He also spotted the one flaw in Fenris’s theater: his mechanical arm’s servo twitched every four seconds. A timing tell. Take off that coat
He slung his rifle and rappelled silently down the back wall of the gallery, landing behind a row of server racks. He removed his helmet, then his boots. Barefoot, he crept to the edge of the crowd. He found a lab coat, shrugged it on, and smeared coolant grease on his face. Then he stood up, hands raised, and stumbled into the hostage group.
Maverick was already pulling on his matte-black tactical gear. The Alpha Strain wasn’t a virus or a weapon. It was a cure. A genetically tailored phage capable of erasing a specific, manufactured flaw in human DNA—a flaw the Serpent’s Hand had secretly seeded into a third of the world’s population ten years ago. If they destroyed the strain, they could hold humanity hostage to their own genetic defects.
“Good work, IGI. They’re calling you a maverick again.”