Chapter 242: Pocket dimension

Commander Voss looked like a man who hadn’t slept in days.

He sat facing Seraph in the small room of the Undercroft bunker, holding a cup of coffee. His eyes kept looking to the door like he expected Sterling’s cyborgs to break in any moment.

“You are putting yourself at risk by being here,” Seraph said.

“Risk?” Voss laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Captain, there is almost no chance I’ll survive this. Sterling’s security has become totally out of control since those soldiers left the base. They are doing random questioning and loyalty checks. They are using some kind of psychic scanner on all human personnel now.”

Draven leaned against the wall. “How’d you pass?”

“I didn’t. I avoided it.” Voss finally took a sip of the coffee. “I got help from my contacts. I made up an excuse about a busy schedule. But I can’t dodge it forever. Eventually, they’ll catch me. And when they do…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

Seraph watched him closely. Voss had been useful so far. Getting the soldiers to leave the base was a brilliant plan, spreading fear and doubt through Sterling’s human ranks. But the man was starting to break down from the stress.

“Then make this count,” she said. “Whatever you came here to tell us, it better be worth the risk you took.”

Voss brought out a data chip from his pocket and slid it across the table.

“The Iso-Cube.”

The name meant nothing to Seraph, but she saw Draven’s face change.

“You must be joking,” Draven said. “Please tell me you are joking.”

“What’s the Iso-Cube?” Seraph asked.

“It’s a terrible place, hidden away and guarded by so many impossible barriers.” Voss activated the data chip, and a holographic image appeared above the table. “It’s Sterling’s black site prison. The place where he keeps his most valuable prisoners.”

The image showed something terrible. It was a huge cube of metal, covered in runes that seemed to pulse with red light.

“It exists in a pocket dimension,” Voss explained. “A place outside space where magic is blocked. No teleportation in or out. No magical scanning. No network access. The only way in is through a portal, and that portal is guarded by everything Sterling has.”

Seraph moved closer to him. “Who’s he keeping there?”

“Scientists. Researchers. The best minds the nation had before the coup.” Voss brought up a list of prisoners. Names moved up the display. Experts in runic engineering, alchemy, biological magic, celestial mechanics.

“He’s not just imprisoning them. He’s draining them.”

“Draining?”

“He’s using advanced neural extraction technology to violently pull knowledge from their minds. Everything they know, every secret, every formula is being used for his research and development programs.”

The room went silent.

Seraph had seen a lot of terrible things in this war. Civilian casualties. Corrupted Weavers. Cities under control by enemy forces. But this felt different. More personal. Sterling wasn’t just killing these people. He was consuming them. Turning brilliant minds into fuel.

“How many prisoners?” she asked.

“Forty-seven confirmed. Possibly more.” Voss said. “The extraction process is killing them slowly. It’s causing them brain damage, memory loss. Some of them are already unresponsive and unable to think. The rest have maybe weeks before they are used up.”

“Then we get them out,” Seraph said simply.

“Did you not hear the part about it being impossible?” Draven said.

“I heard it.” Seraph answered.

“Seraph, I’ve seen the specs on the Iso-Cube. I’ve read the briefings.” Draven moved to the hologram, pointing out features. “Look at this. The portal entrance is in Sterling’s most secure military complex. It’s surrounded by a kill zone with automated turrets, cyber-enhanced guards, and constant patrols of those new Beta-Class Weavers.”

“What are Beta-Class Weavers?” Seraph asked.

Voss answered, his voice sounding serious. “The successful version of what you saw at the factory. Stable and deadly. Sterling’s been producing them in small batches while he waits for the Nexus to come online. They’re assigned to his most critical facilities.”

“How many at the portal?”

“Last count? Six. Plus thirty cyborgs. Plus the automated defenses.” Voss brought up more data. “And even if you somehow get through all that, the portal itself is time-locked. It only opens for authorized personnel during specific times. Miss the set time, you are trapped on the other side until the next opening. And the next time it opens is random.”

Seraph studied the hologram, her mind running through possibilities and finding nothing but dead ends. Draven was right. This wasn’t just difficult. It was designed to be impossible.

“What about inside the Cube?” she asked.

“It’s worse than that.” Voss showed them interior drawings. “The pocket dimension suppresses all magic. Your powers won’t work. You’d be fighting with normal weapons only. Against more cyborgs and automated defense systems that don’t need magic to function.”

“How do the Beta-Class Weavers work if magic is suppressed?”

“They don’t. That’s the point. Only Sterling’s mechanical forces operate inside.”

Draven pulled out a chair and sat on it. “This isn’t a mission. It’s a suicide run. There’s no way in.”

Seraph didn’t respond immediately. She walked around the hologram, looking at it from every angle. Looking for weaknesses. Searching for any small advantage they could use.

She found nothing.

“You’re right,” she said finally. “There’s no obvious way in. But that doesn’t mean we give up.”

“Seraph…”

“Those people are dying.” She met Draven’s eyes. “And their knowledge is being fed into Sterling’s war machine. Every day we wait, he gets smarter. Stronger. More prepared.”

“Every day we wait, we also get stronger,” Draven countered. “We are building a resistance. Recruiting defectors. Maybe in a few months we’ll have the forces to…”

“In a few months, they will all be dead or brain-dead.” Seraph’s voice was flat. “And Sterling will have absorbed every secret they know. That could include the knowledge he needs to defeat whatever Jonah brings back from Haven.”

Voss nodded in agreement. “She’s right. One of the prisoners is Dr. Elena Cross. The nation’s foremost expert on celestial mechanics and spatial manipulation. If Sterling gets her knowledge before your space team returns…”

“He will know how to defeat their ships,” Seraph finished. “He will be ready for them.”

“So what do we do?” Draven asked. “We can’t just run insde. That’s exactly what Sterling wants. This whole place feels like a trap.”

“Of course it’s a trap. Which is why we are not going to rush in. We are going to be smart about it.” Seraph responded.

“Smart how?” Draven asked.

“I don’t know yet.” She looked at Voss. “How long do we have before the next scheduled extraction?”

“Dr. Cross is scheduled in five days.”

“Then we have five days to find out how to do the impossible.” Seraph began copying the data from the chip onto her secure drive. “Voss, get back to your post. Act normal. If you can delay the extraction schedule without raising suspicion, do it. But don’t take risks.”

“What are you going to do?” Voss asked.

“What I always do. Find the weak point.” She looked at the hologram of the Iso-Cube one more time. “Sterling thinks he’s built the perfect prison. But perfect things are also weak.”

Voss stood up, leaving his coffee behind. “Captain, I hope you’re right. Because if you fail, those people are dead. And I’m dead. And Sterling gets everything he wants.”

“I know.” Seraph’s expression was serious. “Which is why we won’t fail.”

After Voss left, Draven turned to Seraph.

“You realize you just agreed to the most insane mission we have ever attempted?”

“Yes.” Seraph answered.

“And you have no idea how we are going to pull it off?”

“Not yet.”

“Just checking.” Draven cracked his knuckles. “Well, if we are doing the impossible again, I should probably get some sleep first.”

Despite everything, Seraph smiled. “Get some rest. I’ll start working on the best ways for us to get in there.”

Draven paused at the door. “You really think we can do this?”

“I think we have to try.” She looked at the hologram again, at the fortress designed to be unbreakable. “And I think Sterling made one critical mistake.”

“What’s that?”

“He built his prison to stop Weavers and Mages.” Seraph’s smile became fierce. “But we are not just Weavers and Mages anymore. We are insurgents. We fight dirty. We cheat. We find the rules and break them.”

“You’re planning something crazy, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.” She brought up more files, her mind already racing through solutions. “Now leave me alone. I’ve got an impossible prison to break.”

Draven left, shaking his head but grinning.

Alone in the command room, Seraph stared at the hologram of the Iso-Cube. Somewhere inside that fortress, forty-seven people were being slowly destroyed.

And one of those people might hold the key to defeating Jonah’s mission.

Five days.

Five days to plan an assault on the most secure facility in Sterling’s arsenal.

“No pressure,” Seraph whispered to herself.

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