A dozen black-booted members of Niles' security detail flooded into the MemEx lab, guns at the ready. Two helped the bloodied oligarch to his feet and escorted him back to his office. The rest worked on freeing Henrik and the technicians from their bonds and securing the room. Two were stationed just outside the door denying entry to anyone who was not strictly authorized to be there.

A team of MedTechs arrived shortly thereafter and began working on the casualties, all but two of the guards were already deceased. Epsilon troops were renown for being brutally efficient and deadly, they were not know for their mercy. The MedTechs, as a result, called in a clean-up crew to deal with the mess left behind. Henrik and his team were ushered quickly from the room to make way for the repair and cleanup teams. In the confusion no one noticed Nic's Netpod still connected to one of the workstations.

Nic's heart still pounded in his chest, listening to the life and death struggle in the MemEx lab was excruciating. He had never before felt so impotent, unable to aid his friends. The overheard din painted a pretty ugly picture of the battle. He could only imagine what had actually transpired. He wondered if any of his friends were injured in the fray.

It was apparent though that they were successful in liberating his Netpod from Niles and for now it was connected directly to a Centreon workstation. It was a small victory, which gave him a glimmer of hope. But now he had his part to play. He'd made a promise.

It took Nic only minutes to get full control of the workstation, he was forced to move quickly as the Netpod could be disconnected at any moment. He immediately began setting up a backdoor so he could easily regain entry to the system in case of a disconnection. The files provided by Wagner provided Nic considerable access into adjoining systems, for the most part he was able to move throughout the network with relative ease. There were so many areas of the network he wished to explore, he had been trying to access this network for a lifetime, it seemed. However, he could not allow himself the luxury of curiosity and stayed on task, his promised goal of locating and freeing Erik.

The first of the two networks Wagner gave as possible locations presented itself as a partially hidden network segment, separated and firewalled from the rest of the network. Nic delegated the job of penetrating the network to Katherine, while he went about locating the other possible location.

* * * * *

Angry and uncharacteristically disheveled, Niles stormed about his office in a rage, berating anyone who dared interrupt his tirade. Presently, two managers from the network security team were being dressed down over their team's failure to prevent Wagner's infiltration of key systems in the MemEx lab. The subsequent disaster was being neatly laid at their feet, and Niles was making no effort to be discreet. The men seem to shrink before Niles as he spared no venom in his relentless stream of accusations, verbally accosting the two managers for over fifteen minutes.

A chime sounded, interrupting the onslaught, and his secretary opened a channel, "Recall team here for you sir." She said, ever cheerful.

"Send them right in," he answered, "as for you two," he turned back to the managers, "I want a full analysis of the incident by tomorrow morning. Now get out of my sight!" The visibly shaken managers passed the Recall team with their heads down as they exited the office.

"Go right on in." The secretary advised the Recall team, who were exchanging looks with each other.

Niles, still red in the face, addressed them immediately, "Gentlemen, we have a situation, three rogue Epsilon operatives have aided in the escape of four known terrorists." The men listened intently, as Niles continued. "I need you to recall all three operators with utmost expedience. The targets are Captain Daniel Carrington and a couple of his lieutenants, Paladins one-three and nine. I have already uploaded their CIT keys and recall codes to your systems."

"What is the desired recall policy?" One asked.

"This will be a terminal recall, the units will not be reformed. This will be a recall, recover and dispose operation. The only other contingency would be termination by our security teams which have already been dispatched to intercept them."

"Are we not able to track them?"

"The internal sensor network has been compromised, we have not been able to locate them yet."

"Not a problem sir, the recall will still work." The other responded.

"How long will it take you to issue the recall?"

"We should be able to push the button in 15 minutes."

"Can you do all three at once?" Niles asked.

"Yes, if that is what you would like."

"Yes, simultaneous recall -- wait, make sure the Captain goes down last. I want him to endure his Paladins' demise."

"Yes sir, anything else?"

"No that will be all." Niles dismissed them and paged his secretary who answered promptly.

"How can I help you, sir?"

"Have the department head from Cortex Research and Development call me."

"I will see if I can locate her, sir. I think she had an appointment over at Core Power Generation." Niles winced at the thought of another delay.

"Until then, no interruptions."

"Yes sir." The channel disconnected.

* * * * *

Daniel led the group to a service stairwell used to access the elevators, and they began their descent. Paladin one-three proceeded before the others, always one stair-flight ahead. Three flights into their escape a security detail burst through the door just as Paladin one-three reached it. He surprised the first man in. The Paladin's augmented reflexes gave him the immediate advantage. He disarmed his opponent and sent him over the guard rail to his death in a single fluid movement. Two more followed so close behind that all three got tangled up and went tumbling down the next flight. The forth came through the door and made the mistake of turning to watch the other three as they rolled down onto the landing. Daniel coming down the flight of stairs from above was upon him immediately. He took the guard out with a single thrust of his blade, penetrating the small gap below the base of the helmet and the body armor.

Daniel carried on down the next flight to help One-Three finish off the security team, while Paladin Nine secured the door. One-Three was uninjured, save a couple bruises from the stairs, his light armor absorbed most of the damage, Daniel helped him up and all three Epsilon members scavenged sub-machine guns and sidearms from the bodies. They were now armed, the odds of making it out of the stairwell alive just got better.

Daniel quickly checked up on the group, the gravity of their situation was sinking in, he could see it in their eyes. They were civilians not soldiers. They were scared, injured and out of their element. He had to keep them moving, so that's what he did. It was a long way down still.

* * * * *

Wagner, now cut-off and isolated, wondered what became of the prisoners in the MemEx lab, more importantly, he wondered if this Nic fellow was holding up his end of the deal. There was no way to know for certain, Wagner's access to the Core network was gone, he tried to cope with the reality that he would never know if he had saved his son or doomed him to a fate similar to his own. He knew Niles would be furious and would be out for blood.

By now, Wagner figured, Niles would be gathering a team of experts to find a way to destroy Wagner once and for all. Wagner was well aware this was something that Niles had had his people working on for many years - a contingency plan should Wagner become too great a risk. Niles, his technicians, engineers and architects had, over time, reduced the Core reliance on and integration with the Cortex to the point where they might be able to risk a Cortex disconnection.

Wagner sealed the room and scrambled the entry codes, he still had total control over the Cortex environment and he intended to utilize that to it's full extent, while he still could.

Nic checked on Katherine's progress, she had yet to make much headway in gaining access to the network suspected to house Erik. Nic himself had so far been unable to find the other network on Wagner's list, it wasn't anywhere to be found. He quickly dismissed the notion that Wagner gave him bad information. He considered the hidden network could have been dismantled, but there would likely still be evidence it had existed. Nic had nothing, except for a suspicion that he might have stumbled across something earlier, he began to retrace his steps.

Previously, one of the areas he found and enumerated, contained some systems with very curious names like EPR cluster and down-conversion nodes, which reminded Nic of some of the things he had read in that wealth of print outs Erik had sent him. Within a few minutes he had backtracked to that network, logged into a control system and began searching.

The entire system was out of the ordinary compared to everything Nic had seen before. Controls for the various sub-systems looked interesting, but foreign - state correlator, entropy cascade matrix and coupler engine. It all looked extremely complex, Nic got up and grabbed a stack of papers from the other table and started scanning through them as fast as he could. He had definitely come across terminology like this recently, or so he thought.

"Katherine, I think I need your help on this one, you can give up on that network, something tells me what we are looking for is over here." He checked the time, the nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach worsened. He honestly thought he might vomit. "We really need to get something going here. Look through these systems, see if you come across anything that may relate to a hidden network. Just post it up on my screen, I have to read through a bunch of this stuff again."

Katherine chirped and worked her way through the network to help Nic.

Nic flipped through page after page, he knew Wagner had been involved in some very cutting edge technologies in the Second Age, somewhere he had read something about his work with networks and communications. He skimmed through page upon page, frantic. Not exactly knowing what he was looking for, he hoped he'd recognize something important when he saw it.

Nic reached the end of the stack and fetched another and came upon a research paper about a third of the way through: 'Near Zero Latency Communication and Control for Mars Miners'. Nic separated the paper from the rest and began to read. It outlined the use of quantum computing technology to enable interconnectivity to distant systems with little or no latency. Nic read on, although the paper got very technical and went over his head at times, but he got the gist of it. More importantly, it gave focus to his search.

"Katherine, find any and all references to quantum computing, quantum entanglement, or anything that says quantum."

His display immediately began filling up with the results of Katherine's search, Nic filtered through them, looking for something in particular, which he found.

"Quantum bridge! That's it right there!" He shouted, jumping back on his console to try to find the control interface for that item.

"Q1 - Core West \ OC bridge, Q2 - IndCoreCorp, Q3 - DBRepl, Q4 - CTexR\D, Q5 - CoreNetSec, Q6 - MiSTForOps" Nic read off from his screen. "Quantum bridge?" Katherine tilted her head and looked at Nic. "I think it's a kind of network connection, if I understand this correctly. It's not a physical connection, or even a wireless one really, it's a quantum connection. Very fast, very secure and very advanced, I've never seen anything like this before. These Q numbers must be the bridges. I think Erik is being held on the other side of one of them. From the looks of things, these bridges have their own authentication mechanism, we have no access rights."

His display blanked, Katherine let out an alarmed whoop.

"What the?" he started. "Did we lose the tunnel?"

She chirped.

"Dammit, they must have disconnected the Netpod. Not good. I sure as hell hope that backdoor works."

* * * * *

Niles drummed his fingers on his desk impatiently, while he dabbed his still bleeding nose with a piece of gauze the medics left with him. The news that the Netpod he had on him had been taken from him and attached to a MemEx workstation only made his sour mood worse. The NetSec group were doing a full forensic review to determine the amount of damage that had been done. It was assumed that the removal of the device terminated the connection, but this group with Wagner's help had proved to be both resourceful and capable. much to Niles chagrin.

He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and retrieved a glass and a bottle of rare whiskey, he poured himself a triple and took a drink. He grimaced as the liquor stung the open cut at the corner of his mouth- he took another drink. The comm system chimed, he opened the channel.

"What is it?"

"Victor Hessod, Network Security sir."

"Go ahead Victor."

"I have a team down at the Cortex, it has been sealed, we do not have access."

"Something like this was expected, override the door."

"That's just it sir, the override does not work either. We tried a mechanical workaround, and that failed as well, the drive system has been electrified, a team member was electrocuted and taken to the Med Level."

"Call an engineering team to cut through the doors."

"We have them down here already, the door is a Second Age alloy, nothing we have used so far has put so much as a scratch in it."

"Keep working on it, I have to make a call." Niles cut him off before he could respond, and then he tapped his desktop, which was nothing more than a large display console itself. A new comm channel opened and a soft chiming started. Immediately the call was answered.

An older man's face appeared on the display, "Good day Niles, you've looked better." The uniformed man quipped.

"Not today General, I'm not in the mood." Niles replied dryly.

"Niles, you are rarely in the mood. What's on your mind?" the General asked. He was unfazed by Niles demeanor, while the Oligarchs held significant sway over every aspect of the Core, some parts of MCSF were practically governments unto themselves and often functioned that way. The majority of the time the two bureaucracies worked hand-in-hand, as it benefitted both to do so, but it was obvious there was some contention over who should really be the ruling class.

"General, I need a Guardian down at the Cortex as soon as possible."

The General raised his eyebrows, it was a strange request. "Is there cause for alarm?" He inquired.

"No, but expedience would be prudent." Niles answered.

"Niles, you're full of shit." The General started bluntly. He found candour was very useful when dealing with the Oligarchs. "Why the hell would you need a Guardian at the Cortex?"

Niles straightened in his chair, "We have a situation General and we have lost access to the Cortex, Wagner is no longer compliant and we are going to execute a controlled Cortex shutdown."

"And you expect the Guardian to do that?"

"No General, I expect your Guardian to blow the damn door open!" Niles admitted angrily. "The door is some Second Age alloy we have never been able to duplicate and we are unable to gain access to the room. Do you think the Gatsu can penetrate the door?" Niles asked, referring to the extremely powerful weapon the Guardians wielded.

"That might be a question for your physicists, I have no idea. I have seen the gun in action against heavy armor, and although devastatingly effective, I can only guess what it might do to a door like that. I would not want to be anywhere nearby, that's for certain. That much kinetic energy in a small space, the amount of spall that could create on the other side of the door... I just don't--"

"Yes or no, General? I need an answer now."

"Okay Niles, I'll dispatch a unit at once. Make sure there is no one in that hallway when the Guardian fires on the door. I hope you know what you are doing."

Niles comm system chimed.

"Excuse me General, I have another call coming in."

"Of course. I will have a Guardian dispatched immediately, one should be onsite shortly." The General disconnected.

Niles answered the incoming call, it was Ursula Wilks from Cortex research and development.

"Ursula, I have some rather urgent business, how soon can you be back here?" Niles asked right away, having no time for pleasantries.

"Mr. Galvin, I am in meetings all day over here at CPG. I can't just leave."

"We have a critical situation with the Cortex, excuse yourself from the meetings and get back here immediately." Niles voice had taken on that firm tone that he used when he wanted his people to obey unquestionably, and it worked.

"I'll have my staff take over, I'll return as soon as I brief them. May I ask what the issue with the Cortex is?"

"I am shutting it down for good, we are doing a controlled system halt and disconnect, followed by a purge."

"You're killing Wagner?" Ursula asked, shocked.

"He has crossed me for the final time Ursula. He can no longer be trusted or controlled and poses a great risk. He has forced my hand in this, there are no alternatives. I think were are at a point now where we can get along fine without him."

"There is still so much we could learn, Wagner holds nearly all the secrets of the Second Age. A complete purge would be devastating to our technological progress, I mean, nearly everything we have accomplished since the dawn of this Age has been due to Wagner."

"I believe we are at a point now where we can extract the entire database, decode it and isolate Wagner's construct and eliminate it, leaving the remaining data intact. Then we can mine the data at our leisure for more of his precious little secrets." He explained.

"I see," Ursula was not entirely convinced you could remove Wagner from the data so easily, Wagner was the data, but she yielded to Niles pressure. "It will still take an hour or more to get over there. I will notify my people and have them do what they can to prepare before I arrive."

"I should also mention," Niles began casually, "he's locked himself in, he's up to something. We have not been able to gain access."

"That's a problem." She noted.

"I have it under control, a Guardian has been dispatched to help us gain entry."

"You can't be serious Niles."

"Damn serious, we don't have time to play games, we need to get in there and shut him down."

Ursula wanted to comment on the risky, desperate maneuver, but decided it was better to keep her opinions to herself. "I will be there as soon as possible."

"Keep me posted." Niles ended the call and finished his drink, the liquor helped somewhat. It soothed the raging maniac within, but only just. He got up and went to his private en suite to check his busted nose. He checked his teeth, one was definitely loose.

Staring at the beaten man in the mirror, he seethed. He would get them, he promised himself. None of them would make it out of the building alive. He would kill them all. And that would just be the beginning.

___________________________________