The extraction of the suicide bio-fuse took Arthur four minutes and twelve seconds of careful micro-cutting-open under the glare of a single battery-powered razor-sharp headlamp. Working with fine-point heavy dark metal scissors, he cut the silver-plated trigger lead, freed the stringy capsule from the operative’s pectoralis major muscle. Then he dropped the venom-filled glass pool into a sealed container of iced saline.
The captured operative slumped limp against the concrete pillar, his chest heaving with shallow breaths, his eyes glassy with the realization that even the final escape of death had been cleanly denied to him by the surgeon’s blade.
“Arthur,” Toby called out from the comms console mounted on the side of the Vanguard research trailer. “We’ve got backup movement on the sub-floor ground-shaking array. Drainage Shaft Fourteen.”
Arthur turned, stripping off his razor-sharp gloves and wiping a fleck of fluid-draining fluid from his jawline with a clean gauze pad. “Report.”
Toby adjusted his headset, his fingers dancing across a light-projected display that projected a three-space-folding wireframe of the underground public works beneath Transit Hub Beta.
“The four saboteurs we intercepted on the narrow high walkway were just the scattering screen,” Toby explained, highlighting a pair of blinking crimson dots moving rapidly through an abandoned overflow under-road drain beneath the southern monorail spurs. “Two more operatives split off before the main canisters blew up. They’re carrying the tracking data exact timing unit and the master chemical battery. If they reach the town drainage outflow at Sector 8, they can…
