Round 52

Jeane's patience thinned faster than the water cooled her skin. "Enough!" she hissed, the word a whip crack in the confined space of the tunnel. Her crimson eyes bore into Silra's face, searching for understanding or compliance—anything but this infuriating stalemate. The entity shifted again, its form sliding like oil across water as it prepared another lunge.

Silra's fingers never stopped moving across her interface as she processed the situation. "You want me to plant a... I'm not planting anything," she muttered under her breath, eyes glued to the screens floating before her, occasionally glancing at the entity looming through the floodwaters. This isn't about speed versus power, it's about not triggering every security protocol in this corporate hellhole." She muttered under her breath as lines of code scrolled past too fast for any but a trained eye.

"Thirty seconds—give me thirty damn seconds or I swear by all the data gods that your next software update will be riddled with my little surprises," Silra warned, teal eyes flashing dangerously. Jeane turned away with a frustrated huff, her wings twitching as she glared at the entity. The thing outside the shield surged forward again, its form twisting into new nightmarish shapes.

The water lapped at their ankles, cold and insistent. They were trapped in this flooded tunnel, surrounded by evidence of corporate depravity and pursued by a guardian that refused to die. Time was running out—and with it, their options for escape or survival.