Round 59

The platform groaned beneath their weight, rusted metal complaining as the rising flood pressed upward from below. Jeane’s wings beat once, twice, creating small whirlpools in the water lapping at the edge of their refuge. “Silra!” she snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut through the sound of rushing water and creaking structure. “How long?”

The elf woman didn’t look up from her screens, fingers dancing across invisible interfaces with practiced precision. “I’m working on it,” Silra replied, annoyance bleeding into her tone despite obvious concentration. “You try hacking a corporate entity while it’s throwing literal magic at you.” The teal of her eyes flickered as she glanced sideways, taking in both the shadow creature writhing in the depths and Halie’s strained shield magic.

“Thirty seconds,” Jeane growled, more to herself than anyone else. “I can hold this thing off for maybe thirty seconds before my magic overloads and turns us all into charred crisps on this rusty platform!” She turned to Halie, her expression softening fractionally. “Stay close behind me; if this platform gives way, I’ll shield us both with my magic.”

Silra’s fingers never stopped moving. “You’ve got thirty seconds to not die,” she called back, voice barely audible over the rushing water and groaning metal. “Because if I lose connection now, we’re all fucked anyway.” The screens before her flickered wildly as another surge of security protocols triggered—Jeane’s dark energy ball had clearly done some damage, but at what cost? The water rose another inch, cold and insistent.

“You want me to plant a...” Silra began, her voice tight with concentration, “I’m not planting anything—screenshot this shit and send it to my contacts if you don’t back off and let me work!” The teal-eyed elf kept her eyes glued to the screens floating before her, occasionally glancing at the entity looming through the floodwaters. This wasn’t about speed versus power, it was about not triggering every security protocol in this corporate hellhole.

“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,” she muttered under her breath as lines of code scrolled past too fast for any but a trained eye. The water rose another inch, and Silra’s fingers moved faster.