Chapter 9
Thwart the plans

They were standing in the corridor, looking at the ceiling. They couldn't believe who they heard a moment ago, they were caught by the worst possible person - Nina Taylor.

"You could let it go already, really. Can't you see it's almost over?" she smiled at her microphone, "You brought this creature right under my door, fantastic job. What a moron came up with an idea of taking him here with you? You? I wouldn't be surprised, but you just made my work easier."

"Nothing is over until I'm standing here." Samuels replied firmly.

"And what are you going to do, escape again? Please… doors are locked and there's pretty much nothing you can do. But… let's make a deal." the ominous smile appeared on her face, "You'll nicely give me this creature and I'll let all of you return home without a scratch. What would you say?"

Kha'Zix widened his eyes and looked at Samuels, scared that he would accept her proposition. Samuels looked at him, too, and smiled. "How about no?" he replied to her.

"Then how about this?" she said and typed something on her keyboard. All digital posters in the corridor switched from adverts to the live transmission from Valoran City which was completely besieged by EC forces. Samuels and others were shocked when they saw that. "See what's going on there? This city will be razed within two days… unless you decide to give me that creature, then I'll stop this immediately. These people's lives depend on you." she tried to blackmail him.

Samuels clenched his teeth and said, "I'll stop this faster than you think. This way!" he said and ran through the corridor. The rest followed him.


"Then let's be it." Nina said to her microphone and stood up from the control console. She went to another computer and connected herself with the main security office. Just like before, she didn't connect with the office of this laboratory, but with the one from the EC facility located elsewhere.

"EC Site 4, main security office talking. What's the problem?" someone said to her.

Nina, confused, replied, "Nina Taylor here, the executive administrator of ERC Site 17. Can you connect me with someone from the Site in which I am?" she said. She couldn't speak with other Sites about this project because Site 17 was the only one included in it.

"Sure, give me a moment.". He tried connecting her with someone from her office, but no one was replying. "I'm afraid there's nobody at this moment." he informed her.

"What?! That's impossible!" she said shocked. Some of her members said they would stay in the facility during all of this.

"But it looks like it. Are you calling about the facility lockdown sequence and security scan? We can disable them from here remotely if you want."

"No… thank you… have a nice day." she said and hung up.

She stood up from the chair and started walking around the room, she was furious. After a moment, she pulled out her phone and called the executive security officer on his private number. A few seconds later, he picked up.

"Nina, what's u-" he got interrupted by her.

"Where the fuck are you?!" she yelled at him, "You said you'll stay in the facility with your crew!"

"Well, yeah, but the outside team needed some extra help and we went there as well."

"Without telling me?!"

"Yeah… I thought it wouldn't be a problem… or… are there any problems?"

"We've got intruders and you left me here alone with them! What am I supposed to do without help?! Also, where the fuck is science personnel? Shouldn't they be here?"

"It's not important where they are. How many of them are in the facility?"

"Four." Nina replied, trying to calm down, "And the one is the creature we are looking for."

"Shit… it's bad…" he said and thought for a moment, "Lock the entire facility, I'm going back there with my team."

"Fastly! They want to stop us!"

"We will try to get there as fast as we can. Now, lock everything, control their every move and try to trap them somewhere."


Samuels with others managed to get to the maintenance areas through the Sector M1's passage. His hacking device started to work properly again and he no longer had problems with opening doors and controlling other stuff. They were now on their way to Sector M3. They were going there trough old service tunnels.

"So much nostalgia…" Rengar said, looking around the tunnels. It was reminding him of the day of his escape from this place. "Anyway, do you know where we should go?" he asked Samuels.

"Yeah." he replied, slowly progressing through the tunnel.

"By what?" Rengar asked another question.

"Signs." Nidalee placed her hand onto his shoulder and pointed with her finger at the sign on the wall.

"Oh…" Rengar gasped, he didn't notice them before.

They were walking like this for the next 15 minutes. Everything was going smoothly and no one was interrupting them. It looked like Nina lost their track. Right now, they were halfway in. These tunnels were huge facilitation for them, they would never reach their main goal going by lab's corridors with Nina watching them on cameras for all the time. It was another plus of these areas - there wasn't a lot of security cameras to disable, so it made their work even easier.

Another 15 minutes passed. They were almost at the end of the tunnel. Its exit was leading to the area they were looking for.

Suddenly, all lights turned from white color to the pale red and all doors closed and locked. They didn't know what was going on. At first, they thought they activated some kind of security systems which trapped them there, but after a few seconds, they realized it was Nina's doing.

"Did you really think I wouldn't find you anymore?" she asked them through the speakers.

"No, we weren't even caring about you." Samuels replied, being pretty confident about his words.

"If that's the case, why were you even trying to do something. I would eventually trap you sooner or later." she replied, mocking them.

"Not completely." Samuels said, waving with his hacking device to one of the security cameras, "We'll get out of here, I assure you." he added.

Nina looked closely at the monitor. When she noticed what Samuels had in his hands, she quickly came up with an idea.

"I assure you that you won't." she smiled and typed a command on the keyboard. She made the power reactor sent some extra power to the tunnel in which they were. Its amount was too high for the doors' control systems and it made its logic board fry completely, locking them inside permanently. "And what are you gonna do now?"

Samuels looked at both ends of the tunnel segment in which they were. Both doors were closed, their controls panels were blank and covered with smoke completely.

"Huh, I thought so." Nina said, knowing he didn't have any idea, "Some of my people will return to the facility tomorrow's morning. I'll finally have my suspect back… thanks to you, of course. Goodbye." she added and disabled her microphone. She left them for a moment because she knew there wasn't anything they could do to escape from her trap.

Few minutes passed. Samuels and others were sitting on the ground in the tunnel, they were completely helpless. There was pretty much nothing they could do about the situation that occurred. They thought about the option of forcing the door, but they quickly realized it would be impossible because its seal was made from pure steel.

"And now what…" Samuels said, nervously stomping foot.

"This hacking device won't work anymore, right?" Nidalee asked him, still having a bit of hope they would get out of here.

"No, door's control chip is fried, we would have to replace it first with a new one… and we don't have it because why would we?" he replied and lowered his head.

"Right…" she nodded, "Then maybe… we could escape through the ventilation? There's a vent on the ceiling." she pointed with her finger.

"No… that's not an option, too. I doubt we would fit there, and even if we would, how would we all get there together?"

"We would give each of us a leg-up." Nidalee suggested.

"Well, yeah, but the last person would stay here, because who would give him a leg-up?"

"Oh… I didn't think about that." she sighed, "So yeah… there's nothing we can do." she admitted and leaned against the wall.

They stopped doing anything, they lost all their hope to get out. They were just sitting there, leaning against walls and talking occasionally about how badly their plans were screwed up. Only Rengar was looking around carefully, he still had some hope and was looking for a solution. He noticed there was a long wire attached to the ceiling, it was powering the lamps. There was electricity in it - doors needed electricity. Suddenly, he came up with a great idea.

"I've got an idea!" he shouted and stood up, raising his hands.

"What is it?" Samuels asked. A little smile appeared on his face.

"See that?" Rengar pointed with his finger, "There's a wire on the ceiling, powering the lamps. We can use it to open the door!"

"Wait, how?" Samuels stood up, "The doors are broken."

"Their control chips are broken, maybe the doors itself are fully operational. Maybe if we attach this wire to the proper connector on the board, it will force door's motor to open it and let us out of here!"

"Hey, it doesn't sound so bad. We can actually try it." Samuels said and smiled at him.

"I didn't know you could be so inventive." Kha'Zix said to Rengar and embraced him from behind, "I'm impressed." he added and kissed him on the cheek.

"You'll see my true ingenuity when we return home." he replied and winked at him.

"Ohh, I look forward to it."

"Alright, enough guys." Nidalee interrupted them, "Let's get to work." she added.

"Heard lady, let's go." Samuels said and begun.

They went to the side of the tunnel where the exit was. First, they ripped from the ceiling the wire which was powering the lamps and cut it such a way to later use it as a connector. During this, some of the lamps turned off because of lack of power. Next, Samuels opened the door's control panel to reveal its control chip. As he thought - it was completely fried, but it sparkled from time to time, which meant the electricity was flowing through it and other systems worked.

"Be careful." Nidalee said to him when he was about to get his hands on this chip.

Samuels looked at it closely and inspected it with his eyes. After a moment, he found a connector labeled as 'mt-pwr'. He ripped off from it the old cable. Next, Rengar gave him the wire from the ceiling, so Samuels could connect it to the board. Holding some distance from the panel, he connected the wire with it. Its power was so high that it burned the board completely, but also powered the door's motor for a moment, so the seal half-opened.

"Success!" Samuels shouted cheerfully.

"Oh man… I thought we would never get out of here." Nidalee said, looking through the opened door to check if there wasn't anybody outside the tunnel.


"You don't have to hurry, I've got them trapped." Nina said happily to the phone, drinking some coffee. She was speaking with the executive security officer who was on his way back to the lab. At this time, she was relaxing in her office, waiting for the personnel to return and run the basic analysis of the creature she captured.

"Are you sure the area is well secured?" he asked her.

"Yes. The doors of the area in which they are trapped are broken, there's no way for them to escape."

"See? Even alone you can handle stuff." the officer laughed.

"Thanks to my brilliant head." she chuckled.

"Alright, we'll arrive tomorrow. We'll be in touch if something goes wrong." he assured her.

"Sure. Ciao!" she said and ended their call.

Taking another sip of coffee, she opened the monitoring panel to control if everything was okay. And everything was beside… they escaped. Nina spat out the coffee all over the screen when she saw that.

"HOW THE FUCK?" she loudly asked herself. She slammed her hands against the desk so hard it almost fell apart. Her eye was twitching, but she tried to stay calm. "Okay… okay…" she took a deep breath and leaned against the back of the chair, "They are better than I thought." she said under her breath and corrected her glasses.

After a moment, she couldn't stand it anymore and slammed her hand against the desk again and yelled out, "Screw that!". She again started typing some commands and unblocked the transit system. Next, she went to the cabinet, took a small gun with her and ran out of the office to catch the tram to Sector M3. She wanted to take the matters into her own hands.


"We're almost there!" Samuels shouted. They were running downstairs to level 4 where all of the control rooms were. "Just a few more levels." he added.

They reached their level a few seconds later. Now they were running through the corridor, ignoring all of the cameras, and looking at every door's sign to know what the room behind it contained. After a few moments, they found it - the room labeled as 'S1402'.

"There it is!" Samuels said and pulled out this hacking device. He began to break the door's security systems. It took him a moment longer than previous doors because this one was secured a bit better.

After a while, they got inside the room. It was a huge, spherical room, containing a big mainframe which was controlling the whole mission and modified creatures. It was quite hot inside because of all running devices in there. At the opposite side of the chamber, there was the thing they were looking for - master control terminal. They slowly approached it.

"And there it is… our goal." Samuels said, looking at everyone, "We reached it…" he smiled.

"So…" Rengar sighed, "Maybe let's end it now…"

"Yeah... let's finally end this…" Samuels repeated and put his hands onto the keyboard. He slowly started typing the ending command. A moment later, the only thing left was to press the enter key.

"Don't… move…" someone said to them when Samuels was about to press that key. They all looked back and saw Nina… pointing at them with a gun. "I won't let you do it.". Her hands were shaking.

Nidalee and Kha'Zix moved away. Only Rengar and Samuels stayed near the terminal.

"You said this so many times… and we are somehow in this room… almost finished." Samuels replied, still holding his finger above the enter key.

"I'll shoot you if I have to… you won't do it." she said, slowly getting closer to them. She sounded like she wasn't controlling herself anymore.

"Even if you shoot me, I'll be able to hit this key first. I can sacrifice myself for others." Samuels said fearlessly.

They were standing like this for a moment, nothing was happening. But Samuels finally decided to do his stuff.

"Alright, now or never." he said and pressed the enter key.


Valoran City...

The mission's mainframe got disabled. All of the modified creatures collapsed on the ground before they could reach the city. Also, all EC forces heard in their headsets they should abandon the mission and return to the facility. Without much thought, they stopped the invasion and started returning to the Site.

City's condition was terrible. Most of the buildings were heavily damaged, some even destroyed, a lot of people got killed. This invasion will be remembered as the most brutal in Valoran City's history.


"No! How dare you?! After what I did for you in the past?!" Nina yelled, still pointing with a gun at him, "Samuels… you'll burn in hell for all you did." she added and slowly pressed the trigger.

"Watch out!" Rengar shouted and pushed Samuels away, finishing himself at bullet's patch. It hit him right into the shoulder.

"AAARRRGGHH!" Rengar screamed out of pain and collapsed on the ground.

"NO!" Kha'Zix shouted when he saw shot Rengar on the ground, covered with his own blood.

Woah, what just happened there? Let's just pray he'll survive… Like always, everything will be clear next Saturday. Thanks for today's attention and see you next week!

I also want to inform you that the next chapter will be the last of this story. Like in my previous work - it will contain an epilogue as well.