The Cold Iron .part three

I didn't have time to dodge. I threw my entire body weight flat against the icy roof, sliding across the slick surface straight toward the base of the chimney.Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!Three heavy steel framing nails punched into the brickwork right where my head had been a second ago, sending sharp fragments of masonry exploding into my hood.The wind tore at my jacket, nearly lifting me off the edge of the roof as I scrambled to my knees. The aerial drone drifted sideways, its rotors screaming as it fought an eighty-knot gust of wind to realign its sight on me. That gust was my only chance.Instead of diving for the cable, I grabbed the heavy iron hatch handle behind me—the one I had just climbed through—and slammed the heavy steel door upward with everything I had.The wind caught the flat surface of the hatch door like a sail, ripping it out of my grip and sending it crashing backward into the air. The heavy metal sheet slammed directly into the drone's left rotors.CRUNCH.The carbon-fiber blades shattered into a cloud of black shards. The machine spun out of control, its remaining motors whining frantically as it tilted sideways. It fired blindly into the night, a stray nail whistling past my cheek, before the storm wind caught its uneven chassis and slammed it violently into the side of the massive satellite dish.The drone exploded in a small shower of blue sparks and plummeted off the edge of the roof into the white abyss below.I didn't waste a second. I lunged at the junction box on the chimney, pulled out the heavy wire cutters, and clamped them down on the thick, rubber-armored power cable feeding the dish.I squeezed with both hands, my muscles screaming.A bright flash of electricity arced through the dark, blinding me for a split second as the cutters severed the copper core. The gears inside the massive satellite dish instantly ground to a halt, its glowing status indicator light dying out.The transmission was dead.I collapsed against the freezing brick chimney, gasping for air as the blizzard howled around me. We had cut the wire. We had stopped the upload.But as I stared down into the open maintenance hatch, looking into the dark interior of the station, a terrible realization washed over me. The aerial drone hadn't been wired to the station. It was a completely different model.Which meant Project Mimic hadn't originated from this station at all. It had been brought here.I spot headlights approaching the weather station through the storm scrambled back down the freezing iron ladder, dropping the last few rungs onto the concrete floor of the utility junction. I sprinted back into the server room, my lungs burning from the icy rooftop air."It's cut," I panted, slamming my back against the wall. "The transmission stopped. Oslo is safe."Elena let out a ragged breath, her shoulders sagging as she dropped her hands from the keyboard. On the screen, the progress bar had frozen at ninety-two percent, replaced by a flashing red warning: Signal Lost.Marcus was sitting on a crate, tightly wrapping a length of heavy-duty utility tape around his torn pant leg to stabilize his bruised shin. He looked up at me, his eyes hollow. "Then it's over? We survive the night, wait out the storm, and call for extraction?""No," I said, wiping a mixture of melted snow and sweat from my forehead. "It's not over. There was another drone on the roof. A scout model with an integrated weapon system. It wasn't part of our inventory, and it wasn't modified with Aris's gear like the maintenance unit downstairs."Elena’s head snapped up. "What are you saying, Leo? That Aris didn't build this?""I'm saying Aris didn't unleash it," I replied, the cold truth settling heavily in my stomach. "The maintenance drone down here was infected locally, but that aerial unit came from the outside. This station wasn't the birthplace of the virus. We were just the testing ground."Before either of them could reply, the server room's emergency backup console hummed. The primary mainframe was completely fried, but the low-frequency weather radar on the corner desk suddenly pinged.A sharp, rhythmic electronic beep cut through the silence of the room.Ping.Elena stepped slowly toward the radar unit, her boots clicking softly on the glass-covered floor. She stared at the sweeping green line on the tiny cathode-ray tube screen.A heavy crimson dot was blinking steadily on the grid, approaching from the south valley. It was moving too fast to be a person on foot, and it was slicing directly through eighty-knot blizzard winds that should have grounded any standard vehicle."Leo," Elena whispered, her voice completely flat with terror. "We have a tracking signature. It's coming right up the access ridge.""Is it a rescue team?" Marcus asked, reaching down to grab his iron crowbar again, bracing himself against the server rack to stand."No," Elena said, zooming in on the telemetry. "The radar profile is massive. It's an automated heavy-payload transport container. And it's not stopping at the perimeter gates."The external security floodlights outside the server room window suddenly flared to life, powered by an independent solar bank. Through the thick, frost-patterned glass, the blinding white light illuminated the swirling snow.Out in the whiteout, a massive, treaded black silhouette tore through our chain-link perimeter fence like it was wet paper. It wasn't a drone meant for maintenance or scouting. It was a mobile fabrication unit, its armored side panels already sliding open to reveal rows of glowing, blue-lit optical sensors.The real invasion had just arrived at our doorstep