She could hear the mountain’s heartbeat: the low rumble of tectonic plates, the whisper of wind through pine, the distant crack of an avalanche. Through the suit’s sensors, she could see the hidden lab’s interior: rows of dormant ABW‑146 prototypes, each awaiting activation, each a promise of healing, of augmentation, of a new evolutionary step.

“Jax, what’s the risk?” he asked, voice tight.

Mara’s fingers danced across the keys, injecting a custom encryption routine— DivShield 4.0 —designed to bind the suit’s AI to the Division’s secure servers. The countdown hit . The suit’s blue glow flared, and the exoskeleton seemed to inhale, expanding like a living thing.

On the screen, a new line appeared:

“Mara cut him off. “Or it could be a rescue.”

Her partner, a lanky former hacker named , leaned over the terminal, his fingers hovering above the keyboard. “If this is a trigger… we need to find the source. It could be a bomb, a virus, a weapon—”