There was only one way an attack could have slipped his radar. The Shadow had found a way to let quantum number generators coordinate even more parts of his plan. Only now was the probability for a specific action above five percent – at a hundred.

“Aron!” Junior yelled, startling everyone in the whole room. “Shadow attack. Now. Four minutes till total destruction. Bring us two levels down. All of us.”

It took a second for the news to sink in but the American reacted quickly. The mess hall’s floor detached from the surrounding walls and descended. Everything underneath was vaporized by Aron’s temperature generation. The ground under their feet fractured as it hit the ground level.

General Lin was one of the first who came back onto their feet. “What do we have to do?”

“I don’t know yet,” Junior said. “I need to see the cameras. For now, we’re all dead. Follow me.”

Nuest rushed into the corridor adjacent to the place where they had landed and arrived at one of the doors with a number pad. While Junior entered his pin, the staff members assembled behind him. The thick steel doors opened and he slipped in as soon as the slit was wide enough for this thin frame.

Downward stairs lead to a platform where Lin took position to guide the personnel into a bunker. Junior himself ascended a staircase branching off the platform and by then Minhyun had linked all of Nuest.

The five boys, plus Jason and Chief Wang, entered a panic room where monitors came to live just as they arrived. A dozen displays showing security footage. Junior strained his eyes, trying to see the next three minutes of probable events.

Hellfire.

Every important structure of the facility was about to be hit by multiple, laser-guided rockets coming from below the mountains, just out of sight – probably from ground based missile vehicles. The explosive’s blast radius was so enormous, they could have been nuclear for all Junior knew. Concrete would melt. They were too far for Aron to get there in time, even flying through Twi. And obviously the Shadow knew exactly where to aim.

The leader relayed the information through the link and added “Most cameras go dark after the impact but not all. Let’s see… the ones around the mountains, the one at the entrance, the bunkers – thank goodness. They’re safe for now.”

Baekho turned in a circle. “There are no cameras in this panic room,” he sent. “Are we safe in here?”

“No,” Junior said out loud. “I still can’t see past the impact. If I stay here, I die.”

Ren grabbed him by the collar and pulled. “Then what are we waiting for?”

They rushed down the stairs onto the platform and further down into the belly of the mountain where tons of granite and layers of reinforced titanium plating shielded them for anything going on outside.

Jason confirmed that everybody from the staff was present – as far as a headcount was possible within thirty seconds – and entered his own pin to shut the bunker gate. Junior saw his assistant switch the power supply to the backup generator within the underground complex.

Junior’s future-sight returned.

For a moment he breathed easy, but the future was still truncated forty minutes from now.

“There is a thirty percent chance the enemy can cut through the bunker in ten minutes. Sixty percent that they’ll make it in twenty minutes. After forty, it’s a certainty. And then they’ll throw everything they have at us.”

Wang called her men over. There was an arsenal in the underground facility, where they went to arm themselves. Meanwhile Lin had finished a proper headcount and was ready for the next step.

“Secret evacuation,” Junior said. “The bunker has a connection to the outside. I’m the only one who knows about it and it’s not written down anywhere. I made sure when we built this place. But it’s a tiny, dark tunnel. You will have to crawl for a good mile without stopping. It leads to a path along the mountain. The entrance is behind cover plate nineteen-G in the left corridor.”

Lin nodded and began collecting the non-combatants for their lengthy evacuation while Wang and her men armed themselves. Only Jason didn't move from his spot.

Should they all run away, too? Aron could create a much bigger tunnel and Ren could illuminate it easily. But what if the Shadow had troops on the other side of the mountain. The villain would follow the anywhere. They had to fight. They had to stay.

This left six boy with nothing to do. Then the impact hit.

It was a minor earthquake. The sound of the explosions didn’t travel through the rock but the subsequent noise of collapsing architecture did. The lights flickered as power lines rattled along their mountings.

Junior turned to his friends. “I don’t have a battle plan yet. We can’t stay here and wait until they find a way in. We have to go out soon and figure out how to fight them. Wang’s troop will engage individual agents. Depending on what I see we can engage or make flight a priority. The question is where we could flee? Would the Shadow attack the city if we hide there?”

All mercenaries were armed and geared up. The first civilians crawled into the small escape hatch to the tunnel, wearing headlamps.

Then Junior saw something in the future he couldn’t believe. Of course, it being part of the Shadow’s plan gave him only a few seconds of warning – and no idea how to avoid it.

Baekho flickered.

“What?” The white tiger looked down on himself. He faded in and out of Twi involuntarily. “I’m not- [flicker] I’m not doing any- [flicker] I don’t know how to stop th- [flicker] help!”

“I’m losing the connection,” Minhyun sent.

“It’s like the time [flicker] when I couldn’t go into Tw- [flicker] but the other way. I can’t stay in reali- [flicker]”

The fading became more erratic until it was impossible to understand a word the boy said. Then he was gone – trapped in Twi. They had lost Baekho. Junior saw no probability for him to pop anywhere.

Jason produced a tablet from somewhere and showed the only available feed to the leader. The camera looking at the entrance showed enough of the surrounding to give an impression of the damage.

Nothing was still standing. Everything was still on fire. Even the rock was burning – the Shadow had used napalm.

Junior had thought he had time to plan. He had thought the Shadow was a cunning, stealthy Machiavelli-wannabe. He had thought the Shadow was running out of resources. He had underestimated how far the enemy’s plans had gotten before the flatline incident cornered the villain and forced this course of action.

Junior had been arrogant and lazy and if there had been time he would have beaten himself up over it. But now, he had to be a leader.

“Chief Wang,” he shouted, his eyes on the screen. “Five agents of the void are about to enter the base in fifty seconds. It has just become a certainty. Take them out before they know where the bullets are coming from.”

All remaining soldiers – about two dozen – assembled at the gate which Jason opened for them. Wang led them outside, wearing a headset. Junior put on his own to act as predictive coordinator. Of course the technology was only a backup plan.

“Minhyun, can you keep all our guys in a link net?”

“Yes, leader. You can just think your commands at them.”

Junior observed the future action of the enemy troops and told his soldiers through which burning wreckage to run in order to flank the agents of the void most effectively.

A small shift in the future occurred as the chance of an event jumped from nothing to certain. Ren rubbed his temples, dropped out the link net and collapsed. Junior had gotten a single precious second of warning and caught his boyfriend before Ren’s head hit the ground. Then the shaking began – the empath was having a seizure.

Minhyun’s network broke.

“I’ll try to connect to him,” the dream-walker said. “I can still get into his mind. He’s getting jammed. There’s no reason why but his brain is doing a hundred things at once. Have you seen this coming?”

“No,” Junior said.

“Then I think the Shadow can induce epilepsy from afar. I’ll try to reach Ren in there. Maybe I can fight whatever is causing th-”

Minhyun staggered. Junior knew what was about to happen before it did. The dream-walker collapsed onto the ground with a seizure. Two more down. It was him, Jason and the American now.

Aron knelt down next to his boyfriend. “Is this going to happen to us, too?”

“I don’t…” Probabilities shifted and all Junior saw a few seconds from now were senseless, flashing half-images. “Yes, it’s happening right now!”

The future went black.