Taz: Unleashed

The buried chamber hums beneath Elysium Spire. Layered consoles illuminate Specter architecture, operator schedules, and a sealed BERSERKER command queue addressed to Taz’s implant signature.

Encrypted fragments assemble across the central display. Handler identifiers remain masked, but command timestamps, relay locations, and dormant access routes begin resolving around the live queue.

A warning blooms across the chamber glass: BERSERKER authorization pending. The system requests confirmation from Taz’s implants while a countdown begins beneath the sealed command queue.

Taz retrieves the signal scrambler from his coat and clamps it into the cyberwarfare interface. He routes the node’s BERSERKER handshake through a sealed, one-way sandbox.

The live queue supplies its authorization details. Taz feeds them into the scrambler’s false channel, giving Specter the requested biometric history without exposing any path back to his implants.

Taz folds the false authorization into the pending confirmation packet, then redirects the countdown timer into a recursive maintenance state. The warning freezes at zero seconds without issuing the command.

The control queue locks open. Handler identifiers resolve across the central display, along with dormant access routes beneath Elysium and a complete copy of the BERSERKER authorization chain.

Smoke curls from the scrambler’s housing as its final components fail. The node remains deceived, the command is contained, and Taz’s implants receive no hostile confirmation.

Taz drives the cyberwarfare equipment into the exposed BERSERKER chain, isolating every handler relay and stripping the command queue of authority.

Encrypted control paths collapse across the chamber display. Remote triggers, biometric overrides, and dormant escalation routines sever cleanly from Taz’s implants.

Taz redirects the remaining authorization traffic into a dead-end archive, then overwrites the node’s control table with contradictory maintenance states.

The sealed queue empties. BERSERKER no longer recognizes Taz as an addressable platform, and the chamber’s warning displays go dark without touching his evidence copies.

A final audit confirms the severance across every known relay. The buried node remains accessible, but its weaponized authority over Taz is gone.

Taz feeds the preserved murder archive into the buried node, correlating Colonel Marcus Vale’s route order, Viktor Soren’s later access, and every concealed relay used after the crash.

The infrastructure yields a live location beneath Elysium Spire: a sealed executive operations floor where Colonel Marcus Vale’s command credentials remain active and Viktor Soren’s encrypted channel terminates.

Taz isolates their identities, access routes, security schedules, and recorded orders into a clean pursuit file. The system confirms both men’s responsibility for the family murder.

A concealed lift path appears beneath the chamber, leading directly toward the executive floor. Taz has their names, their roles, their location, and an immediate way to reach them.

Taz slips into the concealed lift path and descends to the executive floor below. His boots find the maintenance landing without triggering the access sensors.

He places adhesive sensor tabs along the corridor junctions, service doors, and ceiling conduit, spacing them to triangulate movement around the executive elevator.

Crouched beside the elevator housing, Taz feeds the fiber-optic probe through a maintenance seam. The tiny lens maps the adjoining floor in layered thermal and motion returns.

The map resolves into twelve armed security personnel, two corporate technicians, and a clear elevator approach leading toward the command suite above. Their patrol pattern is exact.

A probe filament catches inside the housing and releases with a sharp metallic tick. One corridor camera pivots toward the sound, recording three seconds of empty floor.

The elevator rises into the command suite level. Taz draws the vibroknife in his left hand and the suppressed machine pistol in his right as the doors part.

He throws the smoke canister down the corridor. White chemical fog blooms across the security formation, swallowing the nearest guards before they can raise their weapons.

Taz surges through the opening. The vibroknife cuts beneath the first guard, a young adult man with a compact build, medium-brown skin, and close-cropped black hair beneath his helmet, clad in dark tactical armor’s helmet seal, then turns into the second guard, a middle-aged woman with a broad build, deep-brown skin, and braided black hair tucked beneath her helmet, clad in dark tactical armor’s throat before either body can strike an alarm.

A third guard, a young adult man with a lean build, pale skin, and sandy hair visible beneath his helmet, clad in dark tactical armor emerges from the smoke. Taz hooks him behind the knee, drives the blade into his chest, and catches the falling rifle before it clatters across the floor.

The remaining guards, adult human men and women in dark tactical armor, with varied builds and helmets obscuring their hair and most facial details stagger blind as Taz advances with the machine pistol ready. None fire. His sensor tabs mark their positions through the smoke, and the corridor falls silent.

Beyond the fallen security team, a blast door stands open to the command suite. Its access panel displays Vale’s active credentials and a live private relay tagged to Soren.

Smoke churns through the corridor as Taz drives forward, vibroknife flashing between blurred silhouettes. The nearest guards barely orient before he reaches them.

One rifleman, an adult human man with a stocky build in dark tactical armor and a sealed helmet, folds with his throat opened beneath the helmet seal. Taz pivots through the fall, catches another woman, an adult human woman with a sturdy build in dark tactical armor and a rounded helmet, by her armored collar, and cuts across her neck.

Two more guards, adult human men in dark tactical armor and sealed helmets, fire blind into the ceiling. Taz closes the distance, burying the blade beneath one visor and sweeping the other’s legs before finishing him on the floor.

The smoke breaks their formation completely. Sensor tabs mark fleeing heat through the haze, and Taz charges the next cluster, striking fast until the corridor holds only bodies and dropped weapons.

Taz emerges at the blast door, knife lowered but ready. The last guard, an adult human man in dark tactical armor with a sealed helmet, disappears beyond it, while Vale’s credentials continue glowing beside Soren’s active relay.

Taz drops the vibroknife, draws the discreet pistol, and throws a flash grenade through the blast door. White light detonates across the command suite.

He rushes through the glare with a pistol in each hand. The retreating guard turns toward him, but controlled fire strikes the armor and drops him before he can raise his weapon.

Vale, an older man with a lean frame and close-cropped silver hair, stands behind the command console in a dark military coat. Taz’s shots pin both arms, then both legs, dropping him alive beside the console.

The wounded guard lies motionless near the entrance. Vale bleeds across the polished floor, unable to reach the console, while the private relay projects Soren’s masked interface above the command desk.

Taz keeps both pistols trained across the room, leaving Vale incapacitated and Soren untouched for last. The relay opens a secure audio channel.