Tera crouched behind the smoking remains of the latest iteration of Luminex System's security drone, counting silently as the facility's remaining defenses recalibrated to compensate for their losses. Her gas mask fogged with each labored breath, and her hands were sweating like never before inside the tactical gloves stolen from a corporate security outpost.
"Omega, status?" she whispered into her comms unit—not the sleek neural interfaces used by the uploaded elite, but a cobbled-together mess of salvaged tech.
"Fourth sub-level secured," came the reply. "They had fewer human guards than intel suggested. Mostly automated."
"They wouldn't waste real people guarding their digital afterlives," Tera responded, with a sense of disappointment in her voice. "That would require admitting we still have value."
She pulled up the schematic they'd spent months assembling through bribes, hacking, and reconnaissance. Luminex System's East Server Complex housed approximately half the consciousnesses of Zenith —people who could afford the thirty-million-dollar minimum upload fee. Two million dead people living in digital paradise while the remaining majority fought over the dwindling resources of a world the wealthy had abandoned.
"Remember," she broadcast to her team, "targeted shutdown only. We're not murderers."
"They're already dead, pulling the plug isn't murder." – Rivera, the newest recruit uttered.
"We're better than this," Tera shot back. "This is about resources, not revenge. We shut down luxury processing, redirect power to the residential districts, and download their proprietary medical templates. Stick to the plan."
She moved forward through the smoke, past blinking servers housing thousands of artificial heavens. Somewhere in this building were the backed-up consciousness files of the people who'd built fortunes on exploiting labor, draining resources, and leaving the world to burn once they'd secured their digital immortality.
Tera didn't hate them for wanting to live forever. She hated them for pulling up the ladder once they'd climbed it.
"Found it," Omega's voice crackled through her earpiece. "Primary cooling infrastructure. Thirty seconds to repurpose."
Tera smiled behind her mask. They wouldn't destroy the servers, that would make them the monsters the media already painted them to be. But they would make paradise a little less perfect. Enough discomfort to force negotiation. The dead would have to share with the living once more.
As she planted the final device on the power distribution node, she wondered what the uploaded were experiencing right now. Were they afraid, these people who thought they'd escaped fear forever?
Good. Fear had been the daily reality for everyone else left behind.
"Let the negotiation begin," she whispered, activating the device.