Chapter 9
MIA
There’s something almost meditative about breaking into a building you’re not supposed to be in. It’s like yoga…for people who are sick in the head.
The adrenaline sharpens everything—the distant hum of traffic on the BQE, the smell of rust and rain-damp concrete, the way my breath fogs in the autumn air.
My body knows what to do. Muscle memory takes over, and for a few blissful hours, I don’t have to think about milkshakes or hover cars or the way Vanguard’s eyes darkened when he watched me drink through that straw.
Focus, Mia. You’re on the clock.
The Global Dynamix auxiliary facility in Queens isn’t much to look at from the outside—a squat box of grey concrete tucked between a self-storage warehouse and an abandoned meatpacking plant. No signage. No logo. Just a building that wants very badly to be forgotten.
Which is exactly why SOE flagged it. And since part of my mission is to get as much intel on what Global is doing as possible, in addition to what happened to Kapoor, I don’t get to spend my night alone in my hotel room, eating room service and watching bad reality TV.
“You’re coming up on the east perimeter,” Bayo says in my ear, his voice a familiar comfort. The moth earring is cool against my lobe, a tiny weight that means I’m not alone out here. “Two guards on rotation. They’ll pass your position in approximately ninety seconds.”
“Copy.” I press myself flat against the chain-link fence and start counting. I’m wearing black tactical gear Kat had brought from SOE, my hair pulled back, two guns tucked at my back and in my boot (can’t kiss someone from afar).
I’ve done this a hundred times. This is what I do best—not being a journalist, which was always only as a cover, but being a spy.
So why can’t I stop thinking about Vanguard? The way his nostrils flared as his gaze raked over my bare shoulders, the barely imperceptible way his mouth opened as I asked if he bites. The—
“Seventy seconds,” Bayo says, snapping me out of it. “You still with me?”
Now I am.
“Always.” I watch the guards round the corner—two men in private security uniforms, hands on their belts, faces carrying bored expressions. They’re not expecting trouble. No one ever expects trouble at an auxiliary facility in Queens at two in the morning if there hasn’t been trouble before.
That’s what makes it so easy.
That’s why making trouble can be so much fun.
The moment they pass, I’m up and over the fence, dropping silently onto the cracked asphalt on the other side. The landing sends a jolt through my knees, but I’m already moving, keeping low, hugging the shadows along the building’s eastern wall.
“Service entrance is fifteen meters ahead,” Bayo says. “Keypad lock, four-digit code. I’m running possibilities now, but it might take a minute.”
“I don’t have a minute,” I grumble.
“Then improvise.”
I reach the door and study the keypad. Standard model, nothing fancy. The buttons are worn—some more than others. One, four, seven, and nine show the most use. I run the combinations in my head, factor in the likelihood of lazy security protocols, and punch in 1-9-7-4.
The lock clicks green.
“Show-off,” Bayo mutters.
“You were asking for it.” I ease the door open and slip inside, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. Everything is bathed in a dim red glow, thanks to emergency lighting, with corridors stretching left and right, filled with the faint hum of climate control and the distant beep of machinery.
“According to the building plans Kat pulled, the server room should be on sublevel two,” Bayo says. “Take the corridor on your left, then the service stairs at the end.”
I move quickly, footsteps silent on the concrete floor. The facility has the sterile, empty feel of a place that exists only on paper, with no personal touches or signs of daily use. Whatever Global Dynamix is doing here, they don’t want anyone to know about it.
Which means it’s exactly where I need to be.
The service stairs are narrow and poorly lit. I descend two flights, pausing at each landing to listen. Nothing. Either this place is deserted, or the night shift is skeleton crew. I’m betting on the latter.
“Sublevel two,” Bayo confirms as I reach the bottom. “Server room should be through the double doors at the end of the hall. But I’m picking up heat signatures. Two, maybe three bodies. Stationary. Could be techs, could be security.”
“Could be both,” I muse.
“Aye,” he agrees. “How do you want to play it, Miss Mia?”
I consider my options. Going loud would be faster, but it would also trigger alarms, and the last thing I need is Vanguard swooping in to investigate a break-in at one of his employer’s facilities. The irony would kill.
You’d have to explain why you were there. And he’d look at you with those baby blue eyes of his and know you’d been lying to him the whole time.
I shove the thought away.
“Quiet approach,” I say. “I’ll assess when I get there.”
The corridor is long and featureless, broken only by a series of numbered doors. I press myself against the wall as I near the double doors, risking a glance through the reinforced glass window.
Three people inside: two techs in lab coats, hunched over workstations, one security guard, armed, standing by the far wall with the glazed expression of someone who’s been on shift too long and the coffee’s wearing off.
The server racks line the back wall—rows of blinking lights and humming processors. That’s my target.
“I need a distraction,” I murmur.
“Way ahead of you. Fire suppression system is networked. Give me thirty seconds, and I can trigger a localized alarm in the east wing. Should pull at least the guard.”
“Do it.”
I count the seconds, watching through the glass. At twenty-eight, a distant alarm blares—shrill and insistent. The guard straightens, speaks into his radio, then heads for the door. I flatten myself against the wall as he passes, close enough to smell his aftershave.
He doesn’t see me. They never do.
The moment he’s gone, I slip through the doors. The two techs are still focused on their screens, headphones in, oblivious. I move along the wall, keeping to the shadows, until I reach the server racks.
The device Bayo gave me is the size of a USB stick, a data siphon that can clone terabytes in minutes. I plug it into the nearest port and watch the indicator light blink from red to amber.
“Connection established,” Bayo says. “Downloading now. You’ve got about four minutes before the guard realizes the alarm was a false positive.”
Four minutes. No problem. I can work with that.
While the siphon does its job, I pull out my phone and start photographing—the server configuration, the cable routing, the labels on the equipment, every image automatically sent to Bayo.
Most of it is standard corporate infrastructure, but a few things catch my eye, like a separate rack isolated from the others, cables running through a reinforced conduit in the floor.
Whatever’s on those servers, it’s not connected to the main network.
“Bayo, I’ve got an air-gapped system here, separate from everything else. Do you see it?”
“Can you get physical access?”
I study the rack. Locked cabinet, biometric scanner. “Not without probably triggering something. But I can photograph the setup, maybe give the analysts something to work with?”
“Do it, but watch your time.”
I snap a series of images then notice a label on the cabinet door. Small, easy to miss. Three words that make my stomach clench even as I snap a picture:
PROJECT PROMETHEUS - RESTRICTED
“Bayo,” I breathe. “Are you seeing this?”
“I see it.” His voice has gone tight. “That’s the program Kapoor was investigating before he disappeared. Can you get anything else? Documents, files, anything with that name on it?”
I scan the workstations. One of the techs has a folder open on her screen—schematics of some kind, too far away to read clearly. The other is running what looks like diagnostic software, lines of code scrolling past.
The siphon’s indicator light blinks green. Download complete.
“I’ve got what I can get,” I say, pocketing the device. “Time to go.”
“Yep. Guard’s heading back your way. Sixty seconds, maybe less.”
I move for the door, but one of the techs chooses that moment to stand—stretching, turning toward the coffee machine in the corner.
Toward me.
I freeze.
She’s three meters away, her back to the servers, reaching for a mug. If she turns her head even slightly—
She doesn’t. She pours her coffee, mutters something to her colleague, and sits back down.
I slip through the doors and into the corridor, heart hammering.
“That was close,” Bayo says.
“When isn’t it?” I mutter.
I’m halfway to the service stairs when I hear the footsteps coming, heavy, purposeful, from the direction I need to go. It’s the guard, returning faster than expected, and, from the sound of it, he’s not alone.
“He’s got company,” I whisper.
“I see them on thermal. Three bodies, heading your way. Is there another exit?”
I scan the corridor. Storage rooms, all of them locked. No windows, no vents or spaces large enough to crawl through.
The footsteps are getting closer.
Think, Mia. Think.
There’s a door to my left—unmarked, no keypad. I try the handle. Unlocked. I slip inside and find myself in what looks like a maintenance closet filled with mops, buckets, and industrial cleaning supplies. The smell of bleach burns my nostrils.
I press myself against the wall behind the door, controlling my breathing, and wait.
The footsteps pass. Voices discussing the false alarm in tones of professional annoyance.
They don’t stop, don’t check the closet.
Clearly, they didn’t think the false alarm was worth getting worked up about.
That’s what you hope for in missions like this, that you’re dealing with people who want to clock in and clock out, who aren’t about to go above and beyond for their job.
I count to thirty after the voices fade then ease the door open.
The corridor is empty.
“Clear,” I murmur.
“Then move. I don’t like how many people are awake in that building.”
I take the service stairs two at a time, emerging back on the ground floor. The exit is twenty meters away. Freedom is twenty meters away. I just need to—
“Stop right there.”
And, fuck.
The voice comes from behind me. I turn slowly, hands raised, and find myself facing a security guard I didn’t account for, one who’s young and nervous, a shaky hand on his holstered weapon.
“This is a restricted area,” he says, voice cracking slightly. “How did you get in here?”
I could try to talk my way out, spin a story about being lost, about looking for a bathroom, about any number of plausible lies.
But I look like someone who is up to no good, and he’s already reaching for his radio.
Once he calls it in, the whole building will go on alert, and it will be me against them.
So, I don’t talk.
I move.
I take advantage of his nervousness, and in three swift steps, I close the distance between us.
My hand catches his wrist before he can draw his weapon, twisting sharply.
He yelps, off-balance, and I use his momentum against him, throwing my hip so it sends him crashing to the floor.
His head bounces off the concrete with a sound that makes me wince.
Ouch.
He doesn’t get up.
“Mia?” Bayo’s voice is sharp. “What happened?”
“Just a hiccup.” I check the guard’s pulse—steady, if a bit slow. He’ll have a bloody headache in the morning, but he’ll live. “He’ll be out for a while. I need to move.”
I’m through the service entrance and over the fence before anyone else can respond.
The night swallows me whole, and I don’t stop running until I’m three blocks away, pressed against the side of a bodega with my breath coming in ragged gasps.
I’m out of practice, and my lungs are punishing me for it.
“You’re clear,” Bayo says. “No pursuit. Nice work.”
“Tell that to my heart rate.”
I close my eyes, letting the adrenaline ebb. The data siphon is a solid weight in my pocket. Project Prometheus. Whatever Kapoor found, whatever got him killed—I’m one step closer to finding it too.
And somewhere across the river, Vanguard is sleeping in his penthouse, dreaming whatever dreams a superhero dreams, completely unaware the woman he shared a milkshake with just broke into one of his employer’s facilities.
Let the games begin.