Chapter 39
JENNA
The tactical gear feels like a second skin now. Kevlar vest, night vision goggles, the weight of weapons distributed across my body. Twenty-four hours of intensive preparation have transformed me from observer to operator.
“Comms check,” Ezra’s voice crackles through my earpiece from his overwatch position two kilometers out.
“Elimination One, clear,” Nikolai responds.
“Elimination Two, clear,” I follow, testing my mic.
The abandoned coal mine stretches into darkness ahead of us. Lucien mapped the tunnels six hours ago, confirming our underground route into the facility. Behind us, Raphael’s extraction team waits for our all-clear signal.
“Remember,” Nikolai’s voice is barely a whisper beside me, “children first. Always children first.”
I nod, checking my sidearm one final time. The weight of it should feel foreign, wrong. Instead, it feels necessary. These people stole children, broke them, turned innocence into nightmares, then weapons.
They deserve everything we’re about to do to them.
“Movement pattern is sweep and secure,” Nikolai continues as we advance through the tunnel. “You take left side angles; I take right. Anything that moves and isn’t under eighteen dies.”
“Understood.”
The tunnel opens into the facility’s basement after forty minutes of careful progress. Ancient coal dust mixes with the scent of fear and antiseptic—the particular smell of places where terrible things happen to vulnerable people.
My stomach clenches, but my hands remain steady.
“Basement clear,” Nikolai reports. “Proceeding to main level.”
The stairs creak under our weight despite our careful movement. I’ve learned to distribute my steps, to move like a shadow. Weeks of training with killers have taught me things no civilian should know.
The first-floor hallway stretches ahead, lined with doors that make my skin crawl. Each one could contain a child. Each one could contain a monster.
“Door one,” Nikolai signals.
I take my position as he tests the handle. Unlocked. He enters first, weapon raised, and I follow.
Empty office. Computer still running, coffee cup half-full. Someone left in a hurry.
“Clear.”
We move to the next door. Then the next. The facility feels abandoned, but Ezra’s thermal imaging confirms forty-three heat signatures inside the building.
“Door seven,” I whisper.
This one’s different. Heavier. The lock is electronic and requires a keycard. Nikolai produces one—lifted from the personnel file Marcus provided.
The door opens to reveal hell.
A child sits strapped to a chair in the center of the room, electrodes attached to his temples. Maybe eight years old, unconscious from whatever they’ve been doing to him. Monitoring equipment lines the walls, displaying brain wave patterns and stress responses.
My vision goes red around the edges.
“Jenna,” Nikolai’s voice cuts through my rage. “The child first.”
Right. Save first, kill second.
I move to the chair while Nikolai secures the room. The boy’s pulse is steady, but his breathing is shallow. Needle tracks mark his arms where they’ve been injecting him with compounds designed to break his mind.
“Hey,” I whisper, gently removing the electrodes. “Hey, sweetheart, you’re okay now.”
His eyes flutter open—brown, huge, terrified. When he sees me, he tries to shrink back into the chair.
“Please don’t hurt me,” he whispers. “I’ll be good. I promise I’ll be good.”
The words shatter my heart. I’ve heard them before, in my own voice, in my stepfather’s basement.
“No one’s going to hurt you,” I tell him, working at the restraints. “We’re here to take you home.”
“There is no home.” His voice is hollow, aged beyond his years. “They told me. There’s only here.”
“They lied.” I free his wrists and help him sit up. “What’s your name?”
“Subject Seventeen.”
I close my eyes for a moment, fighting back tears and rage in equal measure. “What did your parents call you? Before here?”
“I…” He struggles with the concept. “Tommy? I think… Tommy?”
“Tommy.” I smile at him, keeping my voice gentle. “That’s a good name. Tommy, my friends are going to get you out of here, okay? Take you somewhere safe.”
“Extraction to Basement Seven,” Nikolai reports. “Priority one package.”
“En route,” Raphael confirms.
I hear footsteps in the hallway—heavy boots, multiple people. Nikolai moves to the door, finger on the trigger.
“Get him behind the desk,” he orders.
I guide Tommy to cover as the door explodes inward. Three men in tactical gear rush in, military assault rifles raised.
Nikolai drops the first one with a headshot before he clears the doorway. The second manages to get his weapon up before I put two rounds center mass. The third tries to use the doorframe as cover.
He doesn’t make it.
“Basement Seven clear,” Nikolai reports as the gunsmoke settles. “Three hostiles eliminated.”
Tommy stares at the bodies with the flat expression of someone who’s seen too much violence already. That look breaks my heart more than his fear ever could.
“They’re the bad guys,” I tell him quietly. “We only hurt bad guys.”
“Are you bad guys too?”
The question catches me off guard. I look at Nikolai, then at the dead men bleeding onto concrete floors, then at this damaged child who’s asking if we’re monsters too.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “But we’re your bad guys now.”
Raphael appears in the doorway with Marcus and Theon. “Package secured,” Raphael confirms, kneeling beside Tommy. His voice becomes impossibly gentle. “Hey there, little man. We’re going to get you out of here.”
“How many more?” I ask.
“Thermal shows thirty-six heat signatures remaining,” Marcus reports. “Most concentrated in the eastern wing.”
“Children’s dormitories,” Theon adds grimly. “Based on the facility layout, they’re keeping them together.”
“Personnel?”
“Scattered throughout the building. Probably trying to implement a containment protocol.”
“Not going to work,” Nikolai states. “Elimination team, continue sweep. Find Dr. Elena Martinez.”
We leave Tommy with the extraction team and move deeper into the facility. Each room reveals new horrors—conditioning chambers, medical suites equipped for neural surgery, laboratories full of compounds designed to break young minds.
My rage builds with each discovery until it feels like acid in my veins.
“Door twenty-three,” Nikolai signals.
This one requires more than a keycard. Biometric scanner, multiple locks, security that screams important people work here.
“Stand back,” I tell him, producing the small explosive Theon gave me.
The door disintegrates in a shower of sparks and twisted metal.
Dr. Elena Martinez looks up from her desk, where she’s frantically destroying files. Late forties, gray hair pulled back severely, and dead eyes that probably never showed mercy to a child’s tears.
“You’re too late,” she says, trying to maintain professional composure. “The damage is already done. These children will never be normal.”
“No,” I agree, walking toward her desk. “But they’ll be alive.”
She reaches for a panic button. I put two rounds in her shoulder, spinning her away from the desk.
“Fuck!” She cradles her wounded arm, blood seeping between her fingers. “You can’t—this is illegal—”
“So is torturing children.” I grab her by the collar and drag her away from the desk. “But here we are.”
Nikolai searches her files while I keep the doctor secured. Most of the documents are partially burned, but he salvages what he can.
“Names,” he says, holding up a personnel roster. “Funding sources. Other facility locations.”
“She was trying to destroy evidence,” I observe.
“Good thing we arrived when we did.”
Dr. Martinez tries to stand, still bleeding from her shoulder wound. “You don’t understand what you’re destroying. This program—it saves children from worse fates. Gives them purpose, structure—”
I backhand her across the mouth hard enough to split her lip.
“Structure?” My voice comes out deadly quiet. “You call strapping eight-year-olds to chairs and frying their brain structure?”
“They were damaged already,” she insists. “Orphans, runaways, children from abusive homes. We gave them—”
Nikolai’s fist connects with her jaw before I can stop him. She crumples to the floor, unconscious.
“Sorry,” he says, flexing his knuckles. “Couldn’t listen to that bullshit anymore.”
I understand the impulse. The urge to hurt her, to make her pay for every child’s scream, every broken mind, every small body strapped to conditioning equipment.
But we have work to finish first.
“Extraction status?” I ask through comms.
“Thirty-four children secured,” Marcus reports. “All alive, various states of damage. Medical team is prepping for transport.”
“Personnel count?”
“Eight confirmed eliminated,” Darius answers. “Approximately six remaining.”
“Dr. Martinez is secured for interrogation,” Nikolai reports. “Continue sweep.”
We drag the unconscious doctor with us as we clear the remaining rooms. The eastern wing holds more torture chambers, more evidence of systematic child abuse disguised as scientific research.
In the final room, we find a scene that makes my stomach turn.
A girl, maybe ten years old, is suspended in a sensory deprivation tank. Electrodes monitor her brain activity while she floats unconscious in the dark. Her medical chart shows sixteen hours of continuous sensory isolation.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe.
Nikolai moves immediately to the tank controls, draining the fluid and carefully extracting the child. She’s barely breathing, her pulse thready and weak.
“Priority extraction,” he calls through comms. “Medical emergency.”
Raphael arrives within minutes, taking over the girl’s care. Her eyes don’t open, they have no appearance of REM cycle, don’t track movement. Whatever they’ve done to her mind, the damage might be irreversible.
“How many others?” I ask quietly.
“Thirty-seven children total,” Marcus reports. “Ages five to fourteen. All alive, but…”
But damaged. Broken. Carrying trauma that will take years to heal, if it ever fully heals.
“Personnel status?”
“All eliminated except the doctor,” Damon confirms. “Facility is secure.”
Dr. Martinez begins to regain consciousness as Theon arrives with his chemistry kit. She looks around at the systematic destruction of her life’s work with growing horror.
“You’ve destroyed everything,” she whispers. “Years of research, breakthrough treatments—”
“Breakthrough torture,” I correct.
Theon kneels beside her with a syringe.
“I developed this compound specifically for people like you,” he explains conversationally. “It amplifies pain sensation while keeping you conscious and alert. You’ll experience every moment of what we do to you with perfect clarity.”
“Wait,” she gasps. “I can give you information. Other facilities, funding sources, the people who ordered this research—”
“You’ll give us that anyway,” Nikolai states. “The question is whether you give it to us before or after Theon starts his chemistry lesson.”
Her face goes white. “Please. I was just following orders. Just doing my job—”
“Your job,” I interrupt, “was torturing children.”
I think about Tommy, about his hollow voice saying there is no home.
About the girl who might never wake up properly from whatever they’ve done to her.
About the thirty-seven children who will carry scars for the rest of their lives because people like Dr. Martinez thought their suffering was acceptable collateral damage.
“Theon,” I say quietly. “Teach her about breakthrough pain research.”
His smile is beautiful and unnerving. “My pleasure.”
What follows isn’t justice. Justice would be a fair trial, appropriate punishment, and the measured response of a civilized society.
This is vengeance, pure and simple. And it feels exactly right.
Dr. Martinez tells us everything she knows—names, locations, funding streams, the whole network of people keeping Project Architect alive. Theon’s compounds ensure she doesn’t lie, doesn’t withhold information, doesn’t die until we have everything we need.
When it’s over, I don’t feel sick or guilty or traumatized by the violence. I feel clean. Like we’ve accomplished something important.
“Facility purge in ten minutes,” Ezra reports. “All evidence destroyed.”
“Children?”
“Secure in the transport vehicles,” Raphael confirms. “Initial assessment shows varying degrees of conditioning damage, but all of them are going to survive.”
Survive. Not heal, not recover, not return to normal. But survive.
It’s more than they had when they woke this morning.
As we prepare to leave the burning facility behind us, Nikolai pulls me aside.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
I consider the question. How do I feel after participating in the systematic execution of seventeen people? After torturing information out of someone who probably deserved worse?
“Useful,” I answer finally. “For the first time in my life, I feel useful.”
His smile behind the tactical mask is proud. “Welcome to the family business.”
Looking back at the flames consuming the place where children were broken for science, I realize he’s right. This isn’t just Nikolai’s war anymore, or just the Architects’ mission.
It’s mine too.
And I’m very good at it.