Chapter 8 Ava Taken, Roman’s Line Crosses
Ava Taken, Roman’s Line Crosses
The service corridor behind the server room smelled like hot plastic and old smoke, the kind that clung to the back of your throat long after the fire alarms had been silenced.
When the annex went dark, Ava’s presence went with it - no footsteps, no breath against the comms, just the soft, panicked churn of ventilation and the distant click of locks engaging like teeth.
Roman kept his gun angled down but never away as he moved, palm skimming the wall for vibration.
The metal was warm from the machines that were still trying to run on borrowed power.
Somewhere ahead, a speaker crackled once - static, then nothing - like the building itself had decided to hold its tongue.
“Where are you?” he murmured, not for the corridor, not for the dark. For her. For the stubborn part of him that still believed Ava would answer if he asked the right way.
His earpiece stayed dead. The encrypted address from the courier’s last message had led them here, and the live-feed bait from the annex had confirmed the trap.
But Ava had been taken during the lockdown - quietly enough that the first thing Roman noticed wasn’t the absence of her, it was the way the security system sounded different.
The building didn’t scream when it caught her. It swallowed her like a secret.
He rounded the corner into the corridor proper and found the first proof they’d been seen.
A smear of boot tread - fresh, dark, and not wiped - marked the floor leading toward a service door.
The tread stopped where the corridor widened, then split into two paths: one toward the server room, one toward a maintenance stairwell.
Whoever dragged Ava through here had done it fast, careful, and with enough knowledge to leave the trail just wide enough to guide Roman.
He didn’t take the bait at first. Discipline was a knife edge - one wrong move and you bled out in plain sight. He crouched beside the smear and pressed his fingers to it. The dust was still damp. Not from water.
From blood.
Roman’s jaw tightened until it ached. Ava could handle herself - she’d proven it in courtrooms and in the field when everyone else froze.
But the kind of men who hid behind legal language didn’t need to overpower her physically.
They just needed to isolate her from witnesses, from time, from leverage.
He stood, listening.
A soft hum threaded through the walls, the servers behind their locked sanctum trying to keep data alive. Beneath that, a different sound: a relay switching somewhere deeper in the facility, followed by the low thud of something heavy being moved. It wasn’t random. It was timed.
The syndicate wasn’t just holding Ava. They were preparing to erase her.
Roman reached for the folder in his inner jacket - Ava’s slim folder stamped with her private seal - still secured under the kind of lock he didn’t trust anyone else to know existed.
He could feel the paper’s weight through fabric, the evidence cataloged and ready to be used.
The motion draft Ava had demanded to file was now a ticking bomb, and he’d been trying to keep her from lighting the fuse.
But Ava wasn’t the fuse anymore. She was the match.
He checked his wrist for the time stamp on the building’s emergency protocol.
The lockdown cycle would complete in minutes.
When it did, the server room would purge.
If Ava’s testimony wasn’t extracted and her evidence wasn’t secured, the syndicate would walk out with clean hands and Ava would be left with nothing but bruises and a story no one could prove.
Roman moved toward the maintenance stairwell, gun held steady, breath controlled. The corridor lights flickered as if the power was being rationed by someone who wanted him to feel blind.
He reached the service door. It had no keypad - just a thumbprint scanner embedded in brushed steel.
Roman stared at it like it had insulted him.
A traitor inside The Shadows meant someone knew his patterns. Someone knew his access. Someone also knew what his instincts would do: he’d try to get to Ava fast, and he’d use every legitimate channel available.
He couldn’t.
Not now.
Instead of forcing the scanner, he pulled a thin strip of metal from his kit, not to break it - he wasn’t a thug - but to test the system’s response. The strip hovered a breath from the sensor. A green light blinked once, then died.
The door wasn’t locked from the outside.
It was locked to keep him from coming in.
Roman’s throat went dry. The corridor had been staged. Ava had been moved through a route someone else controlled, and the purge timer was being run by someone who expected him to hesitate.
He pressed his knuckles to the steel and listened to the door’s internal hum. Behind it, the air was cooler - less heated by servers, more stagnant. Someone had opened ventilation there recently, enough to change the temperature. Enough to create a trail.
Enough to lead him into the next part of the plan.
He backed away and took the other split path, toward the server room. The floor texture under his boots changed - less dust, more grit - like this section had been walked more often. That meant the syndicate wanted him to believe the safest route was the most obvious one.
Roman didn’t like obvious.
He moved with measured violence, clearing corners with the same economy he’d used when he was Special Operations - before his discipline became armor and his armor became a cage.
A camera lens turned slightly as he passed its line of sight. Not much. Just enough to confirm he was being watched.
“Of course,” he said under his breath.
He reached the edge of the server room threshold. The door here was thicker, more secure, and it bore The Shadows’ own insignia - modified. Someone had tampered with the panel to make it look familiar while keeping it out of his reach.
Roman’s fingers flexed around his gun. He could open this door. Not by force. By permission.
Which meant he needed a channel he shouldn’t use.
The forbidden channel wasn’t in a manual. It lived in his bones - the part of him that had survived missions no one could afford to admit happened. It was a direct line to a command node that bypassed the internal hierarchy, the one his superiors had restricted after a previous breach.
He’d promised himself he’d never touch it again.
Because touching it didn’t just mark him as desperate. It marked him as compromised.
Still, Ava’s blood-dark smear on the floor told him the purge timer didn’t care about promises.
He took the earpiece from his ear and held it up to his mouth, thumb pressing a hidden switch. The device clicked, then warmed against his skin like a living thing.
“Roman,” he said, low and precise, using the code phrase that would open the node. “Requesting emergency override.”
Silence. Then a tone - soft, almost polite. A voice followed, distorted but unmistakably one of The Shadows’ internal commanders. Not a handler from the syndicate. Not a courier.
One of theirs.
“You’re out of bounds,” the voice said. “State your designation.”
Roman swallowed. His pulse didn’t slow; it sharpened. He kept his tone flat, disciplined. “Elite Commander Roman. Location: data center annex service corridor. Ava Collins - ”
He cut himself off before he could say her name into a system that might be listening with more than one set of ears.
The voice paused. “You are not authorized to reference civilians on this channel.”
Roman’s teeth bared. “Then authorize it.”
A sound came through the earpiece - breathing, close enough that it didn’t belong to the speaker. Someone else in the room with them, or someone had inserted a second feed.
Roman recognized the rhythm. Not the voice. The cadence.
A person who’d learned to mimic authority by watching it. A person who understood how to keep their presence unnoticed.
The voice on the channel replied again, slower. “If you’re requesting override, you must justify it.”
Roman’s eyes flicked to the server door panel. The insignia looked clean, too clean, like it had been polished after tampering. Like someone had planned for him to arrive.
He could walk away. He could obey the chain of command. He could trust that the internal leak would remain theoretical until it wasn’t.
Or he could do what he’d always done when the mission demanded it.
He lied with the precision of a man who’d trained under lies.
“Ava has been compromised,” Roman said, choosing the words that wouldn’t trigger a civilian reference. “Evidence purge initiated. Server room will wipe in minutes. I’m requesting direct command authorization to retrieve her.”
The earpiece hissed once, like the system was biting down.
“You have no proof,” the voice said.
Roman’s fingers tightened. He wanted to tell the truth so badly it burned. He wanted to say, I know someone inside The Shadows is feeding the syndicate our routes. I know because they left a smear that led me. I know because the annex went dark in a way that wasn’t power loss.
But truth was a weapon. And he didn’t know who had a trigger finger on the other end.
“I have proof,” he said, keeping his voice even. “Override now.”
A click - then a new sound. Not the speaker’s voice. A second line activating. A third.
The forbidden channel wasn’t just opening to one command node anymore. It was broadcasting. He felt it in the way the earpiece vibrated against his throat when the signal widened.
He’d broken his own rule the moment he’d used it. But he didn’t understand the cost until the channel started carrying more than his words.
Behind him, in the corridor, a door slammed - somewhere close enough to make the air jump. Footsteps followed, heavy and fast, not syndicate guards. The cadence belonged to The Shadows’ own men.
Roman turned, gun rising.
A pair of figures appeared at the far end of the corridor, silhouettes under emergency lighting. Their uniforms were dark, their faces covered - not to hide from the syndicate, but to hide from him.