Chapter 17
CASSIUS
The sewer tunnel smells like rust and standing water and decades of the city's forgotten waste.
We move through it single file—Lionel on point, then me, then Selene, then Paul covering our backs.
The flashlight beams cut narrow paths through the dark, catching the wet gleam of pipes overhead and the occasional scatter of rats along the concrete ledge.
Selene hasn't spoken since we entered the tunnel.
I can hear her breathing behind me, steady and measured, trying to keep her body from outrunning her mind.
Her footsteps are light.
She moves well in the dark, better than I expected, placing her feet where I place mine without being told.
The service tunnel entrance is exactly where Alexei said it would be.
A steel plate welded over a rectangular opening in the tunnel wall, the welds sloppy and uneven, the work of someone who was told to seal it and didn't care enough to do it properly.
Lionel examines it with his flashlight, runs his fingers along the seam, then looks back at me and nods.
He wedges the crowbar into the gap where the weld is thinnest.
One pull, and the metal groans but holds.
Two pulls, and a seam splits along the bottom edge, rust flaking off in dark orange chips.
By the third pull, the plate bows inward with a sound like a car door being pried open.
We all go still and listen.
The building above us breathes—the hum of electrical systems, the distant clang of a pipe expanding in the heat, the muffled sound of a radio playing something with a heavy bass line.
No footsteps. No voices close enough to mean we've been heard.
Lionel peels the plate back far enough for a body to pass through.
The opening leads into a utility crawlspace—low ceiling, exposed wiring, the smell of concrete dust and machine oil.
Beyond it, according to Alexei's hand-drawn map, is the basement hallway.
I go through first, drop into the crawlspace and move forward on my elbows until the space opens into a corridor lit by a single fluorescent tube that buzzes and flickers like it's been dying for months.
The floor is poured concrete, stained and cracked.
Two doors on the left. One on the right.
The east room, where they're holding Emilia, should be the second door on the left.
Selene drops in behind me, then Lionel. Paul stays at the tunnel entrance to hold our exit.
I hold up two fingers and point left.
Lionel nods and moves to the first door, pressing his ear against the metal.
He holds up one finger. One man inside.
Probably the guard rotation Alexei described, the pair that stays in the corridor while the other two watch Emilia.
The radio is coming from behind this first door.
Tinny speakers, some Russian pop song, the kind of music bored men play to fill the hours of a shift where nothing is supposed to happen.
I look at Selene.
Her face is pale under the fluorescent flicker but her eyes are focused, tracking the corridor, looking at the doors, the distances, and the angles.
The knife is on her thigh. Her hand hasn't gone to it yet. That's good. Reaching for a weapon before you need it is how you end up using it wrong.
I signal Lionel. He tries the door handle. Unlocked, how careless.
Bored men get sloppy.
Lionel opens the door and goes through it in one fluid movement.
There's a sound—short, compressed, the wet thud of something heavy hitting something soft—and then nothing.
Lionel reappears in the doorway, wiping his hands on his pants.
One down.
We move to the second door. The east room. Emilia.
I can hear voices now. Two of them, speaking Russian.
One is complaining about the food. The other is talking about a football match.
Neither of them are taking their work seriously, and that much is obvious.
I try the handle. Locked.
Lionel positions himself. I count down on my fingers.
Three. Two. One.
His boot hits the door just below the handle and the frame splinters inward.
I go through the opening before the door has finished swinging, gun up, sightlines clear.
The room is exactly what the video showed.
Concrete walls. Exposed pipes. Harsh fluorescent lighting that makes everything look washed out and sick. And in the center, still bound to the same metal chair, is Emilia.
She looks worse than she did in the video.
Her blonde hair is matted and dark with dried blood and sweat.
Both eyes are swollen now, not just the one.
Her lips are cracked and bleeding, and there's a bruise on her jaw that's gone the color of rotten fruit.
She's conscious, barely, her head hanging forward, blood dripping, chin against her chest.
The two guards are on their feet.
One is reaching for the pistol on the table beside a half-eaten sandwich.
The other is already holding his weapon, turning toward the door with the delayed reaction of a man who didn't believe anyone would actually come.
I shoot the one reaching for the table. Center mass. He drops, and the sandwich goes with him.
The second guard fires.
The shot goes wide—panic, not aim—and punches into the concrete wall three feet to my left, spraying dust and chips.
Lionel hits him from the side, a tackle that takes them both to the ground, and what follows is brief and ugly and ends with Lionel standing up and the guard not.
"Clear," Lionel says.
I cross to Emilia.
Her head comes up slowly when she hears footsteps, and the look in her eyes is the look of an animal that has been hit so many times it flinches at everything, even rescue.
"Emilia." I keep my voice low. Even. Non-threatening, which is a particular challenge given that I'm holding a gun and standing over two bodies. "You're safe. We're getting you out."
She blinks and tries to focus.
Her swollen eyes make the effort painful and I can see her struggling to process what she's seeing—a man she doesn't recognize, in tactical gear, with blood spray on his shirt and a gun in his hand, telling her she's safe in a room that has been the polar opposite of safe for her.
Then she sees Selene.
Selene comes through the door behind me and the sound that comes out of Emilia is not a word.
It's something from before language, a raw and wrecked sound that holds relief and terror and confusion all at once.
Her body lurches against the zip ties, straining toward Selene with everything she has.
"Sel—Selene—"
Selene is on her knees in front of the chair before I can move.
Her hands are shaking as she pulls the knife from her thigh and cuts the zip ties, and the gentleness with which she does it, the care she takes not to nick the raw and bleeding skin of Emilia's wrists, is so at odds with everything else happening in this room that something in my chest twists.
"I'm here," Selene says. Her voice is the steadiest thing in the building. "I'm here, Em. I've got you. We're going home."
Emilia collapses forward into her arms.
The sobs that come are the kind that shake a person's entire frame, the kind that come from somewhere deeper than the chest, and Selene catches her, holds her and wraps herself around that small, broken body like she can absorb the damage.
"I knew," Emilia chokes out between sobs. "I knew you'd come. I kept telling myself Selene will come, Selene will find me—"
"I'm here. I found you. It's over."
But Emilia pulls back. Just enough to see.
And what she sees is Selene in tactical gear with a knife in her hand, blood on her boots, and a diamond collar at her throat glinting above the neckline of a ballistic vest.
What she sees is not the Selene she knows.
"What is this?" Emilia whispers. The terror in her voice has shifted. It's not pointed at the room anymore, or the men on the floor, or the memory of what she's endured since she's been here. It's pointed at Selene. "What are you—who are these—"
"Not now." Selene's voice cracks on the second word, just barely, a fissure so small that only someone who knows her the way I know her would catch it. "We need to move, Em. Can you walk?"
"They told me things." Emilia's eyes are wide, wet, and searching Selene's face for something she's not finding. "The men who took me. They said you were with someone. A crime lord. They said he killed people. They said he killed your—"
"Not. Now." Selene cups Emilia's face in both hands, forces eye contact, and the expression she's wearing is one I recognize because I've worn it myself.
The expression of a person holding a situation together by refusing to let it be anything other than what they need it to be right now. "Can you walk?"
Emilia nods. Barely.
Selene pulls her to her feet, wraps Emilia's arm over her shoulder, and takes most of her weight.
She looks at me over Emilia's head and her eyes are wet but her jaw is set and the message is clear: Get us out of here.
"Lionel. Point. Same route, reverse." I move to the door, check the hallway. It's empty. The radio is still playing from the first room, the dead man's music filling the silence he left behind. "Move."
We're halfway down the corridor when the stairwell door at the far end swings open.
Two men. Armed. They don't stand at the door and assess.
They come through it moving, advancing down the hall toward us with their weapons raised, and the distance between us shrinks fast.
Lionel fires. He hits the first man in the shoulder. The man spins but doesn't drop, braces against the wall, brings his weapon back up with his good arm.
I raise my gun but the angle is wrong—Selene and Emilia are directly in front of me, filling the narrow corridor, and I can't get a clean shot without risking them.
I shift left, trying to find a line around them, and in that half-second the second man closes another five feet.
He's not aiming at me. Not at Lionel. He's aiming at the easiest target—Selene, weighed down by Emilia, unable to move, unable to dodge, a stationary body in a straight corridor.
I open my mouth to shout and the word doesn't make it out before Selene moves.
She shoves Emilia sideways, hard, into the wall, out of the line of fire.