Twenty-Five
The first shot punched through the doorway—right where Justin’s head had been half a second before. Plaster dust exploded, splinters whistling past his ear. Adrenaline hit like a slap, clearing hesitation in a single, ruthless instant.
Stone exploded inward, grit and splinters stinging Anya’s cheek as she dropped hard to one knee behind the table. Her pulse spiked—no time for fear, only calculation.
Justin was already moving—low, fast, laptop gripped in one hand as another round tore across the wall, glass and wood exploding where a dead icon used to hang. The past shattered along with it.
Outside in the courtyard, Ice opened fire.
The monastery came alive in a single, violent heartbeat.
Gunshots cracked through stone corridors, echoing off ruined arches and old plaster. Snow whipped through broken windows, swirling in the chaos. Below, boots hammered flagstones—short, controlled bursts. Not militia. Not smugglers. Professionals.
Hunters. Or worse.
Justin slid in beside her behind the overturned table and snapped the laptop case shut.
“East corridor,” he said.
“I know.”
A second burst of fire carved into the doorway—lower this time, the shooter adjusting for cover they hadn’t even taken yet. Not guessing. Reading them. Hunting.
Anya’s pulse dropped to that cold, precise rhythm—no fear, just angles and math, her mind slicing the chaos into solvable problems.
Irina.
She angled her rifle at the dark hallway and listened. There—soft footfalls on stone. One set, deliberate, side passage. Another crunch outside the east windows. Cross-angle pressure. They were being herded.
Orlov and Irina.
Justin keyed his comm without looking away from the corridor. “Charlie Team, status.”
Ice answered over a background of gunfire. “Three in the courtyard, one high on the bell tower ruins, and somebody’s trying to flank west.”
Frosty came in next. “Movement near the old chapel wall. They’re cutting us off from the lower exit.”
So not just hunters. A retrieval team.
Anya looked at Justin.
He understood instantly. “They’re here for the window.”
“Yes.”
Justin’s jaw tightened. “Then they don’t leave with it.”
A shot cracked from outside—different angle this time. The battery lantern by the far wall exploded, plunging them into darkness and drifting snow.
The room dimmed to thin blue moonlight, snow swirling through broken glass—a winter ghost in the ruins.
Anya preferred it that way. Shadows were her element. Let them come.
Justin shifted, one hand braced against the floorboards, body angled toward the door. “You can take the corridor?”
“Yes.”
“Orlov?”
“Maybe.”
He nodded once. “Good.”
He was already moving when she raised the rifle.
Justin broke right, slipping through the side arch instead of the main door—changing the angle before the shooters could adjust. Smart. Fast. Ice would have approved if he weren’t busy dodging bullets in the courtyard.
Anya steadied her scope on the corridor’s mouth. A pale face flickered in the dark—Irina. Not enough for a kill. Enough to confirm the threat.
Anya fired anyway.
The round punched through plaster just as Irina withdrew—a shower of dust and stone where her head had been a blink before. Close. Too close.
A quiet laugh floated back through the corridor. “Still impatient.” Mocking. Familiar. A ghost from training days.
Anya didn’t answer. She shifted two feet left and took a lower angle this time, forcing Irina to guess where she’d repositioned.
The woman’s voice came again, calm, almost curious. “You always do that.”
That made Anya still for half a beat. Not fear. Recognition. A memory flickered from another hall, another training ground, another person scoring habits as if precision were a disease to be cataloged.
She shoved it away and moved again.
Outside, Justin reached the eastern window line and opened fire in short, controlled bursts, pinning whoever was covering the exterior angle.
Charlie Team answered from below with disciplined suppressive fire that cut across the courtyard and drove at least one attacker back behind the collapsed bell tower.
Ice’s voice cracked over comms. “One down!”
Frosty answered immediately. “Make it two.”
Good. But not enough.
The retrieval team wasn’t attacking like men trying to win a siege. They were tightening lanes, sealing exits, and controlling movement.
Sokolov didn’t need the monastery. He needed the people inside it to come out in the right order.
Anya shifted to the broken east window and caught movement below.
Three black-clad operators crossed the courtyard wall in staggered formation—retrieval men, not hunters. One had a compact restraint pack. Her stomach dropped. There it was. Proof. They weren’t here to kill.
They were here to take her alive.
She fired once.
The man with the restraint pack dropped to the side into the snow and did not get back up. The other two broke formation instantly, diving for the low wall—trained, disciplined, no wasted movement.
Justin appeared on her right, crouched beneath the window frame. “See something?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Collectors.”
His expression shifted, not with surprise, but with sharper focus. “Confirmed?”
“The restraints made it obvious.”
He exhaled once. “Good.”
She glanced at him sharply. “That’s not good.”
“It means they committed resources.”
Another burst of fire ripped through the courtyard, forcing both of them lower.
Justin looked toward the closed laptop case by the table. “Can you cover me for ten seconds?”
“Yes.”
He nodded and moved before she could ask what he intended.
Justin crossed the room low and fast, grabbed the case, and slid it beneath the interior stone bench built into the old wall. Then he yanked the portable relay battery from the table and crushed it under his boot.
The room’s last power died with a sharp electric pop. Darkness swallowed the room. The fight was finally on their terms.
Anya almost smiled. Now they were fighting on her terms.
Below, Ice shouted from the courtyard. “We’ve got movement north side!”
Gucci answered with a burst of fire.
Then a new sound. Engine noise.
Anya went still.
Justin heard it too.
The low grind of tires on packed snow. Coming from the road below the monastery.
“Vehicle,” he said.
“Yes.”
He keyed the comm. “Charlie Team, eyes on road.”
Ice answered immediately. “Black van. No lights.”
Of course. A retrieval vehicle.
Sokolov liked systems. Hunters to shape the board. Collectors to close the hand.
Justin rose just high enough to check the lower angle through the shattered east window.
The van slid into the lower yard and stopped without drama, engine idling. Two more operatives jumped out, one heading for the side chapel entrance, the other covering the western path.
Anya felt the shape of the trap settle into place.
“They don’t care about the relay.”
“No.”
“They don’t care about the laptop.”
“No.”
Justin looked at her. “They care where you move when the pressure closes.”
She didn’t like how accurate that was.
The corridor behind them whispered. Irina again.
Anya pivoted and fired at the sound.
Irina answered immediately, the shot snapping past Anya’s shoulder, close enough to pluck at her hair before burying itself in the far wall.
Justin was already firing toward the corridor, driving Irina back.
“Enough,” he said sharply.
“Yes.”
But the problem was not Irina. Not really. The problem was the van below. The retrieval team had made its decision. They were no longer shaping. They were committing.
Ice came over comms again, tighter now. “They’re pushing the north wall.”
Frosty added, “South flank’s collapsing. We need to move.”
Justin made the call instantly. “Fall back through the chapel corridor. We break west and regroup at the ridge line.”
Anya turned toward him. “They want west.”
“Yes.”
“So we don’t give it to them.”
He held her gaze for one hard second. Then nodded. “What do you suggest?”
She crossed to the rear sacristy door and kicked it open. Cold wind punched into the room from a narrow stairwell dropping behind the monastery into the ravine. An old service path. Steep. Dangerous. Invisible from the lower yard. “This.”
Justin looked once. Then smiled grimly. “Much better.” He keyed comms. “Charlie Team, change of route. New exfil through rear ravine. Move now.”
Ice didn’t bother hiding his approval. “Now that sounds like a plan.”
The fight compressed—chaos condensed to a single, frantic pulse. Everything in motion at once, no time to breathe or bleed.
Charlie Team peeled back from the courtyard in disciplined bursts, dropping smoke along the north wall and using the ruined chapel columns for cover.
Justin and Anya held the room three beats longer than safety advised, alternating fire between Irina’s corridor and the lower yard.
Orlov finally reappeared in the bell tower ruins. Just a silhouette. Just enough.
Anya fired instantly. The round shattered stone beside his head and forced him down. Not a kill. A message. She sees you.
Justin caught the shift in her posture. “Orlov?”
“Yes.”
“Can you take him?”
“Not from here.”
“Later then.”
They moved down the narrow stone steps, two at a time, boots slipping on old ice and loose gravel as the rear service path spilled into the ravine behind the monastery. Snow lay deeper here, untouched except for animal tracks and one faint set of boot prints that vanished beneath drifted powder.
Pierce? Maybe. No time to think.
Charlie Team converged in the ravine ahead. Ice had Gucci by the elbow, hauling her downslope after a round tore through her sleeve high on the bicep—blood blooming bright against the snow.
“Still moving?” Justin asked.
Gucci bared her teeth. “Annoyingly.”
“Good.”
Above them, Irina’s voice floated over the monastery wall. “Anya.”
No response.
“Next time, don’t bring so many men.”
That earned her a quiet glance from Justin. He did not smile.
Neither did she.
They pushed deeper into the ravine, gunfire snapping overhead from angles that no longer mattered. The retrieval team lost the route. By the time they realized the monastery no longer held the pressure point, Charlie Team had vanished below the line of sight—ghosts in the storm.
Snow thickened again, swallowing sound and shape.
Fifteen minutes later, they stopped beneath a granite overhang, half a klick from the road—breathing hard in the hush, hearts pounding under the weight of survival.
Everyone breathed. No one relaxed.
Justin crouched in the shelter of the rock while Ice checked Gucci’s wound and Frosty scanned the tree line.
Anya stepped in beside him—close enough that their shoulders brushed, neither of them moving away. Heat radiated between them, unspoken and grounding.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The storm muted everything—sound, movement, distance. The monastery felt a world away.
“You stayed on the window longer than you should have,” he said quietly.
“So did you.”
His mouth almost curved. Not quite humor. Recognition—a shared stubbornness, a mirrored flaw.
Her gaze flicked once to the blood on his sleeve. Not his.
Her hand rose before she could stop it, fingers brushing his sleeve above the wrist. Checking. Reassuring. Needing proof that he was whole.
He stilled.
Not pulling away. Not leaning in.
Just…there.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“I didn’t ask.”
A beat.
His hand shifted—just enough to catch her wrist before she could pull away. Not restraining. Not claiming. Just holding.
Holding.
The contact was brief. Controlled.
But the contact grounded something that hadn’t been steady since the first shot—a lifeline in the storm.
“You don’t get taken,” he said, voice low enough for only her. A line in the snow, a vow he wasn’t sure he knew how to keep, but would die trying.
Not a command.
Not a promise.
A line in the sand.
Her eyes lifted to his. “Then don’t let them build a cage I can’t break.” Her voice was soft, but it landed like a challenge.
His grip tightened—barely—before he released her.
“Not happening.” Final. Fierce. A shield in a single word.
The moment ended as cleanly as it started.
But the space between them didn’t reset.
Anya unslung the rifle and looked back toward the monastery through the storm. No pursuit yet. Which meant one thing. “They’re holding position.”
Justin nodded. “They know we took the route data.”
“Yes.”
“And they know we know about the retrieval window.”
She looked at him. “Yes.”
He sat back on his heels and dragged a hand over his jaw. “Then the question becomes why they still wanted us at the monastery.”
Anya didn’t answer immediately. Because she already knew. And hated it. “They wanted to confirm I’d come personally,” she said at last.
Ice looked up from the bandage he was tightening. “That’s all?”
“No.”
She turned the thought over once more and felt it settle like a blade finding bone. “They wanted to see what Justin would do when the cage started closing.”
Silence. Not awkward. Just honest.
Justin’s gaze met hers in the dim light beneath the rock shelf. “And?” The question wasn’t just tactical. It was personal.
Her mouth flattened. “They got their answer.” A warning. A promise. A line drawn fresh in the snow.
He held her eyes a beat longer than necessary. Then looked away first.
Good. Because if he hadn’t, she wasn’t entirely certain she would have.
Frosty finally broke the quiet. “So what now?”
Justin answered immediately. “Now we beat them to the window.”
Anya glanced at him. “The retrieval window.”
“Yes.”
Ice frowned. “You think they’ll still run it after tonight?”
Justin’s expression hardened. “They’ll run it because of tonight.”
True. Sokolov had committed men, hunters, and transport for one purpose. He wouldn’t waste the timing.
Anya reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the folded page she had taken from the archive in Georgia.
Prototype Result: Morozov Twins—Unstable.
She stared at it for one second. Then tucked it back away. “Then we hit them first.”
Justin nodded. “Exactly.”
Somewhere beyond the storm and the ruined monastery, beyond the roads threading these mountains like veins, Dawn Wing waited. So did Sokolov. Predators and prey, circling.
And sometime before 0300, the war would stop circling. It would find her—full force, storm and steel, no more running, no more hiding. This time, the fight would arrive at her door, and Anya would be ready to meet it head-on.