Chapter 7
Harper was still awake when the engines came.
Outside. Not the usual generator hum or the crunch of guards changing shift.
She lifted her head from the ratty pillow. Engines revving. Multiple vehicles, moving fast, then cutting out all at once. She sat up and the blanket slid from her shoulders.
The engines grew louder. Then nothing. The sudden absence of sound pressed against her eardrums.
Boom.
The entire barrack shuddered. The overhead bulb swung wildly and threw jagged shadows across the walls. Women screamed. Harper rolled out of bed, her boots hitting the floor.
God, what now?
Gunfire erupted. A staccato rhythm that escalated in seconds to a continuous roar. Close enough, the vibration thudded in her chest.
Women scrambled from their beds, dropping to the floor, hands over their heads, while a few ran for the walls and pressed against the brickwork, eyes wide in the artificial light.
Polina jumped down from the upper bunk and grabbed Harper’s arm, her fingers digging in. “What’s happening?”
Harper’s mouth was too dry. “Don’t know. We should—”
The lock blew, and the door punched inward, hinges warping, smoke pouring through the gap.
Harper dove for the floor, dragging Polina down with her. Pain lanced through her knees as she hit the wood. Two guards burst through the smoke, rifles up, faces red and furious.
“Down! Everyone down!”
Women who weren’t already on the floor dropped. Harper threw her arm over Polina’s back and pressed her cheek against grainy wood, breathing in dust and damp wood.
The gunfire outside intensified. Shouting in Russian. Someone screaming. The generator’s hum cut out, and the overhead bulb died, plunging them into darkness.
Harper twisted her head to look.
The orange flicker of flames from outside lit the windows. One guard moved to the shattered doorway, looked out—
His head snapped back too far, like someone had yanked a wire. He dropped, rifle clattering from his hands.
Harper tasted bile.
The second guard fired through the doorway. Automatic fire that made Harper’s ears ring, a high, thin whine drowning out everything else. She squeezed her eyes shut, her arm tightening over Polina. The stink of gunpowder scorched her throat.
Please make it stop. Please—
The gunfire ceased.
A heavy thud. Harper blinked, focussing on the doorway. The second guard was down, blood black in the flicker of firelight. Harper slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Tears blurred her vision, hot against her frozen cheeks.
Boots on wood. An armed figure filled the doorway. Tall, broad-shouldered, backlit by flames, dressed in white tactical winter gear streaked with soot, his face covered by a white balaclava.
The stranger scanned the room. His head turned in small increments, taking in every corner, every body, as if he was counting inventory.
He didn’t move like the guards with swagger or wasted noise. Just purpose. His attention fixed on Harper.
Her breath stuttered. He was across the room in a second.
Harper pushed up onto her hands and knees. She scrambled backward, bare skin scraping against splinters. She hit the bunk frame, and metal dug into her spine. There was nowhere to go.
He stopped two feet away, looming over her. “Harper Fox?”
She couldn’t place the accent, but it was emotionless. She nodded, her throat closed.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes, but—”
His hand closed around her wrist. “Move.”
He pulled her up fast, but not carelessly, one hand catching her elbow when her knees threatened to buckle.
Polina screamed, reaching for her, but the man ignored her and dragged Harper toward the door.
Harper tripped, caught herself, and dug her heels in, clawing at the hand holding her wrist. “Stop—”
But his grip was unbreakable and he kept moving. Harper twisted, tried to yank free, digging her fingernails into the small gap where his gloves met sleeve. His skin was hot and real.
He spun fast, and his free hand came up, not touching her but close enough to make her freeze. “Stop.”
Cold green eyes locked on hers, reminding her of the taiga forest in deep winter, ice forming over still water.
“Let me go—”
He turned and pulled her past the dead guards sprawled in spreading pools of thick, viscous blood.
He halted in the doorway. Ahead, smoke curled through the night air in filthy ribbons. Harper gasped as the cold grabbed her like an icy glove, well below freezing and honed by the wind.
The compound was burning. Fire licked up the side of the admin building, painting everything in orange and shadow. Guards ran in scattered groups, shouting, firing at targets she couldn’t see.
Two men in white moved through smoke with rifles raised. She didn’t know if they were salvation or something worse. Behind her in the barrack, Sasha was sobbing in the corner, arms around another woman.
“Let me go.” Harper wedged her heels against the thin strip of wood across the threshold.
He didn’t stop but shifted his grip to guide her forward.
“I said let go!” She twisted with everything she had, throwing her weight backward, fingernails gouging his wrist.
Those green eyes locked on her. Calculation moved behind them, happening too fast for her to read.
“The others.” Harper’s voice was raw, scraped from her throat. She gestured back toward the barrack with her free hand. “I can’t leave them.”
“I’m here for you.” No reassurance, only fact.
“I don’t care what your mission is.” Her whole body shook—cold, adrenaline, fear churning in her gut until she thought she might vomit. “I’m not leaving them.”
He stared at her. Fresh gunfire erupted across the yard. Harper straightened despite every instinct screaming at her to run, to get away from the guns, the fire and the bodies. Her hands and feet were numb with cold, her heart violent in her chest, but she didn’t care.
“Either we all leave, or—” She sucked in air, lungs shaky. “Or I stay.”
Something exploded to their left. One of the men in white gear shouted from near the fence. “Pav! We need to move!”
Pav.
The name meant nothing to her. But he responded to it, his head cocking toward the voice, then back to her. He could force her. Throw her over his shoulder and run. She couldn’t stop him. His grip tightened for half a second. Decision moved behind his eyes.
Then his fingers opened. “How many?”
For one stunned second, Harper was speechless. Behind him, the women had gone utterly still. Even Sasha had stopped crying.
Hope was a terrible thing to see in a place like this.
Harper swallowed, her throat burning. “Twelve.”
She looked past him, back into the barrack where firelight painted the women’s faces in shades of terror. Tear-streaked. Dirty. She would not leave them.
“Fuck.” The word came out quiet but vicious. He released her wrist.
She rubbed her skin, tender where he’d held her.
He turned his head toward something at his neck—a comms unit, a thin wire running up to his ear. “Change of plan. She won’t leave without the others.”
Static crackled. Then a voice, distant and pissed: “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“Two minutes,” an English voice cut in. Calm and controlled. “Get them ready to move.”
Harper bent forward, fighting for air as the world grew fuzzy at the edges. Her head ached, pressure building behind her eyes.
Pav’s hand settled briefly against her lower back, steadying her balance before pulling away again.
Another figure appeared in the doorway—eyes older than Pav’s, same white tactical gear stretched over a broader frame.
“What the fuck’s going on?”
Harper pushed back up to standing.
Pav didn’t take his eyes off Harper. “She won’t leave without the other women.”
Every muscle in her body trembled and her legs threatened to give out. But her voice came out clear.
“You take all of us, or no one.”