Chapter 3
Present day
Katya Volkov
The drainage pipe was cold and disgusting, a tight metal cylinder with just enough room to crawl through if I kept my elbows tucked in.
The walls were slimy, coated with algae and condensation, and every time I pushed myself forward wet things slithered under my palm like they wanted to make friends.
I didn’t scream, but only because I’d been trained better than that.
My knee caught on a ridge in the metal and pain spiked up my thigh. Perfect. Exactly what I needed while crawling through God’s least-welcoming ventilation system. I shoved forward again and hissed when the thin strip of a rusted edge scraped the back of my wrist.
“Of course,” I muttered under my breath. “This is exactly how I wanted to spend my afternoon.”
I could still smell the remnants of smoke and disinfectant stuck in my nose from the facility above.
Revenant wasn’t subtle. They never had been.
What they lacked in creativity they made up for in infrastructure, and this pipe system was clearly designed to be navigated only by rats, plumbers, or people who desperately needed to escape and had no dignity left to lose.
People like me.
I wiped my hand on my shirt, immediately regretted it, and forced myself another foot forward. Water trickled beneath me, soaking into the knees of my pants, and a cold draft swept through the pipe from somewhere up ahead.
Fuck, yes.
Airflow meant an exit. Or at least a larger tunnel.
I would take either at this point.
My thoughts turned to Viktor.
“I swear to God,” I whispered, near silently, “if you’ve gotten yourself killed, I’m going to resurrect you just so I can strangle you to death.”
The metal echoed my voice back at me, a soft, sibilant mockery.
Viktor Dragunov was many things. Charming. Brilliant in a way he pretended not to be. Stupidly reckless. Infuriatingly handsome. And the single least cautious man I’d ever had the misfortune of falling into bed with. It was a terrible combination of traits in a hostage situation.
We’d been together when Revenant had sprung their trap. One second, we were walking the concrete hallway toward the meeting room they’d requested after we’d left Kara, Roman, Lev, and Dmitri in that ridiculous penthouse suite with orders to stay put.
Instead of a meeting, we’d gotten a half-dozen armed guards, a pair of tranquilizer darts, and a flashbang bright enough to wipe the memory of my own name for three full seconds.
I remembered the moment before everything went white—Viktor with his gun halfway raised, fury etched across his face like a man preparing to chew through steel, stepping in front of me.
I’d tried to shout something to him, but the blast swallowed my words whole.
When my vision snapped back, I was on the floor, and someone was screaming in the distance. Viktor was gone.
By the time Revenant turned their pet drones on the rooftop pool and put the Markovs and Kara on their knees, we were already ghosts in separate cages. They didn’t need to grab us all at once when they could break us apart piece by piece.
They separated us on purpose. They didn’t want us thinking together.
Unfortunately for them, I did my best work when I was pissed.
I pushed forward again, digging my fingers into a patch of slick moss to pull myself along. The pipe answered with a groan of shifting metal. Water dripped somewhere ahead, the sound echoing like the tick of a clock.
It didn’t help that Viktor’s name kept circling in my head. Viktor in a cell. Viktor with his wrists bound. Viktor smirking at his captors even as they hauled him down a corridor. Viktor thinking he could talk his way out of anything because he’d never learned the definition of restraint.
And now me—crawling through a drainage pipe like a feral cat even though he was still caught.
I grumbled under my breath and tried to ignore the heat pooling in my stomach at the memory of his hands sliding under my shirt the night before, his mouth tracing my throat like he was memorizing the taste of my skin. Now was absolutely not the time for nostalgia, lust, or murderous affection.
The pipe narrowed and I had to drop my head lower, pushing with my toes until my boots found traction on the damp metal.
The smell thickened with rust, mildew, and something rotting.
The ambience of this pipe was just so delightful.
The sound of my breathing grew louder, echoing back in an unforgiving rhythm.
The eldest Dragunov flashed in my mind: steady, stoic, predictable Mikhail. He was probably marching straight into ARCHEON headquarters right now with his coat buttoned and his jaw set, ready to barter, threaten, and negotiate like the dutiful eldest son he was raised to be.
If I knew Mikhail—and unfortunately, or rather, fortunately, I did—he’d be sitting across from some ARCHEON official right now, listening in silence, calculating how many concessions he could give before drawing blood.
It was both his greatest strength and his most irritating trait: the ability to bury emotion in favor of strategy.
Sure, he was predictable, but I had to admit that he kept people alive. He did whatever he had to do to keep us all alive.
Still, if he found out we’d been captured and thought I needed rescuing, he was going to be disappointed. Forced confinement just ticked me off. It didn’t break me.
I shoved myself over a raised seam, bit back a groan, and felt warmth trickle down my shin. Probably blood from a cut. Maybe a bruise. Nothing fatal. I was just fine. I inch-wormed onward.
Andrei, though… God help me, if he realized Viktor and I were missing, he’d try something heroic. The youngest Dragunov brother with the fast smile and the even quicker repartee. He could charm his way into a fortress, but he’d never walk out without setting half of it on fire.
And that made him dangerous.
The pipe widened around a slight curve, and a faint patch of dim light appeared ahead. A grate. An exit, maybe.
I sighed with relief.
I reached it, braced my palms against the slick metal, and pushed.
The grate groaned once, shifted a centimeter, then stuck.
Rust clung to its hinges. I gritted my teeth, shoved harder, and felt it give beneath my weight with a loud, grinding crack.
It toppled outward and clattered loudly onto the concrete below.
I winced and whispered, “So much for stealth.”
I didn’t stop though.
I lowered myself through the opening and landed in a crouch on a maintenance walkway, the air cool and crisp against my skin.
Somewhere above, machines hummed. Somewhere below, pipes rattled.
Somewhere in the building behind me, Viktor was probably cracking jokes through clenched teeth while calculating how many screws were in his cell door.
I rubbed the grime off my palms and looked down the dimly lit tunnel stretching ahead.
There was no cavalry coming for me.
If I wanted Viktor back, if I wanted out, if I wanted to get to Kara and the Markovs and help Mikhail before ARCHEON boxed him in, I had to move fast.
Which meant I needed help.
I needed Andrei.
Again.
God willing, we’d get through it without getting shot at this time.
But that was probably unlikely.