Chapter 12 #2
I dropped back against the wall, flattening myself into the shallow recess where two doorframes met and where there was just enough shadow to hide in if the runner was focused straight ahead.
He was.
It was old tray guy guard, huffing down the hall with a gun in his hand and panic in his eyes. He rushed toward my cell, swearing under his breath, fumbling with something in the pocket of his vest with his free hand.
A grenade. Compact. Non-standard. Probably Revenant’s own design.
He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t even check the room.
He yanked the pin, muttered, “Commander’s orders,” and shoved it through the food slot into the cell I’d just recently vacated.
I didn’t feel anything at first. Just a cold, quiet sort of curiosity.
Then instinct grabbed me by the throat and I lunged for him.
“Hey!” I shouted.
He turned just as the grenade detonated.
The blast sucked the air out of the corridor for a heartbeat. Flame and concussive force bloomed inside the cell, bursting the windowless space in a roar of sound that rang in my teeth. The door flew open, smoke and dust billowing out like the room had exhaled its own death.
The guard staggered from the shockwave, knocking into the wall.
I was already on him.
He didn’t even have time to raise his weapon.
I hit him low, tackling him around the midsection, driving him into the opposite wall.
His skull cracked against concrete and the rifle clattered from his hands.
I grabbed it, flipped it, and drove the butt of the rifle into his face with a clean, satisfying impact.
He went limp, sliding bonelessly to the floor.
I stood there, breathing hard, the sirens screaming all around me, the air thick with smoke and the smell of burnt everything.
They’d just tried to kill me.
Not break me.
Not scare me.
Kill me.
Fine.
Now I knew where we stood.
I spared one glance into the cell. The blast had shredded the cot, turned the walls black with soot, and transformed the interior into a trap full of shrapnel. If I hadn’t escaped that little room, I’d have been as good as dead.
I stepped over the guard’s body, lifted the gun, and checked the ammo without thinking. Half a mag. That would be enough. I took his uniform and dumped his body in my cell, then I stole his access card and his earpiece, tucking both into my waistband.
Then I ran.
The corridor branched into a T-junction. Left led back toward intake. Useless. Right dropped deeper into the detention levels and, beyond that, the facility’s central artery. That was where I needed to go.
The sirens cut suddenly, replaced by the cold voice of some internal system barking in that flat, too-calm tone no human ever possesses during a crisis.
“Sub level breach. North access. All units respond. All units respond.”
I smiled. “Go, little brother. Show them what true chaos looks like.”
The hallway ahead lit with intermittent white flashes as the power cycled. Doors shuddered along the walls, some locked, some half-opened by the surge. I moved fast, staying low, listening for boots.
At the next corner, I heard voices. Two guards, arguing.
“—said seal the stairwells!”
“We can’t, they’re already in there and—”
They never finished that sentence.
Someone else’s gun handled it for them.
Three loud, quick gunshots. I heard the sound of a body dropping. Then another.
I froze, back pressed to the wall, rifle raised, waiting for the shooter to step into view.
He did.
Dark hair. Cold eyes. Calm expression. A mouth set in a line that said he’d done this a thousand times before and that he would do it again without flinching.
Dmitri Markov.
A second figure behind him—taller, broader, moving like everything was a joke.
Roman Markov.
“Well,” I said, stepping into view with the rifle aimed vaguely in their direction. “Looks like I missed the party.”
Roman pivoted first, gun half-raised, then froze as his brain caught up to his eyes. “You have got to be kidding me,” he said. “They let you out?”
“They tried to blow me up. With a grenade, for fuck’s sake!” I exclaimed. “So I took that as a sign our relationship had ended. Or at the very least, now it’s complicated.”
Dmitri’s gaze swept over me, taking in my bare feet, the stolen rifle, and settling on my pretty face. “You look terrible,” he observed.
“You should see the other guy,” I replied.
“Oh,” Roman said, “we did. His face is all over that wall back there.”
A third figure appeared from behind them, hair wild, eyes narrowed. I winked in her direction.
Kara Lennox.
Her eyes flicked over me. “You’re alive.”
“You’re welcome,” I crowed.
She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t thank you.”
Behind her, Lev Markov lingered in the shadows like a ghost with a grudge, quiet and lethal, eyes sweeping the corridor for threats even while everyone else focused on me.
The four of them together looked like a walking disaster, armed, pissed off, and improbably intact.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You all broke out at the same time?”
Roman grinned. “What can I say? Great minds think alike.”
“And idiots survive on luck,” Lev added calmly.
“We heard the blast,” Kara said, chin tipping toward the wrecked cell. “They really tried to blow you up?”
“They did,” I said.
“And you just walked out before they did it?”
“Yeah.”
“Showoff,” she muttered.
Dmitri stepped closer. “We don’t have time for a big happy reunion right now. Up or down?” he asked.
“Up,” I said. “North access is compromised. If we want out, we need to head toward the chaos, not away from it.”
Kara huffed. “Your family’s tendencies are deeply concerning.”
“You chose to work with us,” I reminded her.
She groaned. “You made me.”
Lev gestured with his pistol. “We move. Now.”
We started down the hall as a group, boots thudding against concrete and my bare feet making almost no sound at all. Roman fell into step beside me.
“So,” he said conversationally, “how’ve you been?”
“Trapped in a glorified shoebox while people threw explosives at me,” I replied offhandedly. “You?”
“Strapped to a chair, interrogated, drugged, and mildly electrocuted.”
“Nice,” I said. “I’m jealous.”
He snorted.
Kara moved up on my other side. “Any idea how many guards we’re dealing with?”
“Too many,” I said. “But some of them are very dead right now, so numbers are in flux.”
Dmitri’s voice cut in. “Viktor. Focus.”
“Right.” I scanned the next intersection, listening for movement. “Two doors ahead on the left. They walked me by it when they first captured me. It’s security control. If we can get in there, we can pull down internal cams, kill some of the locks, and give ourselves a path out of this joint.”
Lev nodded once. “Then that’s our first stop.”
We reached the security door, but it was still securely sealed. There was no visible handle or knob. It needed a badge and code. I had a badge, but no code. This was the kind of lock that usually took time and finesse.
I didn’t have patience for finesse.
“Roman,” I said. “You up for breaking things?”
He grinned like I’d complimented him. “Always.”
He looped his fingers together and made a stirrup. “Up?”
“Up,” I said.
He boosted me so I could get enough leverage to slam the rifle butt down on the access panel. Once. Twice. Sparks flew. The keypad shattered. Lev reached past us, jammed the barrel of his gun between the door and the frame, and leveraged it with quiet, powerful force.
The lock gave with a hydraulic wheeze.
We slipped inside the security room, guns up, anticipating guards.
It was empty.
Banks of monitors flickered on the far wall, some dead, some looping static, some still streaming grainy footage of other floors. I moved immediately to the nearest console, fingers flying across the controls.
“Okay,” I muttered. “Let’s see what you bastards are hiding.”
The siren changed pitch again, shifting to a deeper, more insistent wail.
On one monitor, I caught sight of armed squads moving toward sublevel three. On another, emergency shutters were dropping across one of the upper atriums.
And on the third, my youngest brother, Andrei.
His hair was tousled, and he was wearing stolen gear and a look that said he’d been having entirely too much fun getting to this point. He was moving down a stairwell with that signature Dragunov speed, like he wasn’t sprinting, but somehow the world was still struggling to keep up with him anyway.
And he wasn’t alone.
Katya was with him.
She was right beside him, cheeks flushed, eyes blazing. There was a pair of knives strapped to her thigh. Andrei had clearly armed her himself.
Good boy.
“There,” I said, stabbing my finger at the monitor. “North stairwell. They’re coming up.”
Roman squinted. “Is that—?”
“It is,” Kara breathed.
Dmitri’s gaze flicked between screens, tracking their path, attention locked. “Look. Revenant sent three teams to intercept them. They split across sublevel two. They’re trying to trap them in the stairwell.”
My fingers flew over the console. “I can cut cams on their route, drop doors behind them, reroute the guards for a minute or two. But someone is already trying to override me.”
“The Revenant commander’s orders, I bet,” Dmitri said. “He’ll want to start isolating every floor.”
“Then we move,” Lev said.
“Not yet,” I said, eyes still on the feed.
I watched the screen as one guard charged from the landing; Andrei ducked under his arm, twisted, and slammed the man into the wall hard enough to knock him unconscious.
Katya, still beside him, didn’t hesitate.
She whipped one of her knives in a clean arc that sliced right through another guard’s quadriceps, dropping him before he fired.
My chest tightened. Watching Katya move like that—fierce, precise, alive—made my heart clench in my chest.
Andrei didn’t say a word to her on the feed, but every time she shifted position, he adjusted to cover her. When he moved forward to clear the next landing, she matched him without hesitation. He trusted her implicitly.
I didn’t know whether to be grateful or jealous.
“Once they reach this level,” I said, tapping the screen, “we meet them here.”
“Revenant will expect us to head for the exits,” Lev said.
“We won’t.” My voice was cold. “We’re going to need to hit something important on the way out.”
Roman cracked his neck. “What about the servers?”
“Good idea,” I confirmed.
The console beeped sharply, three loud tones that echoed off the walls.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“I hate that word,” Roman muttered.
“They’re overriding my remote control,” I explained. “Someone knows we’re here.”
“Then it’s time for us to go,” Dmitri said.
We ran.
The hallway shook beneath our feet, either from alarms or structural systems shifting into lockdown. Smoke drifted faintly through the air. Somewhere below, someone screamed orders. Gunshots cracked like snapping bone.
The Markovs moved as a single unit behind me, Kara between Dmitri and Roman, Lev taking the rear, all weapons ready. I kept point. Bare feet silent on the concrete, rifle warm in my grip.
We reached the junction that would lead to the stairwell.
I looked at the others. “Ready?”
Roman grinned. “Been ready.”
Kara tightened her grip on her pistol. “Let’s go get them.”
Lev gave a single nod.
Dmitri’s eyes locked on mine. “We move.”
We rounded the corner as one.
The stairwell door at the far end burst open.
Andrei came through first, breathing hard, gun raised, eyes locked angry and intense until they found us.
Shock flickered across his face, quickly replaced by relief, then determination.
Katya stumbled in behind him, hair half-loose, knives slick with someone else’s blood, breathing hard. The moment she saw us, her shoulders dropped, just a fraction, relief creating a pathway for the tension to leave her spine.
The sight of her punched the breath straight out of my chest.
“Andrei,” I said with a rare note of gratitude.
“Family reunion later,” Andrei replied, wiping blood off his cheek with the back of his hand. “We’re not out yet.”
Katya’s gaze found mine.
Her chest rose up and then dropped down, like she’d been holding her breath since the moment we were separated. For one second—one heartbeat—the world narrowed to just the two of us.
Then her eyes hardened, breaking whatever pull that moment had.
“We need to move,” she said, stepping closer. “They know you’re loose, Viktor.”
“They tried to grenade me,” I answered. “It was very rude.”
Andrei looked at me sharply. “Did they touch you?”
“If by touch you mean ‘tried to redecorate my cell with my organs,’ then yes.”
His jaw flexed.
Roman slapped Andrei’s shoulder. “I see you brought backup.”
“She wanted to come with me,” Andrei said.
Katya glared. “If I wasn’t by your side, you would have tripped that alarm.”
“I would have noticed it in time,” he shot back.
“Children,” Lev muttered. “We’re not safe yet.”
Dmitri gestured suddenly. “We need to move.”
We did.
The eight of us—three Markovs, Kara and Katya, Andrei and me—cut through the corridor like lethal ghosts.