Chapter 13 #2
“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’m breaking into things.”
“What kind of things?” Roman asked.
“All the things.”
That seemed to satisfy him.
The screen flashed a warning: Access Restricted. Level Omega Authorization Only.
“Cute,” I muttered.
Andrei leaned closer. “Problem?”
“No,” I said. “Just a pretentious door I’m about to kick down digitally.”
I entered an override code I’d once used during training simulations—one of those rare privileges I’d earned through long nights, excellent scores, and a disturbing willingness to perform tasks no one else wanted.
The screen blinked as though it was hesitating.
Then shifted.
The restricted files opened like a book someone tried to hide behind their back.
“Jesus,” Kara whispered, reading over my shoulder. “They catalog everything.”
“Every movement. Every call,” I confirmed. “Every illegal armament they’ve placed. Every political official they’ve bought. All their off-record surveillance maps. All of the AI programming that they stole.”
Viktor let out a low whistle. “That’s… a lot.”
“It is.” My fingers flew faster. “Which is why I’m stealing all of it.”
With every command, the warning lights above us flashed brighter, angrier. Someone somewhere realized a part of their empire was under attack.
“Katya,” Dmitri whispered hoarsely, “they’re reacting. You have one minute.”
“Then I’ll use all sixty seconds.”
I clicked into another secure folder and began transferring everything to the encrypted cloud server I’d set up weeks ago.
File after file—copied, uploaded, locked behind my firewalls.
The next batch—mine. The next—mine. My heart hammered, palms slick, but my fingers didn’t hesitate. This wasn’t hacking.
This was revenge.
The system started fighting me harder, popping up alert messages almost as if it was screaming at me.
Are you sure you want to transfer—
“Yes,” I snapped. “God, you’re so dramatic.”
Kara laughed breathlessly.
Roman shouted from the door, “Incoming!”
Lev and Roman shot simultaneously. “Two down.”
The building’s automated voice chimed overhead, cold and clipped. “Core integrity compromised. Manual intervention required.”
Andrei leaned in. “Katya?”
“Almost done,” I said.
He stepped closer, close enough for his breath to brush my cheek, close enough that anyone else would have interfered. But not him. He never distracted me. He just steadied me.
“You’re doing great,” he murmured. “Finish it.”
I wiped all record of my presence from the server and then deleted everything. A red alert flared on all screens.
The system crashed.
All the lights on the server rows blinked erratically.
Then dimmed.
“Okay,” I said. “They’re blind now. But we’re not finished.”
“What else?” Viktor asked.
I pointed to the massive physical towers lining the far wall—offline storage, the deep backups not connected to any network.
“If we don’t destroy those,” I said, “Revenant can rebuild everything I just deleted.”
Roman grinned, practically glowing. “So we blow them up.”
Dmitri sighed softly. “Carefully.”
“Ish,” Viktor added.
“We came prepared,” Andrei said as he passed Kara several charges that he had attached to his belt. He and I had tried to think of everything before we’d come.
“Show me where to put these,” Kara dictated.
I led her down the aisle. She placed each explosive at the power base of each set of hard storage units. Dmitri shadowed her protectively. Roman handled the back row like a kid in a candy store. Lev stood guard.
Within seconds, all the charges were set.
Kara rushed back to us, breath a bit ragged, fingers trembling with adrenaline. “We’ll probably have about fifteen seconds once we trigger them.”
“Then we go,” Dmitri said.
I hit the final command on the console, shutting down whatever remained of the servers, freezing the last processes in place. The lights flickered one last time.
“Now,” I said. “Run!”
We burst into the hallway just as Revenant guards rounded the far corner, shouting orders that turned into gunfire.
Lev returned fire immediately, dropping two. Roman surged forward, reckless as always, tackling another guard into a wall with so much force that the plaster cracked.
Viktor grabbed my wrist and yanked me behind a structural pillar as bullets tore through the space where I’d just stood.
Andrei moved like a dark blur, slamming one guard into a window, shattering it with his head and disarming him in a single fluid twist.
Dmitri stepped calmly between us all, firing quick, clean shots that turned the firefight into a metronome.
Kara ducked low and threw her knife directly into the throat of a guard whose gun was aimed toward Dmitri. An arc of bullets tore through the ceiling as he went down gurgling and choking.
When all the guards in this desperate batch were on the floor, I hit the remote trigger.
The building shook.
The explosion inside the server room wasn’t loud, it was deep. A rippling, roaring collapse that sounded like the entire floor exhaled and then caved inward, metal snapping, plastic vaporizing, heat crawling through the air like a living thing.
The walls reverberated.
The lights dimmed.
“Move!” Dmitri barked. “They’ll flood this level with guards any second!”
We fell into a sprint, boots pounding against tile, breath sawing through our lungs, the air thick with smoke.
Roman took the front, smashing the butt of his gun into the face of a Revenant soldier who tried to block our path.
Lev grabbed another by the collar, pulling him off balance and sending him tumbling to the floor.
Kara darted between us, nimble and focused. Andrei kept pace easily, his hand brushing my back occasionally to steer me clear of falling debris.
Viktor stayed at my side, too close, too intense, like he was making sure I didn’t vanish again.
“Left!” I shouted over the alarm’s wail, pointing toward the emergency corridor I remembered from the old schematic. “Service wing!”
We turned sharply. The floor here dipped downward, walls narrowing, temperature rising.
Pipes ran exposed along the ceiling, humming from the strain of overheating coolant systems. And somewhere far behind us, a voice over the intercom shouted an unintelligible tangle of words before the line cut out mid-syllable.
Ahead, the hallway split.
Right side led toward a locked-down section of the building. I watched as a heavy set of doors descended like jaws, blocking it off.
Left side veered into a dark, low passage, unmarked. No lights. No signage. Just an ugly industrial corner no one ever thought to beautify.
I grabbed Andrei’s arm. “Back there. That’s the maintenance wing.”
He looked. “How do you know?”
“Just trust me.”
Roman skidded to a halt, leaning around the corner. “I can see a vent panel about twenty meters in. A big one.”
Kara blinked. “Why are all maintenance shafts gigantic in villain buildings?”
“Compensation,” Roman said.
Lev gave him a look. “Focus.”
We rushed forward. The corridor tightened around us, narrowing until the walls felt almost too close. The lights flickered overhead. Smoke seeped through a crack near the ceiling.
I dropped to my knees beside the access point, fingers hooking under the lip of a wide floor grate. It was rusted and heavy, but it wasn’t locked. A maintenance engineer would need immediate access in times like these.
Just like we did.
Viktor got next to me without a word and grabbed the other edge. “Lift on three. One—two—”
He didn’t wait for three.
He yanked. Hard.
I bit my tongue to stop a laugh. He always jumped the gun.
“Premature elevation,” I laughed. But the grate groaned loose and came up with a horrifyingly loud screech of metal against metal.
A narrow vertical shaft stared back at us. It was dark, deep, and the heat from it rolled out in waves. Coolant pipes ran along one side and electrical conduits showed faintly against the opposite wall. The wall nearest where I knelt sported a narrow ladder that descended into the dark below.
Lev knelt beside me and shone a small tactical light into the drop. “It’s a service access. Probably runs all the way to sublevel exits.”
I swung my legs into the shaft without hesitating. “We go. Now.”
The shaft was narrower than it looked and I briefly wondered if the massive shoulders of the men Kara and I kept company with would fit.
I let myself slide down a good way, letting my hands and legs skim along the outside of the ladder, quickly making room for the rest coming behind me.
Scrambling down the ladder as quickly as I could command my hands and legs to move, I was relieved to hear everyone else following and then the sound of the heavy grate being lowered back over the hole.
Heat rose from somewhere below. My heart stuttered, but I forced my breathing to keep steady.
Above me, bodies dropped one by one—the Markov brothers swearing creatively, Kara squealing, Viktor laughing, and Andrei muttering some Russian curse under his breath.
Viktor slid down behind me, leveraging himself against the walls of the shaft and not even using the ladder. He looked so at ease, it was like he’d practiced this before. “Look at you,” he murmured. “Leading us straight into the belly of the beast.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, even as sweat trickled down my neck.
“Sexy,” he added.
Andrei kicked him lightly from above. “Focus.”
“I am focused,” Viktor said. “Just not on what you want.”
I shook my head as I continued onward. The others followed. We slid another twenty feet downward before the ladder ended at a sort of wider landing and the main shaft angled slightly to the left.
“Here!” I called, facing a large horizontal duct intersecting the one we were in. “Fuck! It’s sealed!”
“Move,” Roman said, pushing his way over and around us. He braced his back against a pipe and kicked forward.
The metal groaned.
He kicked it again.
It bent.
One more strike and the panel dislodged, falling into the dark. Cold air rushed through the hole.
Roman shoved Kara through first. She scrambled into the vent, swearing under her breath. He rushed in after her.
“Go,” Viktor told me, motioning.
I slid into the duct, landing on my hands and knees on smooth metal. The height was just enough to crouch, but not high enough to stand. Andrei crawled in behind me, then Dmitri, then Lev, and Viktor pulled in last just as gunfire erupted from somewhere behind us.
“They found us,” Lev said.
“Of course they did,” I muttered.
“Then move,” Dmitri ordered.
We scuttled and crawled quickly through the dim tunnel. The scraping of boots and muttered breaths surrounded me, the Dragunovs and Markovs, Kara and I pressed too close in too small a space, moving like a single creature with seven heads and fourteen fists.
No turning back now.
The vent sloped downward at a steep angle. Roman slid forward, feet first.
“Hell, yeah,” he said. “This is the fun part.”
Kara muttered, “Speak for yourself—oh, shit—”
She dropped.
I went next.
My hands skidded on the metal as I descended in a fast, uncontrolled slide. Heat brushed my palms from friction; my hair whipped behind me. The tunnel spat us out into a large maintenance junction.
We crashed into the ground below—Kara first, then me, then the rest, each rolling out of the way of those following. Viktor slid in last and landed with a heavy thud.
“That sucked,” Kara muttered.
“That was amazing,” Roman corrected.
Dmitri rose quickly, sweeping the room. “Where are we?”
“Service nexus,” I said, pointing to the metal catwalk ahead. “Leads to an alcove that opens out into the sublevel loading docks.”
“Sublevel?” Lev questioned. “We go deeper before we go out?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s why they won’t expect it.”
Roman cracked his knuckles. “Her brain is incredible.”
Viktor glared. “Hands off. She belongs to the Dragunovs.”
“Both of you shut up,” Andrei said. “What’s next?”
“Door,” I said, jogging across the catwalk to a big metal door.
The loading dock access was heavy. It was thick, reinforced steel, but old. Not one of Revenant’s newer, smarter designs. I ran my fingers along it, feeling for a latch. I found it and pulled. It clicked and released with a satisfying clunk.
Roman grabbed the handle and opened the door. The door groaned inward.
Cool night desert air blew in.
Freedom.
My stomach twisted with a hot surge of relief.
Viktor stepped to my side, his shoulder brushing mine. “Nice work, kotenok.”