She gritted her teeth, forcing it down, forcing herself to remain steady.
The elevator sped toward her, a bullet in a barrel. Shadera cursed as she scrambled to get above it. It was so close now, she could feel the air compressing in her lungs, could smell the oil on its massive gears.
She hurled herself sideways into a tight space, barely squeezing inside the utility cavity as the car shot past her like a freight train, taking the guns strapped to her left thigh with it. The backdraft sucked at her legs, trying to drag her into the machinery’s hungry maw.
Shadera wedged herself deeper into the tiny space, ribs compressed until each breath was a struggle. Metal groaned around her, the building’s skeleton protesting the weight. The noise was deafening, a scream that died in an instant as the elevator stayed its course upward.
Shadera pressed herself against the cramped confines, heart a wild beast in her chest. She could feel every beat, rapid and alive, and a brief, feral grin spread across her lips as a sharp laugh shot from her throat.
So, this is what fear feels like.
When silence returned, she exhaled slowly and pulled herself back onto the shaft wall. Her hands shook—barely perceptible, but there. She clenched them into fists until the tremor stopped.
The climb resumed. Higher now, toward the Heart’s poisoned core where Greyson Serel should have been sleeping, unaware that death was scaling the walls to find him.
She reached the service hatch to the Heart’s underground garage and paused. She waited, pulse counting off the seconds. She’dmemorized the guard rotations, the way the Heart’s enforcers walked their beats in lazy arcs. She listened for the telltale whir of a drone, the heavy tread of Veyra boots.
Silence.
She twisted the hatch and let it open a sliver. The light that bled through was blinding, bright and white. She pulled herself through, rolled flat onto her stomach, and pushed up from the concrete as her eyes adjusted.
The garage was a cathedral of order—rows of Veyra patrol vehicles, each lined up with the precision of military graves. Every surface gleamed, even the air seemed filtered and too still. She kept low, weaving between the glossy hulls, her own reflection distorted in the platinum trim of the cars.
She’d planned for this. Twenty-four steps from the shaft to the ground level vehicle exit, no less, no more. She took them in silence, feeling the cold seep into her bones with each measured advance.
Halfway across, she froze.
A sound—the sound of metal hitting concrete—echoed in the cavernous space.
She ducked behind the nearest vehicle, silenced pistol up and ready, blood pounding so hard she thought she could hear it leaking from her pores.
Someone was here. Someone not accounted for.
She waited. The silence dragged on, punctuated only by the distant thrum of the city’s heart above. Shadera forced herself to breathe slow, to let the adrenaline burn off into something clean, something focused.
She adjusted her grip on the gun, eyes fixed on the space between the vehicles as a shadow moved from an undercarriage.
Shadera inched forward, every instinct on a hair trigger. Whoever this was, they weren’t supposed to be here either, or they would have come out to ask for her credentials.
She moved closer, waiting for the next mistake, the next breath.
A bead of sweat slipped from her temple, trailed along the ridge of her cheekbone, and vanished into her collar. The smell of ozone and motor oil filled her nose.
Shadera retreated a half step, recalibrating her plan.
She had not come here to kill a janitor or a ghost. The target was above, behind a thousand tons of armored glass and self-importance. So, she let the shadow be, for now. She didn’t have time to pick a fight with someone who wasn’t an active threat.
With a final glance over her shoulder, she fell back against the wall and followed it up the ramp and out into the night, praying the Heart was still asleep.
Greysonlayflatonhis back, spine pressed to the cold concrete beneath a Veyra patrol vehicle’s underbelly. Above, the garage’s floodlights bled through the suspension’s lattice, painting the world in razor lines and motionless shadows.
He ignored the filth, the puddles of old oil seeping through his uniform. Instead, he kept his focus on his work—tucking the black foil packets deep into the undercarriage. Each movement was a calculated betrayal—one slipup, and the Heart would devour him.
The wrench in his hand twisted, tightening the last screw into the anti-scan mesh. That’s when the wrench slipped from his fingers, bounced off the steel crossbeam, and clanged onto the concrete next to his head.
Greyson stopped breathing.
He counted the seconds, every muscle in his body seized. In its wake, he heard footsteps—a slow, predatory rhythm—moving across the polished concrete. He cursed under his breath, pressing himself farther into the darkness beneath the car, and stilled.
