But something held me back. The Agency had resources, but they also had agendas. Protocols. Bureaucracy. They wouldn't move fast enough, wouldn't take the risks necessary to save Nicolai before O'Rourke did whatever he planned to do.
And there was something else—something in the phrasing that raised a red flag."Aleksandrovich compromise confirms protocol activation."What protocol? What exactly would they be activating if I confirmed?
My hand remained frozen above the keys as a timer appeared on one of my screens, counting down the seconds until my window for response closed.
Sixty seconds.
Fifty-nine.
Fifty-eight.
Time was running out, for this decision and for Nicolai.
A series of mechanical clicks at the panic room door jolted me from my indecision. Someone was unlocking it—from the outside. I sprang to my feet despite the wave of dizziness that threatened to topple me, grabbing the heavy metal paperweight from Nicolai's desk.
If O'Rourke's men had found me, they wouldn't take me without a fight. Not after what they'd done to Nicolai. Blood dripped from my chin onto my shirt as I positioned myself beside the door, paperweight raised, ready to strike.
The heavy steel door swung open with a pneumatic hiss, and I tensed, fingers tightening around my makeshift weapon.
Yuri stumbled in, looking nothing like the impeccably dressed second-in-command I'd come to know. His normallypristine suit was torn and soaked with blood—some his, some definitely not.
A deep gash crossed his forehead, and his left eye had swollen shut. He braced himself against the doorframe, his chest heaving with exertion.
"You," he managed, his eyes landing on me with an intensity that made me step back. "You did this. The systems."
I lowered the paperweight slightly, but kept it gripped in my hand. Yuri and I had never been friends. He'd made his distrust of me clear from the moment I'd entered Nicolai's life.
"I did what needed to be done," I replied, my voice sounding strange to my own ears. "Where's Nicolai? Have you found him?"
Yuri's expression shifted, something dark and pained flashing across his features. He pushed himself away from the doorframe, staggering deeper into the room.
"O'Rourke's team has taken him to his torture complex on the riverfront," he said, each word seeming to cost him. "The old processing plant. Informant just confirmed it."
The paperweight suddenly felt too heavy in my hand. "Torture complex?"
"Where O'Rourke breaks people who defy him," Yuri explained, his voice flat. "Where he extracts what he wants from those who have something he needs."
My stomach twisted. "And what does he want from Nicolai?"
"You." Yuri's gaze bored into mine. "Your location. Your abilities. Everything Nicolai has been protecting."
A cold sensation spread through my chest, numbing the pain of my overextended abilities. This was my fault. All of it. Nicolai was suffering because of me.
"How much time do we have?" I asked, already turning toward the terminal.
Yuri's next words stopped me cold. "Thirty minutes, maybe less."
"What?"
"O'Rourke's testing a new compound on paranormals. The informant said they're preparing to use it on Nicolai when their standard methods fail." Yuri's voice cracked slightly. "It's designed to force a shift, then lock the victim between forms. The pain... it drives them mad before it kills them."
The paperweight slipped from my fingers, clattering to the floor with a sound that seemed impossibly loud in the sudden silence. Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes to save the man who had risked everything to protect me.
Something shifted inside me then—a fundamental realignment of priorities and possibilities. The fear that had defined my existence for so long gave way to something harder, something that burned cold and clear.
"He won't die," I said, the words coming out with a certainty I'd never felt before.
I turned back to the terminal, wiping fresh blood from my face. The physical pain of pushing my abilities too far seemed distant now, unimportant. What mattered was Nicolai. Only Nicolai.
