"What are you doing?" Yuri hissed, glancing between me and the corridor outside.
"Finishing the job," I managed, my voice barely audible. I reached up, fingers trembling violently as I grasped the edge of the console and pulled myself into a half-sitting position.
The security feed showed O'Rourke had reached his private elevator, case clutched tightly against his chest. Whatever was in there—research data, experimental results, maybe even samples from people like me—it couldn't leave this facility. I wouldn't let him rebuild his torture chamber elsewhere.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard, shaking so badly I could barely target specific keys. It didn't matter. The keyboard was just a focus point, a physical anchor for my increasingly untethered consciousness. The real connection happened directly between my mind and the building's systems.
"O'Rourke's escaping," I gasped, blood dripping freely onto the console. "With research data."
Yuri cursed under his breath. "Let him go. Nicolai will hunt him down later. Right now, we need to get you out of here."
I shook my head, immediately regretting it as fresh pain lanced through my skull. "If he gets away with that data, he'll just start over somewhere else." I focused my remaining strength, reaching for the deepest levels of the facility's infrastructure. "Need to destroy it all."
The backup generators were my target. O'Rourke's facility had been designed with multiple redundancies, which was why despite my earlier efforts, critical systems were still operational. The main generators were housed in the lowest sublevel—massive, shielded units that powered everything from security doors to life support.
I closed my eyes, extending my consciousness into the building's electronic nervous system. The connection was weaker now, flickering like a bad television signal, but still there.
I could feel the power flowing through circuits, the steady hum of systems struggling to maintain functionality despite my previous assaults.
With what little strength I had left, I reached for those generators. Not to shut them down—to overload them.
"Target the backup generators," I whispered, blood now flowing freely from my nose, mouth, and ears. My body was shutting down, organ by organ. I was pushing far beyond what any human should survive, but I couldn't stop. Not yet. "When they blow, whole place goes dark. Permanently."
The strain was unbearable. My vision darkened around the edges, tunneling until I could only see the monitor showing O'Rourke. He'd reached his escape route, was punching in the access code for his private elevator. I couldn't let him leave with that data.
The lights throughout the facility flickered ominously as I channeled everything I had left into one final push. In the surveillance feed, I glimpsed Nicolai and Dima's team makingtheir way toward the extraction point, moving with purpose through dimly lit corridors. They were almost out, almost safe.
Just as I initiated the sequence that would cause a catastrophic overload in the backup generators, the control room door burst open. I expected Dima or one of our extraction team, but the massive frame filling the doorway belonged to someone else entirely—Marcus "Sparky" Denton, his face twisted into a triumphant grin as he raised a weapon I recognized all too well.
"Well, well," Denton drawled, aiming the specialized gun at me. "Looks like I found the source of our little problem."
It wasn't a regular firearm. It was designed specifically for people like me—electronic manipulators. The technology dampened our abilities while delivering a neural shock that could render us unconscious without killing us. O'Rourke had developed it for capture, not elimination.
After all, what use was a dead battery to him?
Yuri moved with surprising speed, positioning himself between me and the intruder. His stance was protective, his weapon aimed directly at Denton's head.
"Touch him," Yuri warned with deadly calm, "and you'll never touch anything again."
Denton's grin didn't falter. "You're outnumbered and surrounded. The kid's half-dead already. Be smart and hand him over. Mr. O'Rourke still values his abilities."
"Mr. O'Rourke can go fuck himself," Yuri replied conversationally, as if discussing the weather. "The boy belongs to Nicolai Aleksandrovich now."
The declaration stunned me almost as much as it seemed to surprise Denton. Belongs to Nicolai. The phrasing should have bothered me—I'd spent my life ensuring I belonged to no one—but instead, it filled me with an unexpected warmth that had nothing to do with my failing body.
Behind me, the monitor showed the power fluctuations spreading throughout the facility as my final command executed itself. Lights flickered more violently now, and warning alarms began blaring in distant sections. The generators were approaching critical overload.
"This whole place is about to become a smoking crater," I managed to say, blood bubbling over my lips with each word. "Might want to run while you still can."
Denton's eyes narrowed, darting from me to the emergency lights now flashing across the control room. "You're bluffing. Even you wouldn't have the strength to trigger a complete meltdown in your condition."
I managed a bloody smile. "Wanna bet?"
As if on cue, a distant explosion shook the facility, the vibrations rattling through the floor beneath us. The first of the auxiliary systems failing catastrophically.
It wouldn't be the last.
Denton's confident expression faltered for the first time. "You crazy little—"
