“No.” I kept my ear pinned to the door. My pulse hammered. Every instinct I had was screaming.
“Ruslan,” she hissed. “I’m going in.”
I straightened, meeting her gaze.
“No,” I said again, voice iron-hard. “That’s an order.”
The silence between us stretched.
I outranked her.
On paper, in the chain of command, in every way that mattered—I was her superior. Older by two years. Higher ingrade. And the one officially responsible for bringing her home alive.
That knowledge sat in my chest like a loaded gun.
Elena stood a step behind us, HK416 locked tight against her shoulder, knuckles white on the foregrip.
A bead of sweat rolled slowly down her temple, catching the faint spill of light from the corridor before disappearing into the collar of her ghillie suit.
She was nineteen—same age as Amy. Young. Lethal. Tough as nails.
And scared.
I saw it in the tightness of her jaw, the way her breathing hitched just slightly off rhythm. I pretended not to. She needed me steady, not observant.
“Amy,” I whispered, keeping my voice low and controlled. “Stand by.”
Her shoulders were already tense, coiled to move.
Then the door exploded inward.
Amy had kicked it open.
Directly disobeying me.
“Damn it—”
There was no time to finish the thought.
We poured into the room on instinct alone—training overriding shock, weapons up, bodies flowing into pre-assigned lanes.
I swept right.
Elena cut left.
Amy drove straight in, pistol tracking, breath sharp in her chest.
The room was empty, not in the sense that it had been cleared, but in the way a place is abandoned and forgotten.
It was large and cavernous, yet something about it felt deeply wrong. An old bed sagged in the center, its mattress rippedopen and crawling with pale maggots that writhed through the exposed stuffing. Cobwebs hung thick in the corners like funeral veils, undisturbed for years, while a tattered duvet lay crumpled on the floor, gray with dust.
The air was stale and sour, heavy with rot layered over long neglect.
There were no guards, no personal effects, no signs of recent use—and no Al Chapo.
The realization froze my blood.
I started to speak, the warning forming even as my stomach dropped hard enough to feel it in my boots, and the truth became unavoidable: this was a decoy.
