ACCESS REVOKED.
STOP.
Then everything goes black—screen, data, digital heartbeat.
The silence deepens.
Panic claws at me, but I crush it. I’ve been inside war rooms; I’ve been pinned in crossfire; I’ve cleaned up blood I pretended wasn’t mine.
Panic is a luxury. Precision is survival.
I restart the console manually and spin up a clean shell, tracing pathways like threading old scars. Ghost signals blink in and out, tauntingly close, then gone.
I chase them.
Hours pass without the world outside daring to interrupt. My coffee goes cold, my fingers go numb. My eyes ache the way they used to when I spent nights decoding enemy intercepts with nothing but caffeine and spite.
Then, at the edge of the screen, just long enough to register, not long enough to capture, a message flashes.
Stop searching, or you’ll vanish like he did.
My breath stutters, fingers freezing on the keyboard.
The message dissolves into nothing.
I stare at the empty console, heartbeat a thunder drum against my ribs. Whoever sent that didn’t want to be found. They wanted fear, not fingerprints.
My heart is in my throat, but the training drilled into me during the months in the Velvet Blade’s orbit clicks into place.
Fear is only useful if it makes you act. Terror is only dangerous if it paralyzes you.
I straighten, spine aligning as though someone’s pulling a string from the top of my skull.
I encrypt everything I touched: every file, every trace.
Then I stand.
I don’t trust him. God, I do not trust him. But if someone is hunting me, Damian Ignatov’s shadow is the only one more dangerous than the threat.
I head for his office.
My heels strike the floor angrily.
The whole walk there, my pulse thrums with a confusing mixture of dread and an emotion that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the man I’m about to face. The man I’m trying, and failing, to exorcise from my bloodstream.
His door is already cracked open. And he’s inside, standing with his hands in his pockets, expression carved from stone.
He was waiting?
A chill slides down my spine. Damian always knows before the rest of the world catches up. As infuriating as it is, it’s impressive.
“Someone locked my systems,” I say, stepping inside. “Higher-level clearance. Countermeasures I’ve never seen.”
His gaze flicks over me like he’s checking whether I’m still standing on my own legs or propped up by adrenaline.
“You’re in over your head,” he says quietly. Pale-toned warning wrapped in silk.
“I didn’t ask for your diagnosis,” I snap. “What I need is an explanation.”
