Fuck this stupid, overprotective man. And fuck me for feeling safer with him.
My pulse beats steady, familiar now, almost calm. Maybe that should terrify me more than the danger itself.
The data center appears ahead of us, an old concrete cube sagging under decades of neglect. The last lead we got was of this center. Anton’s former front company logo still clings to the wall, half peeled, like it’s ashamed to stay attached.
“Clear?” Damian murmurs as he returns from his scan of the right perimeter of the center. He meets me where we entered, the exact point I return to after inspecting the left.
“As it’s going to be.”
He nods, and we slip inside through a cracked vent that Damian bashes in with his foot.
The air is colder than outside, dense with dust that rises in lazy spirals when we step over fallen cables. Rows of servers tower into the darkness, sleeping giants waiting for a command.
My fingers hover over the old circuitry, and for a moment I feel the strange déjà vu of touching an old wound. This is the place that used to be alive with illegal activity. Anton’s secrets were stored in these machines long before he ever set his sights on me.
The main control port is only a few steps away from where we got in. I drop to one knee.
“Give me thirty seconds.”
Damian stands behind me, keeping watch. Power hums through the servers as I bridge the circuits. One by one, thetowers glow. Blue LED lights flicker in hesitant breaths, then steadying as though recognizing an old friend.
The interface boots up.
Directory after directory unfolds. Hidden sectors surface and encrypted partitions blink.
There it is.
A repository labeled under Anton’s signature encryption. Even as my heart climbs up my throat, my hands are stable as I click on it.
Inside the files, there’s blackmail archives, financial coercions, message chains between Anton and Orlov.
Then the fucking video logs.
I click the most damning one: the footage of me signing fabricated documents.
The angle, the lighting, the digital fingerprinting… this is all Orlov’s work. My stomach tightens with the sting of betrayal. I start downloading everything onto the drive.
Behind me, Damian whistles quietly. “You found it.”
“Yes.” My voice feels distant to my own ears. “And more.”
The progress bar crawls forward to thirty percent, then forty. All the while, my pulse is vibrating in my throat like a hummingbird’s.
Isn’t all this a bit too easy?
Just as I’m about to voice this to Damian, the squeaking of a shoe echoes through the towers.
He stiffens instantly, hand going to his holster. I stand slowly, clutching the drive cord without disconnecting it. The server lights reflect against metal in the darkness—guns.
Inessa Markova steps into the glow.
She wears a fur-collared coat, flawless lipstick, eyes sharp as cut glass. Two armed men flank her, rifles lifted with bored confidence.
“Well,” she purrs, “look who we have here.”
Damian and I stand frozen. She tilts her head, studying us like curated art.
“Hand over the files, and I’ll let you leave Moscow. Walk away free. Consider it… a mercy.”
