Andrei made a low sound. “They used a remote override to try to take down our flight systems.”
“Correct,” she said. “They’ve used similar methods before. But you were more stubborn, or maybe ingenious, than they expected.”
“I suppose that’s supposed to be flattering,” Andrei muttered.
Dmitri’s gaze sharpened. “And ARCHEON?”
She turned her head toward him. “We were observing what was happening from afar,” she said. “We became aware of the compromise mid-flight. By the time we’d confirmed it wasn’t operator error, Andrei and Ms. Volkov had already severed the external control. Impressive, by the way.”
Her eyes flicked to me again. I didn’t blush, but I felt a sliver of pride slide under my skin.
“So now what?” Roman asked. “We’re out of Revenant’s control. We’re in your hands now.” He spread his hands. “Are we prisoners? Guests? Protected assets?”
The director inclined her head. “You are not prisoners,” she said. “Not today, anyway.”
Kara arched a brow. “That’s comforting,” she muttered.
The woman’s mouth tightened faintly. “You’re here because Revenant is hunting all of you. They have resources, yes, but their attention is… divided at the moment. We mean to make that distraction worse.”
Dmitri’s voice cut in, steady and wary. “When you called me on the phone to get us here, you told us that the Dragunovs and ARCHEON and have aligned interests now. Spell that out for the rest of us.”
She clasped her hands loosely in front of her. “Revenant has become a destabilizing factor and we don’t like that. They interfere in operations that require steady and complete control. They arm unpredictable actors. They tamper with systems they don’t fully understand. We can’t allow them to continue what they’re doing.”
“So, you’re going destroy them,” Dmitri replied.
“That is the idea,” she replied with zero expression on her face.
“I’m supposed to trust that you’re doing this because you’re altruistic now?” I asked. “You want to be the good guys?”
She turned and held my gaze without flinching. “I’m not naive enough to call ARCHEON good, Ms. Volkov, and neither should you be. But in this instance, we are on the same side. Whether you like us or not is irrelevant.”
Beside me, Viktor murmured, “She’s got a point.”
Mikhail sighed. “I know you don’t like ARCHEON, Katerina,” he said, his eyes cutting to me, “and they don’t particularly like you either, but we need this to work.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I folded my arms, forcing myself to listen.
Mikhail focused in on Andrei. “What about the drones? What did you arrange?”
Andrei straightened, all lazy charm gone. “The shipment never went to Revenant’s people or their insane client group,” he said. “The manufacturer delivered them to one of the Markov warehouses. They’re in our orbit now.”
The room went very still.
Roman’s brows shot up. “I’m sorry—one ofwhatwarehouses?”
Lev leaned forward in his chair, eyes narrowing. “You routed a shipment of experimental weapons into our supply chain without telling us?”
Dmitri’s mouth curved, but there was no humor in it. “And when, exactly, were you planning to mention you’d parked a small private war fleet under our floor?”
Andrei didn’t flinch. “You have a receiving facility even Revenant doesn’t know about. High security. Clean records. Ineeded somewhere they couldn’t touch and wouldn’t think to look. Your warehouse was the safest option.”
The director nodded. “We’re aware. Once we discovered what Mr. Dragunov had done, we elected to keep the shipment where it was.”
Roman blinked. “You what?”
She turned to him. “You have a secure receiving facility. It’s discreet. Well-guarded. Off the books. It was efficient to keep using it. Moving the drones again would have increased risk. So we left them where they are, for now.”
