I stood there, breathing hard, the sirens screaming all around me, the air thick with smoke and the smell of burnt everything.
They’d just tried to kill me.
Not break me.
Not scare me.
Killme.
Fine.
Now I knew where we stood.
I spared one glance into the cell. The blast had shredded the cot, turned the walls black with soot, and transformed the interior into a trap full of shrapnel. If I hadn’t escaped that little room, I’d have been as good as dead.
I stepped over the guard’s body, lifted the gun, and checked the ammo without thinking. Half a mag. That would be enough. I took his uniform and dumped his body in my cell, then I stole his access card and his earpiece, tucking both into my waistband.
Then I ran.
The corridor branched into a T-junction. Left led back toward intake. Useless. Right dropped deeper into the detention levels and, beyond that, the facility’s central artery. That was where I needed to go.
The sirens cut suddenly, replaced by the cold voice of some internal system barking in that flat, too-calm tone no human ever possesses during a crisis.
“Sub level breach. North access. All units respond. All units respond.”
I smiled. “Go, little brother. Show them what true chaos looks like.”
The hallway ahead lit with intermittent white flashes as the power cycled. Doors shuddered along the walls, some locked,some half-opened by the surge. I moved fast, staying low, listening for boots.
At the next corner, I heard voices. Two guards, arguing.
“—said seal the stairwells!”
“We can’t, they’re already in there and?—”
They never finished that sentence.
Someone else’s gun handled it for them.
Three loud, quick gunshots. I heard the sound of a body dropping. Then another.
I froze, back pressed to the wall, rifle raised, waiting for the shooter to step into view.
He did.
Dark hair. Cold eyes. Calm expression. A mouth set in a line that said he’d done this a thousand times before and that he would do it again without flinching.
Dmitri Markov.
A second figure behind him—taller, broader, moving like everything was a joke.
Roman Markov.
“Well,” I said, stepping into view with the rifle aimed vaguely in their direction. “Looks like I missed the party.”
Roman pivoted first, gun half-raised, then froze as his brain caught up to his eyes. “You have got to be kidding me,” he said. “They let you out?”
“They tried to blow me up. With agrenade,for fuck’s sake!” I exclaimed. “So I took that as a sign our relationship had ended. Or at the very least, now it’s complicated.”
