We reached the first security checkpoint, a tall steel door with a glowing panel beside it cycling red and blue. There was no keypad, no manual override, just a biometric reader and a curved glass screen waiting for a hand, an eye, and a prayer.
Roman walked right up to it and kicked it.
The door didn’t budge.
“Helpful,” Lev said dryly.
“Just getting acquainted,” Roman replied, rolling his shoulders. “Kara? Katya? One of you want to do something clever, or should I keep flirting with it?”
“Move,” I said, stepping up to the panel. “This system is idiot-proof. It’s not me-proof.”
I pried off the lower cover with the edge of a knife. Inside the panel, lines of fiber and cable pulsed with faint blue light. I found the link I wanted—a narrow connection line leading to a redundantly labeled sub-circuit—and jammed the blade into it, shorting the bridge.
The lights on the panel flickered, cycled once, and went dead.
The lock clunked open. Andrei stepped past both of us and simply shoved the door. It swung inward with a hiss of pressure release.
“It’s almost like I loosened it for you,” I muttered.
He gave me the barest hint of a smile. “You did.” I grinned back.
Behind us, Viktor chuckled. “Everybody gets to be a hero.”
I ignored the way my stomach flipped at the sound of his voice.
After the first door, the hallway narrowed into a short passage lined with thick glass panels. Behind them, I could see banks of auxiliary equipment, battery backups, cooling systems, and a bunch of other mechanics that hummed and pulsed like the room had a heartbeat. We paused where we were, assessing the situation.
At the end of the hall, there was another door: solid, gray, heavier than the last one, with two biometric plates and an embedded camera staring down at the entrance to the door.
“We won’t break this one quietly,” Dmitri observed, sliding closer with his gun lowered but ready. “And we’re almost out of time.”
“How many guards would you assign to this room?” Lev asked him.
“Minimum? Two inside,” Dmitri said. “On a night like this?” He listened for a heartbeat. “Double.”
Roman cracked his neck. “Then let’s go say hello.”
“Just wait a second. Stay right there,” Andrei said.
The others moved to the side, crouching and flattening into the recesses of the hall. He walked right into the center of the corridor, hands visible, weapon holstered.
“What are you doing?” I hissed. “Do you have a death wish?”
“Trust me,” he said.
I opened my mouth to argue, then shut it. My instincts screamed at me that this wasn’t right, but then a tiny, almost imperceptible smirk tugged at his mouth.
He looked straight up at the camera in the corner, angled his head, and said, “Hey, I’m lost. Could you buzz me in?”
For a second, nothing happened.
Then the door slid open.
Four guards stepped out, guns halfway raised, faces caught between confusion and suspicion.
Andrei’s smile did a wicked thing. He lifted his empty hands higher. “Thanks. I was worried I’d have to knock.”
The closest guard frowned. “Identify yourself.”
