“Every movement. Every call,” I confirmed. “Every illegal armament they’ve placed. Every political official they’ve bought. All their off-record surveillance maps. All of the AI programming that they stole.”
Viktor let out a low whistle. “That’s… a lot.”
“It is.” My fingers flew faster. “Which is why I’m stealing all of it.”
With every command, the warning lights above us flashed brighter, angrier. Someone somewhere realized a part of their empire was under attack.
“Katya,” Dmitri whispered hoarsely, “they’re reacting. You have one minute.”
“Then I’ll use all sixty seconds.”
I clicked into another secure folder and began transferring everything to the encrypted cloud server I’d set up weeks ago. File after file—copied, uploaded, locked behind my firewalls. The next batch—mine. The next—mine. My heart hammered, palms slick, but my fingers didn’t hesitate. This wasn’t hacking.
This was revenge.
The system started fighting me harder, popping up alert messages almost as if it was screaming at me.
Are you sure you want to transfer?—
“Yes,” I snapped. “God, you’re so dramatic.”
Kara laughed breathlessly.
Roman shouted from the door, “Incoming!”
Lev and Roman shot simultaneously. “Two down.”
The building’s automated voice chimed overhead, cold and clipped. “Core integrity compromised. Manual intervention required.”
Andrei leaned in. “Katya?”
“Almost done,” I said.
He stepped closer, close enough for his breath to brush my cheek, close enough that anyone else would have interfered. But not him. He never distracted me. He just steadied me.
“You’re doing great,” he murmured. “Finish it.”
I wiped all record of my presence from the server and then deleted everything. A red alert flared on all screens.
The system crashed.
All the lights on the server rows blinked erratically.
Then dimmed.
“Okay,” I said. “They’re blind now. But we’re not finished.”
“What else?” Viktor asked.
I pointed to the massive physical towers lining the far wall—offline storage, the deep backups not connected to any network.
“If we don’t destroy those,” I said, “Revenant can rebuild everything I just deleted.”
Roman grinned, practically glowing. “So we blow them up.”
Dmitri sighed softly. “Carefully.”
“Ish,” Viktor added.
