“Just trust me.”
Roman skidded to a halt, leaning around the corner. “I can see a vent panel about twenty meters in. A big one.”
Kara blinked. “Why are all maintenance shafts gigantic in villain buildings?”
“Compensation,” Roman said.
Lev gave him a look. “Focus.”
We rushed forward. The corridor tightened around us, narrowing until the walls felt almost too close. The lights flickered overhead. Smoke seeped through a crack near the ceiling.
I dropped to my knees beside the access point, fingers hooking under the lip of a wide floor grate. It was rusted and heavy, but it wasn’t locked. A maintenance engineer would need immediate access in times like these.
Just like we did.
Viktor got next to me without a word and grabbed the other edge. “Lift on three. One—two?—”
He didn’t wait for three.
He yanked. Hard.
I bit my tongue to stop a laugh. He always jumped the gun.
“Premature elevation,” I laughed. But the grate groaned loose and came up with a horrifyingly loud screech of metal against metal.
A narrow vertical shaft stared back at us. It was dark, deep, and the heat from it rolled out in waves. Coolant pipes ran along one side and electrical conduits showed faintly against the opposite wall. The wall nearest where I knelt sported a narrow ladder that descended into the dark below.
Lev knelt beside me and shone a small tactical light into the drop. “It’s a service access. Probably runs all the way to sublevel exits.”
I swung my legs into the shaft without hesitating. “We go. Now.”
The shaft was narrower than it looked and I briefly wondered if the massive shoulders of the men Kara and I kept company with would fit. I let myself slide down a good way, letting my hands and legs skim along the outside of the ladder, quickly making room for the rest coming behind me. Scrambling down the ladder as quickly as I could command my hands and legs to move, I was relieved to hear everyone else following and then the sound of the heavy grate being lowered back over the hole. Heat rose from somewhere below. My heart stuttered, but I forced my breathing to keep steady.
Above me, bodies dropped one by one—the Markov brothers swearing creatively, Kara squealing, Viktor laughing, and Andrei muttering some Russian curse under his breath.
Viktor slid down behind me, leveraging himself against the walls of the shaft and not even using the ladder. He looked so at ease, it was like he’d practiced this before. “Look at you,” he murmured. “Leading us straight into the belly of the beast.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, even as sweat trickled down my neck.
“Sexy,” he added.
Andrei kicked him lightly from above. “Focus.”
“I am focused,” Viktor said. “Just not on what you want.”
I shook my head as I continued onward. The others followed. We slid another twenty feet downward before the ladder ended at a sort of wider landing and the main shaft angled slightly to the left.
“Here!” I called, facing a large horizontal duct intersecting the one we were in. “Fuck! It’s sealed!”
“Move,” Roman said, pushing his way over and around us. He braced his back against a pipe and kicked forward.
The metal groaned.
He kicked it again.
It bent.
One more strike and the panel dislodged, falling into the dark. Cold air rushed through the hole.
