Recording.
For a brief moment, I consider turning back, finding the camera, and erasing the footage like I handle every other loose end.
Then exhaustion hits me like a hand on my neck. We have one more target, one last strike before everything either collapses into victory or crumbles around us.
I tell myself the footage will sit in a server farm and decay, that no one will look unless they have a reason to. By the time anyone asks questions, we'll be long gone. Boris will be exposed. The war will be over.
I keep driving.
But the blinking red light lingers in my mind longer than it should.
Not fear.
Unease.
The sensation of leaving a door unlocked.
The fifth day dawns gray and cold.
Another motel. Another identical room. Another temporary refuge.
Maksim checks the weapons Lev provided, his movements careful yet efficient, favoring his leg in subtle ways he thinks I don't notice. He's tougher than his wound, but that doesn't mean the wound isn't there.
"Security will be heavier," he says. "Boris knows he's being targeted. He'll fortify the center."
"Which is why we won't go through the front," I reply.
I spread a hand-drawn map on the bed—ugly but accurate. There's a service entrance on the east side, accessible through the adjacent building. Shift change gives us a narrow window.
He studies it and nods once. "Extraction?"
"Same," I say. "Stay quiet until we're moving. If it goes wrong, we split and regroup at the tertiary."
"It won't go wrong," he says, a ghost of a smile appearing—small, lethal, familiar.
We have become frighteningly good at this.
Not because I commanded it.
Because we learned each other under fire.
I step closer, and his hand finds mine without hesitation, our fingers interlacing in a way that has shifted from possession to promise.
"One more hit," I say.
"One more," he agrees.
I look at him—this man I have shaped and hurt, yet somehow still hold on to. This partner I could never have imagined until he stood beside me in the smoke.
"We're winning," I say.
And it feels true. It feels inevitable. It feels like the end of the war.
My body believes it. My mind begins to plan for it. My hands tighten around his as if the victory is already secured.
I do not yet realize how costly that belief will be.
20
