I grab his rifle and come up firing. Another guard appears from the left, trying to flank us. I catch him with a burst that stitches across his torso. He spins and falls.
"Behind you!" Svetlana screams.
I spin. A third guard, almost on top of us, his weapon coming up. I squeeze the trigger, but my gun clicks empty.
Svetlana fires. Once, twice, three times. The first two shots go wide—she's shaking, inexperienced, and terrified—but thethird catches him in the throat. He goes down gurgling, blood spraying across the concrete in a wide arc.
I drop the empty rifle and pull my pistol again, grabbing a fresh magazine from my belt. My right hand screams in protest as I use it to steady the weapon, but the stimulants keep me moving.
A guard emerges from behind a support column. I put him down. Another tries to rush Ilya's position. Sergei cuts him down with a controlled burst.
The firefight is brutal and short. Ilya's men are professionals, trained killers who move like a single unit. They communicate with hand signals, covering each other, advancing in coordinated movements. Iosef's guards are thugs—strong, vicious, but undisciplined. They fire wildly, waste ammunition, and break cover at the wrong times.
Within ninety seconds, the guards are all dead.
Brass casings litter the floor. The smell is thick enough to choke on. Blood pools and spreads, mixing with the water that seeps through cracks in the concrete.
But Iosef, Evan, and Grigory are still alive.
They've taken cover behind an overturned table, and now they emerge slowly, weapons raised. Ilya's men have them surrounded, red laser dots dancing across their chests, but no one fires. This isn't their fight, and they know better than to take the shot.
This is personal.
Ilya understands that. He gestures to his men, and they fall back slightly, maintaining a perimeter but giving us space. I stand slowly, pulling Svetlana up with me. She's shaking, covered in blood—some hers, most not—but she's alive. She's breathing. And when she looks at me, I see both fear and fury in her face.
"You came," she whispers.
"Always." I keep myself between her and the three men who tortured her. "I'll always come for you."
Iosef laughs, the sound echoing off the concrete walls. "How touching. The great Kazimir, reduced to playing hero for used goods."
I feel Svetlana flinch behind me.
"She’s not a possession. Notgoods," I say quietly, my voice cold and flat. "And I don’t care who touched her before, so long as I’m the last.”
"Is that really how you feel?" Evan sneers, his weapon still raised but wavering slightly. "Did she tell you all the things we did to her? All the ways we?—"
I shoot him.
Not in the head. In the stomach, where it will take the longest to die, if I have that much patience. He goes down screaming, clutching at the wound, blood pouring between his fingers. His weapon clatters away across the concrete.
"You don't get to talk about her," I snarl, walking toward him. "You don't get to say her name. You don't get to fucking breathe the same air as her."
Evan is crying now, begging, trying to crawl away. His hands scrabble at the concrete, leaving bloody smears. "Please—please, I'm sorry, I didn't?—"
I put my boot on his chest, pinning him. He screams.
"This is for every time you touched her," I say, pressing the barrel of my gun against his forehead. I’ve decided against patience. "Every time you hurt her. Every nightmare you gave her."
I pull the trigger. The shot echoes in the concrete room. Evan's body goes still, his eyes staring at nothing.
One down.
Grigory roars and charges at me, abandoning his gun for a knife. He's fast, but I'm faster. I sidestep, letting him stumblepast, then grab his knife arm and twist hard. The bone snaps with a satisfying crack. He screams, high and shrill.
The knife falls from his useless hand. I kick it away, then drive my fist into his kidney; once, twice, three times. He collapses to his knees, gasping.
But before I can finish him, Svetlana is there.
