“Using this place for more than a storage locker now?” he asks lightly.
“Sit,” I tell him, pointing at the desk. “There’s a breach. I want everything inspected before the day shift reports in.”
“Sure thing.” He drops into the chair and unpacks his laptop.
Raina stays by the window, pretending to watch the city. I can see her reflection in the glass. Her eyes are fixed on the monitor, waiting.
Mikhail plugs into my network. He moves fast—too fast—opening internal files without asking which ones I want. His fingers skim through directories that have nothing to do with diagnostics. He minimizes windows the moment he opens them, almost as if he doesn’t want me to see what he’s touching.
Then he does the one thing Raina expected him to do. He opens a hidden admin panel. It’s the same panel used to erase security footage.
He shouldn’t even know it exists.
The moment he clicks it, the decoy trace triggers. A tiny symbol flashes in the corner of the screen—just once—but it might as well be a gunshot.
Raina sees it in the glass. So do I.
Her breath catches. My pulse doesn’t rise, but something inside me clamps down hard. The traitor is sitting in my chair, ten feet from us, hand-deep in the system he helped destroy.
He has no idea he’s been caught. He reaches for another command, humming under his breath, tapping keys he thinks none of us recognize. I start to speak.
The lights cut out.
Every bulb in the apartment dies at once, plunging us into complete darkness. The city still glows beyond the windows, but inside there is nothing. For a heartbeat, no one moves. Then the speakers crackle.
11
RAINA
The lullaby swells through the apartment like a rising tide, each note sharper than the last, each line scraping down my spine. For half a second, I freeze, mind blank, breath trapped. Then Nadia. Everything else drops away.
I sprint down the hall, feet silent on the wood, every sense tuned to the blackout—the vibration in the speakers, the subtle pressure shift when the auxiliary systems fail. The apartment is swallowed in darkness, but I know the layout by heart. Every room now becomes an escape route or a possible betrayal.
Her door glows faint blue from the emergency strip I activated earlier. My precaution, not Sergei’s. I slip inside and lean over her small form curled under the blanket. Vera, already up, reads the situation instantly.
“Game time,” I whisper.
Her eyes fly open instantly, storm-gray pupils huge. She knows this tone before I say another word.
She nods once. No questions. No sound. I scoop her into my arms. Her arms loop around my neck, light and warm, tense in that way children hold themselves when they understand everything without fully knowing why.
The lullaby grows louder. The faint tremor in the floorboards tells me the speakers in the walls are cycling volume. Someone’s in the system. They enjoy theatrics.
I cross the hall again, Nadia’s small breath warm against my collarbone. Vera follows us. The living room is darker now, shadows layered thickly. Sergei’s silhouette stands in the kitchen doorway, harsh and still, one hand pressed to Mikhail’s shoulder in a deceptively casual hold. Even in a blackout, I can smell his predatory calm. He’s waiting for Mikhail to make one wrong move.
“Take her to the safe room,” he says, and though his voice carries no strain, I see it in the way his lips are pulled too tight, the alertness in his eyes. “Behind the shelves in the study. Left side. Second panel from the corner. Press at the baseboard, not the molding. It looks decorative, but it isn’t.”
The directions hit me all at once.
“That opens it?” I ask.
“Yes,” he answers. “There’s a latch under the wood. The lights inside run on a separate line. Vera will go with you.”
The lullaby climbs another degree. Nadia buries her face in my neck.
I run, Vera trailing behind me. The study is lit only by the faint red strips along the floorboards. Bookshelves line the walls. I find the one Sergei described—left side, second panel. Nadia’slittle fingers clutch the fabric at my collar while I crouch and feel along the baseboard.
There. A slight looseness. I press.
