When they wake up. Not if. Jagger's already thinking past the mission, past the extraction, to the aftermath. The long, slow process of undoing what the Silent has done to these children.
"What about the woman from the plane?" Jinx pushes off the wall, moves closer to the table. The marks on his neck are visible above his collar, purple and possessive. My marks. "The one who was watching us."
"Lost her at the airport." Marlee sets down the rifle, picks up a handgun, checks the chamber. "She cleared customs ahead of us and disappeared into the crowd. Either she knew we clocked her and ran, or she's reporting to whoever's running the facility."
"So they know we're coming."
"Maybe. Maybe not." Jagger closes the projection, plunging the room into dimness broken only by the single bulb. "The source says Cross has been at the facility for three days. She's not there because of us. She's there because of the children. Whatever they're planning, whatever these kids are being prepared for, it's bigger than one extraction team."
"Or it's a trap," Jinx says. "Like Geneva."
"Possibly." Jagger meets his brother's eyes, and something passes between them. "But we've taken precautions. No electronic communication since we landed. No predictablepatterns. No contact with anyone outside this room. And the source has been right about everything else. The location, the security rotation, the number of children. If she wanted to set us up, she's had plenty of chances."
"I don't trust her."
"You don't have to trust her. You just have to trust the intel." Jagger checks his watch, a beat-up analog that can't be tracked or hacked. "We breach at 0200. That gives us four hours to prep, rest, and get into position. Questions?"
Silence.
"Then let's get to work."
The maintenance tunnel is exactly as bad as Jagger described.
Dark. Cramped. The ceiling so low I have to duck, spine bent at an uncomfortable angle, the walls close enough that my shoulders brush cold concrete on both sides. The smell is a thick cocktail of sewage, industrial cleaner, and something else underneath. Something organic. Rotting. The kind of smell that makes you breathe through your mouth and regret every choice that led you here.
Water drips somewhere in the darkness ahead. The sound echoes off the curved walls, disorienting, making it impossible to tell how far away the source is.
Jinx is ahead of me, moving through the darkness with ease. His body is a shadow among shadows, rifle up, every step silent despite the uneven ground. The night vision in his tactical goggles turns his eyes into glowing circles when he glances back at me. Behind us, Jace and Marlee cover our six.
We've been underground for fifteen minutes. It feels like hours.
"Checkpoint one," Jagger's voice crackles in my ear, soft and distant. "You should see an access hatch in twenty meters. Utility junction. That's your entry point to the facility's lower level."
The hatch materializes out of the darkness. Rusted metal, bolted to the ceiling, a faded maintenance code stenciled on the surface in yellow paint that's flaking with age. Jinx stops beneath it, tilts his head back to examine the lock.
"Padlock. Old. Shouldn't be a problem." He looks at me. "On your go."
I nod. Pull out the bolt cutters, position them around the rusted shackle. The metal is cold and slick with condensation. The lock gives way with a dull snap that sounds impossibly loud in the confined space. The echo bounces down the tunnel behind us, announcing our presence to anyone listening.
We wait. Counting seconds. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Listening for alarms, footsteps, the distant shout of guards who heard something they shouldn't have.
Nothing. Just the drip of water and the hammer of my own pulse.
Jinx reaches up and pushes the hatch open. It swings upward with a groan of protesting hinges, rust flaking down into his face. He doesn't flinch. Just squints against the debris and waits for it to settle.
The space above is dimly lit. Red emergency lighting, the kind that runs all night in facilities like this. Standard protocol. Easier on the eyes of night staff, harder for intruders to navigate.
Jinx is through in one fluid motion, pulling himself up and disappearing into the space above. A moment later, his hand reaches down, pale in the red light.
"Clear. Move."
I grab his wrist and let him haul me up. The space above is a utility corridor, narrow and lined with pipes that hiss and gurgle with mysterious fluids. The ceiling is higher here, enough to stand upright, but not by much. The red lighting turns everything into shades of blood and shadow.
Appropriate, given what this place does.
Jace comes through next, silent as death, knife already in his hand. Then Marlee, her rifle sweeping the corridor in both directions before she's even fully upright. We crouch in the corridor, weapons ready, hearts pounding.
"Children's wing is two levels up," Jagger feeds us through the comms. "Take the service stairs at the end of the corridor, thirty meters on your right. Security station on level three, directly adjacent to the stairwell exit. Night shift is two guards."
