“I’ve never sent an unvetted asset into a building with the person leading the operation.”
“The risk is real,” Julian says. “But the operational value is also real. A static floor plan is a snapshot. Having Alexei inside gives us adaptive intelligence. If Konstantin has changed the layout since Alexei left, we’d know in real time instead of discovering it at the wrong moment.”
“That assumes Alexei tells the truth about the changes instead of using them to redirect the team into a prepared position.” Maximus’s attention hasn’t left me. “He asked for you by name, Celeste. If he’s bait, you’re the target. And you want to walk into that building with him at your shoulder.”
“I’m not asking.”
“I’m aware.”
The door opens behind us.
Simone stands in the frame.
Her eyes go to Alexei. Then to Maximus. Then to me.
“He’s real,” she says.
The room shifts.
“Simone,” Maximus begins.
“I’m not talking about his intel.” She steps inside. Her voice is steady but her hands are tight at her sides. “I’m talking about who he is. I was in that facility. I was on the other side of the bars. The guards who ran the schedule were doing a job. They followed rotations and filled out their clipboards and none of them ever looked at me like I was a person.”
She stops. Breathes.
“Alexei looked at me. He brought me blood when the guards forgot, and he didn’t have to. It wasn’t his job. It wasn’t on anyone’s schedule. He did it because he saw me and couldn’t keep walking.”
Maximus is still.
“I know what Konstantin’s loyalty looks like,” Simone says. “I lived inside it. The people who belong to him don’t break protocol. They don’t risk themselves for a prisoner. They don’t touch someone’s hand through the bars when nobody is watching.” Her eyes hold Maximus’s. “He broke with Konstantin the moment he chose me over the schedule. Everything after that was just him working up to leaving.”
Julian’s fingers haven’t moved from his tablet.
Marcellus has turned from the secondary console to watch Simone.
“You’re vouching for him,” Maximus says.
“I’m telling you what I know. And I know it in a way none of you do, because I was the one in the cage.”
Alexei hasn’t moved through any of this. His posture hasn’t changed, but his eyes have. They’re on Simone. The sameunguarded pull I saw last night. The precision still there, but the rehearsed quality gone.
Maximus looks at Simone. At Alexei. At me.
“Erik’s wolves flank him from the moment you breach the door,” he says. “If he deviates from the plan, if he moves in a direction you didn’t authorize, if anything reads wrong, the wolves put him down before he reaches the next corridor.”
“Agreed,” I say.
“And if Julian’s comms pick up anything that doesn’t match Alexei’s intelligence, I’m calling abort from the command center. Regardless of where you are in the extraction.”
“Agreed.”
Maximus holds my gaze for a long beat. Then he steps back to the wall.
Alexei speaks for the first time. His voice is quiet. Directed at Maximus, not at me.
“I understand the risk you’re accepting. I won’t make you regret it.”
“That remains to be seen,” Maximus says.
