The Hamburg U-Bahn tunnel was a concrete gut, cold and damp. It smelled of wet earth and the faint, sharp tang of ozone from the third rail. A single gas lantern sat on the gritty floor, casting a circle of nervous, yellow light that pushed back the absolute dark but did little to warm it. The distant rumble of a passing train was a physical tremor, a reminder of the living city grinding on meters above their heads. They had found a dry alcove, a shallow recess where a junction box had once been ripped from the wall, leaving a tangle of dead wires. It was shelter enough.
Anja Petrova, the KGB physicist who had built the weapon they now hunted, knelt on the floor. The heavy case containing the Aegis Conduit, the strange artifact that was their only insurance against oblivion, rested beside her. She had a small, worn notebook open, the paper already curling in the damp air. With a graphite pencil, she began to sketch. Her hand was steady, her lines precise. From memory, she drew the layout of the KGB depot.
I watched her work. I sat with my back against the cold concrete, my pistol disassembled on a square of oilcloth before me. I cleaned each part with a practiced economy of motion, the metallic clicks of the components echoing softly in the confined space. The depot materialized on the page: perimeter fences, guard towers, access corridors, and at its heart, a shielded vault. She added annotations in a small, neat Cyrillic script, marking power conduits, ventilation shafts, and the patrol routes she knew by heart.
— I supervised the installation of the psychic wards there two years ago, — she said, not looking up from her drawing. Her voice was flat, a simple statement of fact. — The project was under the Ninth Directorate. My work on the Echo Protocol’s resonance chamber gave me access to their component storage. That is where they keep the Iskra-7.
She paused, her pencil hovering over the drawing of the central vault. — I am not telling you this for absolution. I am telling you this so you understand that my knowledge is a tactical asset. I built the engine. I know its flaws. And I know the flaws of the men who guard it.
Sineus slid the pistol’s magazine home. The sound was a sharp, definitive click. He said nothing. Judgment was a luxury he couldn't afford. Her past was a key. That was all that mattered. He looked at the schematics taking shape in the lantern light. They were a map into hell, drawn by one of its architects. Her confession was the price of her expertise, a deliberate act of vulnerability to prove her value.
He reached into his coat and pulled out the silver flask. It was heavy, solid, its surface smooth and cool. A gift from Misha Orlov, from a time before his mind had been filled with the screams of other men’s wars. He uncapped it and held it out to her.
— You should have some of this, — he said. — The cold gets in your bones down here.
Petrova stopped drawing. She looked from the flask to his face, her expression unreadable in the flickering light. For a long moment, she was still. The only sound was the slow drip of water somewhere down the tunnel, a sound like a clock counting down the seconds they had left. This was a different kind of confession, a different currency. He was offering a piece of his own history, a trust that went beyond the mission.
She reached out and took the flask. Her fingers brushed his. Her hand was cold. She raised the flask, her dark eyes meeting his over the silver rim, and took a small, measured sip. The sharp scent of whiskey cut through the tunnel’s damp smell. She didn't cough. She handed it back, the metal now faintly warm from her hand.
— Thank you, — she said. The words were quiet, but they landed with the weight of a treaty signed in the dark. The alliance was no longer just a matter of convenience. It was sealed.
Sineus took a drink himself. The whiskey was a familiar fire in his chest. He capped the flask and set it aside.
— Show me the entry point, — he said.
Her focus returned to the notebook. — Here. A loading bay on the north side, for agricultural equipment. It’s a fiction. The manifests are real, but the cargo is not. They use it to move sensitive materials without alerting the German port authorities. The guards there are regular army, not Ninth Directorate. They are lazy.
— And inside?
— The main corridors are a maze, — she explained, her pencil tracing a path. — But there is a secondary system. Maintenance shafts for the psychic wards. They are shielded. The patrols avoid them. The vibration from the wards gives them headaches. It will be tight, and the air will feel like static, but it will be clear.
The word hung in the air. Static. The visual noise of a world coming apart at the seams. In the eyes of the Echoed, in the flicker of a Judas Pane, in the hum of the tunnel around them. It was the sound of the enemy.
— The shafts lead here, — she tapped a point just outside the vault. — To a cooling duct. From there, we have three minutes once we cut the power. Any longer, and the backup generator kicks in and floods the entire sector with a neuro-agent.
Three minutes. A lifetime or a death sentence. He looked at the plan. It was a clean, brutal piece of geometry. It was full of risks that could not be mitigated, but it was a path. It was more than they’d had an hour ago.
— We go in at 05:00, — Sineus said. — Dawn shift change. The night crew is tired, the day crew is not yet alert. The fog from the harbor will give us cover to cross the open ground to the loading bay.
Petrova nodded, adding a final detail to the drawing. — I can bypass the lock on the vault, but I will need thirty-five seconds. Uninterrupted.
— You’ll have them, — he promised.
The plan was complete. A desperate, high-wire act with no safety net. Their lives, and their only chance at acquiring the Aegis Conduit, rested on her memory and his resolve.
The lantern flame burned with a steady, unwavering light. The dripping in the tunnel seemed to slow, each drop a heavy, final punctuation mark.
At dawn they would go and rob the devil.
