The fog off the Hamburg docks was a cold, wet shroud. It clung to the brutalist concrete of the KGB depot, making the building seem less like a warehouse and more like a tombstone waiting for a name. It smelled of salt, diesel, and the damp rot of the harbor. Dawn was a rumor, a faint graying at the edge of the world that did nothing to push back the gloom. This was their cover.
I moved through the murk, a ghost in a city of ghosts. Anja Petrova, the KGB physicist who was my key and my liability, walked beside me. The forged papers in my pocket felt stiff and useless, a lie printed on cheap cardboard. Our objective was simple on paper and impossible in practice: walk into a Soviet fortress, steal a piece of forbidden technology, and walk out. The plan rested entirely on her knowledge of the cage she had helped build.
I approached the main gate with Petrova. A single yellow bulb cut a sickly cone of light through the fog, illuminating a guardhouse. Two figures, silhouettes in heavy coats, stood watch. One was young, his posture stiff with the cold and the weight of his rifle. The other was older, slumped against the gatehouse, a cigarette glowing in the grayness. Petrova walked forward, her steps even and sure. I followed a pace behind, my hand in my coat pocket, my weight balanced on the balls of my feet.
— Zone is restricted. Papers, — the young guard said. His voice was flat, bored.
Petrova presented the documents. — Special consignment for Director Volkov. Priority Iskra.
The older guard pushed himself off the wall, his boots crunching on the gravel. He took the papers, his eyes scanning them without interest before flicking up to study Petrova, then Sineus. His gaze was flat, a professional emptiness that was more dangerous than open hostility.
— Never heard of it, — the old guard said, his voice a low rasp. — The log says nothing about a consignment. A call comes from the Kommandantur, or you wait for the shift change.
Petrova’s posture didn't change, but the air around her went cold. — The directive is from the Ninth Directorate, — she said, her voice dropping into a register of quiet, absolute authority. — Do you want your name on the report when Director Volkov’s schedule is disrupted? Or do you want to check the log for authorization code Trinity-Seven-Niner?
The old guard’s eyes narrowed. The Ninth Directorate was a ghost story, a whisper of power that operated outside the normal chain of command. To challenge it was to invite erasure. To obey a false order was just as bad. He was caught. The price of his choice was his career, maybe more. He looked from Petrova’s unblinking stare to the silent, waiting shape of Sineus.
He made his choice.
— Open the gate, — he grunted to the younger guard. He handed the papers back to Petrova. He had chosen the path of least immediate resistance. He had chosen to live until his next shift.
The gate groaned open. We walked through, the heavy steel clanging shut behind us. We had subverted the machine using its own gears. It was a small victory, but it was a start.
The moment they were inside the main building, the air changed. The damp chill of the harbor was gone, replaced by a dry, sterile cold and a low, pervasive hum. It wasn't a sound he heard with his ears. It was a pressure he felt in his teeth, a vibration that traveled up from the polished concrete floor into his bones. The psychic wards.
The hum was a wall of manufactured noise, designed to shred the concentration of any sensitive who tried to pass. To Sineus, it felt like a migraine made of static. He could feel the waves of psychic energy pulsing through the corridor, overlapping and interfering with each other to create a field of pure dissonance.
— Stay close, — he said, his voice low. — And do not step off the path.
Petrova looked at him, her expression a mix of clinical curiosity and tension. — I don't feel anything.
— You're not supposed to, — he replied. — It's not for you.
He closed his eyes for a second, letting his other senses take over. He didn't see the wards; he felt their absence. There were gaps in the field, narrow corridors of psychic silence where the emitters didn't quite overlap. Cold spots. He found the first one, a ribbon of stillness three meters to their left.
— This way.
I led her down the long, featureless corridor, moving in a series of straight lines and sharp, unnatural turns. I was a needle finding a thread in a hurricane. The pressure of the wards grew, a dull ache spreading from behind my eyes through my entire skull. This was the cost of my gift, the physical toll of pushing my mind against a system designed to break it. The air itself seemed to crackle with a faint, invisible static, the symbol of a power that sought only to control and suppress.
They turned a corner and stopped. A thin, horizontal red light barred their path at waist height. A secondary electronic sensor grid. Petrova didn't hesitate. She knelt and opened a service panel on the wall, her movements economical and precise. She pulled a small tool from her pocket, a simple jumper wire with alligator clips on each end. She studied the tangle of wires for a moment, then clipped the jumper onto two specific terminals.
The red light vanished.
She closed the panel and stood. — The Ninth Directorate believes in redundancy, — she said, her voice a dry whisper. — They do not believe in imagination.
We moved on, a perfect synthesis of the psychic and the technical. I was the key for the locks she couldn't see; she was the key for the ones I couldn't touch. The ache in my head sharpened, a spike of ice being driven into my brain. I ignored it. It was just the price of doing business.
They navigated two more warded corridors, the psychic pressure mounting with each step. Sineus felt a trickle of blood from his nose, warm against his cold upper lip. He wiped it away with the back of his glove, not breaking stride. The strain was becoming severe. He could feel his focus beginning to fray at theedges.
Finally, they reached their destination. A heavy steel door, unmarked except for a stenciled Cyrillic warning: BIOHAZARD LEVEL 4. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. The hum of the psychic wards was gone, replaced by a deeper, more powerful thrum that seemed to emanate from the door itself. The air here was still and cold, thick with the clean, metallic scent of high-energy physics.
They had made it through the layers of defense. They were at the exterior of the core room.
The silence in the corridor was absolute, a dead space between the pulsing wards behind them and the humming power ahead. The only sound was the soft, rhythmic puff of their own breath in the cold air.
Now they had to get inside and steal its heart.
