The steel door was a dead end with a warning written in stark Cyrillic. BIOHAZARD LEVEL 4. It was a lie, but the kind of lie that kept the curious from becoming corpses. The deep thrum of power vibrated through the concrete floor, a physical presence that made the fillings in my teeth ache. Anja Petrova, the KGB physicist who was my map through this hell, knelt before the lock. She didn't use a pick; she used a small electronic device of her own design, plugging it into a diagnostic port no one was supposed to know existed. Her fingers moved with the calm precision of a watchmaker. The lock gave way not with a clang, but with a soft, oiled click, like a bone setting.
We slipped inside. The air was different here. It was cold, sterile, and smelled of ozone and the clean absence of dust. The thrumming was louder, a bass note that resonated in my chest. In the center of the room, inside a thick-walled glass chamber, sat the Iskra-7 Memory Core. It wasn't a cylinder as Petrova had drawn. It was a nest of interlocked brass spheres, nested inside each other like a child's puzzle box made by a madman. Suspended in the amber crystal at its heart was a web of golden wires that seemed to drink the light.
The low hum of the depot’s psychic wards was gone, replaced by the core’s own song. It was a sound that felt like a memory I’d never had. The air around the glass chamber seemed to shiver, a faint visual static that distorted the lines of the room behind it. This was the prize. This was the key to the Aegis Conduit, our only shield against the oblivion Kestrel wanted to unleash.
Petrova moved to a control panel beside the chamber, her face illuminated by the green glow of its screen. Her fingers flew across the keys, entering a string of commands.
— The release sequence is initiated, — she said, her voice tight. — We have three minutes.
A series of amber lights began to blink on the console, counting down. The hum from the core deepened, the pitch shifting from a low drone to a rising thrum of anticipation. Three minutes. A lifetime to a man on death row, a heartbeat to us. The vulnerability of the moment was a physical weight. We were exposed, committed.
A boot scuffed on the concrete in the corridor behind us.
I didn't turn. I didn't need to. A shadow fell across the open doorway. A guard, making his rounds, drawn by the silence where the wards should have been humming. There was no time for a decision, only for the action that had already been chosen for me. I moved back into the doorway, a ghost detaching from the wall. He saw me a second too late. His mouth opened to shout, but the sound never came.
My left hand caught him under the jaw, snapping his head back. My right hand drove the butt of my pistol into his temple. It was a clean, brutal economy of motion. He went down without a sound, a puppet with its strings cut. I dragged his body into the shadows of the corridor. The price of our silence was his life, or at least his consciousness for the next several hours. It was a currency I was used to dealing in.
— Thirty-five seconds, — Petrova said from the core room.
I stepped back inside. A loud hiss of pneumatics broke the silence as the glass chamber slid open. The air filled with the sharp scent of ozone, stronger now, like the aftermath of a lightning strike. Petrova reached in with both hands, her movements careful, reverent. She lifted the Iskra-7 from its housing. It was heavy, denser than it looked. She cradled it to her chest like a newborn, or a bomb.
— I have it, — she breathed.
We had it. We had won. For a single, clean second, the plan had worked.
Then a single red light began to pulse on the control panel. A silent alarm, triggered by the core's removal. The victory turned to ash in my mouth. The distant, muffled clang of a security door slamming shut echoed down the corridor. Then another. They knew.
— Time to go, — I said, pulling my pistol. There was no more room for silence.
We plunged back into the main corridor, the one I had bled in. The psychic wards were still active, their dissonant hum a physical assault. Two guards appeared at the far end of the hall, rifles raised. I didn't hesitate. The suppressed pistol coughed twice. The sound was a dull phut-phut, swallowed by the oppressive hum of the wards. The first guard went down, clutching his knee. The second staggered back, a dark flower blooming on his chest, before collapsing.
— Move! — I yelled to Petrova.
She ran, clutching the Iskra-7, the brass spheres glowing with a faint internal light. I followed, covering our retreat. Another guard appeared from a side passage, his pistol barking. The shot went wide, chipping concrete from the wall beside my head. I fired twice more. He fell. We were a blur of motion and violence, a desperate flight through a concrete maze. The cost of the core was being paid in spent cartridges and broken bodies.
We burst through a final service door and out into the pre-dawn gloom. The fog was still thick, a gray, wet blanket that smelled of salt and diesel. The sounds of the harbor—a distant foghorn, the creak of a ship at its moorings—were a welcome relief from the sterile hum of the depot. Behind us, the facility was coming alive, the muffled shouts and alarms growing louder.
We had the prize. We had the key to our insurance.
But the pier was still a lifetime away, and Zoltan Haas was waiting.
