Her hand was a sudden, surprising heat on his wrist. Her grip was tight, the fingers strong, a stark contrast to the absolute cold that had settled in his bones. It was an anchor, a physical argument against the cold, clean logic of his own self-destruction. He stopped, his hand hovering inches from the heavy case containing the Aegis Conduit. The silence in the ravine stretched, broken only by the low moan of the wind and the faint, psychic residue of screams from the dead town below.
— Don’t, — she said. The word was not a plea. It was an order.
He didn’t look at her. His gaze was fixed on the case, the seamless black rectangle that promised a clean, final solution. It was a piece of the void given form, and it was calling to him. It was the one move left on the board that guaranteed checkmate. The cost was just the king.
— It’s the only way to be sure, — he said, his voice a low rasp. The words tasted like ash.
— It is the most expensive way, — Anja Petrova countered, her grip tightening on his wrist. He could feel the pulse in her thumb, a steady, stubborn rhythm against his own skin. — Your way guarantees one victory and one death. My way offers a chance at two victories.
He finally turned to face her. Her face was a pale oval in the gloom, her eyes dark and intense. The bruising on her cheek from the embassy escape was a faint purple stain. She was a scientist, a creature of logic and systems. She saw the world in terms of probabilities and outcomes, not honor and sacrifice.
— Kestrel has planned for a martyr, — she continued, her voice sharp with an engineer’s precision. — He feeds on sacrifice. Your death would be the final note in his symphony. It would validate his entire philosophy. You would become just another echo in his collection.
The psychic static from Kholodny-12 seemed to press in, a chorus of agreement from the fifty souls Kestrel had already collected. The thought of his own final moments being looped for eternity, another instrument in that monstrous orchestra, was a violation that cut deeper than the cold. He had built his life on control, on the precise and deliberate application of his will. To surrender that control in death, to become a tool for the man he hunted, was a failure more profound than any he had yet suffered.
— There is no other way to get close enough, — he argued, the words a last defense of his grim certainty. — His defenses are absolute. The Protocol itself is a fortress.
— Every fortress has a key, — she said, releasing his wrist. The sudden absence of her warmth was a shock. She knelt and unlatched the case, revealing the Aegis Conduit. It didn’t reflect the faint starlight; it drank it, a patch of perfect blackness in the snow. She didn’t touch it. Instead, she pulled a folded piece of paper from her coat pocket and spread it on the flat top of the case. It was a schematic, a complex web of lines and equations she had drawn from memory.
— The Echo Protocol is a broadcast, — she explained, her finger tracing a path through the diagram. — Every broadcast has a carrier wave. I designed the modulation sequence. It’s complex, but it has to be. It has to interface with the human mind without causing immediate cellular decay. That complexity is its weakness.
She pointed to a specific junction in the schematic. — I can’t shut it down remotely. But I can introduce a targeted feedback loop. A harmonic dissonance. It’s like singing a single, perfect note that can shatter a glass. For approximately four seconds, the core’s internal shielding will fluctuate. It will be exposed.
Sineus stared at the drawing, the cold logic of her plan cutting through the fog of his despair. She wasn't talking about a frontal assault. She was talking about picking a lock. A lock she had designed.
— That’s when you strike, — she said, looking up at him, her eyes locking onto his. — Not with a bomb. Not with your body. With your scalpel. A surgical cut. You sever the core’s primary directive, the memory that tells it what it is. You unmake it.
The synthesis of it was brutal in its elegance. Her knowledge, his power. A two-pronged key to open a door that was supposed to be impassable. It was a plan born from the wreckage of their separate failures, a new weapon forged in the cold of the ravine. It was a chance. A slim, desperate, beautiful chance.
— And the failsafe? — he asked, his voice steady now. — The Oblivion blast?
She tapped the open case beside the schematic. The Aegis Conduit lay there, silent and waiting.
— You punch the core, — she said, her voice dropping to a near whisper, a vow made in the frozen dark. — I will handle the blowback.
He looked from her face to the schematic, then to the impossible blackness of the Conduit. He had come to this ravine to die, to trade his life for a guaranteed, solitary victory. She was offering him a different trade. His trust for her life. The price was no longer his own self-destruction, but his faith in her. He had to surrender his need for absolute control over the outcome and place it in the hands of a woman he had known for less than a month, a woman who had been his enemy.
The psychic static from the town hadn't vanished, but it had changed its texture. It was no longer a roar of Kestrel’s victory, but the low, steady hum of a machine waiting to be broken. The choice was clear. To die alone was subjugation. To fight together was a declaration of sentinence.
He reached down, not for his pistol, but to fold the schematic. He handed it back to her.
— Let’s go over the approach one more time.
The wind died down. The only sound was the soft crunch of snow under their boots as they began to move.
We walked back toward hell.
