Sineus was gone. The long, grey service tunnel swallowed him whole, a man walking toward a sound only he could truly hear. Zoya was left with the echo of his presence and the weight of her own purpose. She turned in the opposite direction, her movements a fluid, silent economy of motion. Her part of the plan was simpler. And louder.
— Give them hell, Commander, — she whispered to the empty corridor. The words were a promise. A farewell.
She moved through the sterile veins of Kavkaz-4, a ghost in the machine. The air was cold, tasting of ozone and the dust of settled concrete. A distant, rhythmic thrum vibrated through the soles of her boots—the fortress’s mechanical heartbeat. She was a creature of forests and ruined villages, but the logic of a hunt was the same everywhere. You learned the terrain. You found the weak points. You waited for the prey to expose its throat.
Her already injured leg ached with a dull, insistent fire, a reminder of the price already paid on the mountain ridge. She ignored it. Pain was a resource to be managed, not a master to be obeyed. She found a ladder and ascended, the cold steel rungs solid beneath her hands. The sound of the main Oscillator grew fainter, replaced by the higher-pitched hum of localized machinery.
She found it two levels up. A secondary generator, housed in a mesh cage like a captured beast. It was a solid block of humming steel and copper, thick black cables snaking from it into the walls. It powered the lights and systems for this entire sector. A non-essential organ, but one whose failure would cause a system-wide alarm. It was the perfect target.
Zoya slipped the two demolition charges from her pack. The waxed paper felt smooth and dense in her hands. She worked with a grim familiarity, the muscle memory of a life spent breaking things. She placed the first charge against the primary power conduit, its magnetic base clamping on with a solid thud. The second went against the generator’s cooling unit. It was a brutal, artless placement. She was not a sapper. She was a wildfire.
She set the timers. Ten seconds. Enough time to get clear. Not enough time for anyone to react. She looked at her work, then faded back into the shadows of a cross-corridor fifty meters away. She flattened herself against the cold concrete, her rifle ready.
The explosion was not a single bang. It was a two-stage catastrophe. The first charge severed the conduit with a deafening crack, showering the room in a fountain of blue-white sparks. The second charge, a half-second later, ruptured the cooling unit. The generator died with a drawn-out, metallic scream. The lights in her section of the fortress flickered and went out, plunging the corridor into absolute darkness.
A moment of perfect silence followed. Then the fortress answered.
Alarms blared, a frantic, pulsing shriek that echoed off the concrete walls. Red emergency lights bathed the corridor in a bloody, strobing glare. In the polished surface of a steel door, Zoya saw her own reflection. A face of sharp angles and deep shadows, fractured by the emergency light, its eyes wide and feral.
She heard the sound she was waiting for. Heavy boots on concrete, running. Shouted orders in Russian, sharp and panicked. And they were coming toward her. Toward the noise. Away from the core. The diversion was working. 80% of the garrison’s immediate response, she estimated, was now aimed directly at her.
— Come on, then, — she muttered, a prayer to a god she no longer believed in.
A five-man squad of Directorate guards rounded the corner, rifles up, moving in a tight, professional formation. They were disciplined. They were focused. They were walking into a trap.
Zoya waited. She let them pass her position, their focus entirely on the smoking ruin of the generator room ahead. When the last man was ten meters past her, she stepped out of the shadows.
Her rifle came up. A single, controlled three-round burst. The last man in the formation went down without a sound, his helmet ringing against the floor. The other four spun around, their faces a mixture of shock and confusion. Too slow.
Zoya was already moving. She dropped the rifle on its sling and drew her knives, one in each hand. She closed the distance in three long strides, a predator in her element. The first guard tried to bring his rifle to bear. Her left-hand blade went under his chin, a sharp, upward thrust. His eyes went wide. He made a wet, gurgling sound and collapsed.
The remaining three opened fire, their shots wild in the narrow corridor. Bullets sparked off the walls. Zoya used the dead guard’s body as a shield, driving forward. She kicked out, her boot connecting with the knee of the closest soldier. He screamed as his leg buckled. Her right-hand blade sliced across his throat. A clean, brutal motion.
Two left. They were backing away now, trying to create distance. Their training was fighting her instinct. She was too close. She threw the knife from her left hand. A spinning, dark blur. It took the third man in the chest, sinking to the hilt. He staggered back, his rifle clattering to the floor, his hands clutching at the blade.
The last guard stood frozen for a half-second, his face a mask of terror. He had been a soldier. Now he was just a man facing a monster in a red-lit hallway. He turned to run. Zoya was on him before he took his second step, her remaining knife finding the soft spot between his neck and shoulder. He fell.
Silence returned, broken only by the pulsing alarm and the drip of something wet on the concrete floor. Five men down. It had taken less than thirty seconds. The price of their lives was a few bullets and a thrown knife. A good trade.
She retrieved her knife, wiping the blade clean on a dead man’s uniform. She had to keep moving. She had to keep making noise.
She ran, her wounded leg a hot spike of agony. She ignored it. She moved deeper into the labyrinth of the fortress, following the flow of guards away from the core. She found a long, straight maintenance corridor, two hundred meters of clear sightline. At the far end, another squad was advancing cautiously.
She knelt, brought her rifle up, and fired. Not to kill. To be heard. The shots echoed like thunder in the confined space. The guards at the far end took cover, returning fire. Good. Their attention was fixed.
A bullet ricocheted off a pipe above her head, showering her with rust and sparks. Another slammed into the wall beside her, the impact a hard, physical blow that vibrated through the concrete. She felt a sudden, sharp heat in her left shoulder. A stray round. Or a lucky one.
The pain was clean, electric. It stole the breath from her lungs. She gritted her teeth, pressing herself against the wall. Blood, warm and sticky, began to soak through her jacket. She looked down at the growing dark stain.
— Bastard, — she hissed.
She glanced at a puddle of oily water on the floor. Her reflection stared back, a fractured image broken by the ripples. The face was pale, streaked with grime. The red emergency light painted one side of it, the darkness of the corridor the other. The image was split, but the eyes were whole. They burned with a cold, undiminished fire.
She had a new debt to collect.
She pushed off the wall, her movements slower now, heavier. The wound in her shoulder was a dragging weight. She could no longer use her rifle effectively. She let it hang on its sling and drew her remaining knife. One blade. One good arm. It would have to be enough.
The sounds of the hunt were all around her now. Shouted commands. The clatter of gear. The rhythmic tramp of boots. They were closing in, a net of steel and anger. She was the bait, and the trap was closing. But she was not caught yet.
She found a junction, a nexus of four intersecting corridors. She pressed herself into a dark alcove, the cold of the concrete a welcome shock against her feverish skin. She held her breath, listening. A squad was approaching from her left, moving with confidence.
She waited. The footsteps grew louder. Closer.
Now.
She burst from the alcove, a whirlwind of focused violence. She drove her knife into the side of the first man, using her body weight to drive him back into his comrades. They stumbled, a tangle of limbs and weapons. She pulled the knife free and slashed, a wide, horizontal arc aimed at faces and throats.
A guard grabbed her wounded arm. Pain, white-hot and absolute, exploded in her shoulder. She screamed, a raw, animal sound of pure rage. She twisted, headbutting him, the crunch of his nose satisfying. He let go.
She fought. She was no longer a soldier executing a plan. She was a force of nature. A fire burning through a dry forest. She was the rage of her lost village, the memory of her dead family, given form and a blade. She cut and stabbed and kicked, a dervish of death in the strobing red light.
They fell back. Not in a tactical retreat, but in fear. She was wounded, bleeding, outnumbered. And she was winning.
She stood panting in the center of the corridor, surrounded by the dead and the dying. The alarm still shrieked. Her vision was starting to blur at the edges. The loss of blood was making her slow. She knew she did not have much time left.
But the diversion was holding. The sounds of fighting were all concentrated here, in this sector. A storm of violence focused entirely on her. Far away, in the heart of the fortress, there would be silence. A silence Sineus could use.
She stumbled to the end of the corridor and looked down its long, empty length. She could hear more guards coming. Many more. This was it. The last stand.
She braced her wounded shoulder against the wall, raised her rifle with her one good arm, and aimed.
The corridor was her final field of fire. Her last gift to her commander.
