The glowing text on Kirill’s monitor seemed to scorch itself onto my retinas. Kolskya Reclamation Zone. Krov-owned facility. It was a euphemism, of course. A polite term for a punishment camp, a place where people ‘reclaimed’ their debts through manual labor, stripped of identity and recourse. Luka.
“No,” I said, the word a raw, guttural sound I barely recognized as my own. My hand curled, the plastic pass digging into my palm. “No, they can’t.”
Kirill was already moving, his face a mask of controlled fury that mirrored the storm churning inside me. He tapped furiously at the screen. “It’s a forced transfer. Legal, technically. They’ll have manufactured some ‘breach of contract’ from the Krovs’ side, tied to a loan Luka never knew he had. It’s their standard play.”
“His safety,” I whispered, the phrase like a broken bell. My primary objective, the one thing I clung to, now snatched away. My world, which I had so meticulously constructed around cold logic and calculated risks, had just been upended by a single line of text. This wasn’t about numbers anymore. This was about blood.
Kirill spun around, gripping my shoulders. His eyes, usually guarded, were alight with an intensity I hadn’t seen before. “Anja, listen to me. This isn’t servitude. This is a hostage situation. Matrona wants us to move. She’s giving Dimitri’s little game a very public timetable.”
“Matrona wants us to expose him,” I corrected, my voice steadier now, the shock hardening into something cold and sharp. “She wants him brought down. And now… so do I.” The world-weariness that usually coated my every thought had evaporated, replaced by a singular, burning purpose. Dimitri Koslov had just signed his own death warrant, metaphorically speaking, of course. For all my cynicism, I found myself capable of a truly spectacular rage.
“The override card,” I said, pulling it free. “It clears clearance for Dimitri’s terminal. His suite. His private archives. What can I find there?”
Kirill released me, moving to a holographic display table that sprung to life with a tap. It projected a three-dimensional rendering of Olenka Tower, shimmering with lines of data and structural schematics. “His suite security is formidable. Biometrics, retinal scans, pressure plates under the floorboards that register anything heavier than a feather. His vault, though… that’s another matter. No digital entry. It’s entirely analog. Deep in the sub-basement, sealed in an inert gas chamber.”
“Then how does he get documents there?” I asked, leaning over the holographic projection, my eyes tracing the invisible pathways. “He wouldn’t trust anyone else with truly sensitive physical papers. Not even couriers.”
Kirill’s finger hovered over a section of the tower’s older structural layers. “He doesn’t. He uses something antiquated. A relic from the original tower design. The pneumatic transfer network. Decommissioned for general use decades ago, but certain tubes still run between his desk and that vault.”
My mind, the cold, calculating machine it was, latched onto the idea. A mechanical routing setup, designed for speed and discretion, bypassing all digital safeguards. That was it. That was the ghost in the machine. “The schematics for those tubes. The entry points, maintenance hatches. Show me.”
We spent the next six hours hunched over the glowing table, dissecting Olenka Tower. Kirill, surprisingly, had an encyclopedic knowledge of the tower’s forgotten infrastructure. He explained the pressures, the routes, the disused transit tunnels that ran parallel to the pneumatic lines. He sketched out routes, estimated timing, even suggested what kind of documents Dimitri might be moving – paper contracts, records tying shell corporations to his name, the true ledger of his divestment scheme. My anger was a cold, sharp blade, honing my focus to an unnatural degree. This wasn't a game. This was my brother.
“The plan is simple,” I said, finally, tracing a narrow conduit that branched off the main utility corridor on the thirty-fourth floor. “I enter here, during the evening shift change, when the cameras sweep wide. The override gets me through the initial perimeter doors. I navigate to the tube junction near Dimitri’s desk. I intercept a capsule.”
Kirill looked up, his expression grim. “It’s too risky. Those tunnels haven’t been inspected in years. And if guards catch you…”
“Then they catch me,” I interrupted, my gaze unwavering. “But they won’t. I’m a ghost, Kirill. I’m a cartographer who knows every shadow, every blind spot this tower has. I’ve been mapping its secrets since the day I arrived. You just need to tell me when Dimitri sends a package.”
“He sends them late,” Kirill said, his voice dropping to a low murmur. “Past midnight. When the tower is a skeleton crew. I’ll monitor his terminal, the pressure fluctuations in the system.”
The following night, I found myself navigating the narrow, dust-laden maintenance conduits beneath the gleaming façade of Olenka Tower. The air was stale, thick with the scent of ozone and forgotten machinery. My headlamp cut a path through the gloom, illuminating ancient conduits and tangled wires. The chip had hummed softly, granting me passage into this hidden labyrinth, a world away from the pristine luxury above.
My internal compass, honed by years of mapping forgotten systems, guided me through the maze. I found the junction, a nest of tarnished brass pipes and clanking mechanisms. The low hum of the active tube, carrying its precious cargo, was almost imperceptible. I waited, my breath shallow, straining to hear the distinct hiss of a capsule approaching.
Then, a new sound. Heavy bootfalls. Two voices, hushed but clear, echoing from the main utility corridor just around the bend. A sweep team. Frost bit the back of my neck. They were close. Too close. I pressed myself against a cold, grimy wall, hardly daring to breathe. They would sweep this section, eventually. My presence here was a severe breach. They would find me.
My comm-link, a discreet device tucked into my ear, crackled. Kirill’s voice, tight with urgency. “Anja! Guards on your sector. Move! Now!”
I was trapped. The squad was advancing. There was no escape route from this narrow tunnel without being seen. My mind raced, searching for an exit, a hidden panel, anything. There was nothing. Just the approaching footsteps, growing louder, closer.
“They’re almost here,” I whispered into the comm-link, the sound barely audible over the thump of my own pulse. “I’m cornered.”
Silence from Kirill’s end. For a terrifying second, I thought he’d abandoned me. Then, a shrill, piercing shriek tore through the silence of the tower. The fire alarm. Not from my floor, but somewhere high above, on the seventy-first. Red lights began to flash sporadically, and the faint, distant sound of emergency klaxons began to reverberate through the tower’s structure. The footsteps outside my tunnel hesitated, then began to recede, their pace quickening as the officers raced towards the source of the alarm.
Kirill. He had triggered a fire alarm. A false one. A desperate, reckless diversion. It bought me precious seconds, enough to scramble out of the service tunnel and blend back into the now-chaotic main corridor. But the cost… the entire tower was now on high alert. And Dimitri, calculating and paranoid, would know this wasn't an accident. He would know someone was actively hunting him from within his own fortress.