The main loading bay doors didn’t just buckle; they disintegrated in a thunderous metallic shriek, sending a geyser of sparks and twisted rebar across the factory floor. The roar of the engines, now inside, rattled my ribs with deafening force. Maksim. He was here. Already. My brain, usually so sluggish, snapped into hyper-drive, not from panic, but from a profound annoyance. This was entirely too much effort for a Tuesday.
“Up, Pasha! Now!” I yelled, shoving my brother toward a massive, grease-caked exhaust vent set high on the wall. He stumbled, his eyes wide and unfocused from the blast, his small body a dead weight against my shove. The air tasted like burnt oil and fear. I couldn’t waste time explaining; Maksim’s men operated with brutal efficiency.
My gaze darted around. The main floor was a war zone of shattered machinery and falling debris, the usual escape routes now blocked by burning wreckage or the sheer, intimidating presence of the Cartel’s vehicles. A trio of black-armored trucks, their headlamps slicing through smoke, idled in the gaping maw of the destroyed doors, exhaust plumes thick and acrid.
“The vents! Hurry!” I barked, grabbing Pasha’s arm. His tiny hand, usually warm, was clammy and cold. He was practically vibrating with terror. I hauled him onto a precariously tilted stack of discarded gearboxes, then boosted him up to the intake grate. It was rusted shut, of course. Nothing was ever easy. I kicked it, hard, the metal groaning in protest, then again, putting my entire body weight into it until the hinges shrieked and gave way, sending a plume of stagnant, sooty air into our faces.
“Go! Keep going until you can’t hear anything but your own breathing. Don’t stop for anything!” I ordered, shoving him through the opening. He scrambled inside, a small, pale shadow swallowed by the gloom. I followed, squeezing through the surprisingly narrow shaft, the rough metal scraping against my borrowed coveralls. The space was claustrophobic, smelling of ozone, dust, and decades of industrial grime. Pure bliss compared to the imminent threat of Maksim, though.
We crawled, my knees aching against the ribbed metal. Every rasp of my breath echoed in the confined space. The thunderous commotion from below slowly faded, replaced by a dull thrum and the distant shouts of men. That, and a new, more insidious sensation. A sharp, icy ache began to bloom in my chest, right where my soul-core pulsed. It wasn't the dull throb I’d grown accustomed to. This was a gnawing, insistent cold, like frostbite spreading from the inside out, digging its claws deeper with every ragged breath. My recent Resonance exertion had drained me far more than I’d anticipated. The clock wasn’t just ticking; it was screaming now.
“Are we safe, Rudi?” Pasha whispered, his voice small and thin, barely audible over the scrape of our movements. He was curled up ahead of me in a slightly wider section, looking back, his face streaked with soot and tears.
“For now,” I grunted, pulling myself forward. Safe was a relative term. We were just temporarily un-hunted. “Just rest. Try to keep quiet.”
I needed to buy us time. Maksim’s men were good, but they weren’t omniscient. A frequency jammer. Something to scramble their comms, their trackers, give us a window to slip away from Kosvarg entirely. The thought of building one, right now, in these conditions, made my already aching soul protest. But the alternative was Maksim’s tender embrace, and frankly, I preferred the internal frostbite.
Ahead, I spotted a grate overlooking a section of the lower bay that seemed relatively untouched by the recent explosion. A storage area, by the look of it, filled with disused engine components and scrap metal. Perfect. I nudged Pasha. “Stay put. I’m going to find some parts. Don’t move unless I tell you.”
He nodded, his eyes fixed on me, a silent promise. I pushed open the grate, careful to muffle the screech of metal, and dropped silently onto a stack of rusted chassis parts. The floor was littered with debris, but amidst the chaos, I spotted a discarded control panel from a kinetic regulator, a coil of insulated wiring, and a smashed-up chronometer. Not ideal, but a start. I began to scavenge, my fingers flying over the components, sorting, assessing, my engineering instincts taking over despite the bone-deep weariness.
“—’s a miracle anyone survived that blast, boss.” A gruff voice drifted up from below, startling me. I froze, melting into the shadows cast by a towering pile of broken gearboxes. Two figures emerged from the gloom, their heavy boots crunching on shattered glass. One was a hulking Enforcer, clad in the standard black armor. The other was sleeker, sharper, his tailored charcoal uniform a stark contrast to the grime of the workshop. Dmitri Sokolov.
My throat tightened around a curse, not from fear, but from a surge of pure, venomous fury. The architect of my current, supremely inconvenient predicament. He surveyed the wreckage with a chillingly detached gaze, his sharp features illuminated by the beam of his hand-lamp. He held a small, ornate device in his gloved hand, turning it over idly. It was a modified implosion trigger. The same kind that had been used to frame me at the Governor’s Gala, disguised as a kinetic destabilizer. The one that had blown a hole through the main power conduits, turning me from brilliant engineer to wanted terrorist overnight.
He really hadn’t changed his toys. My fingers twitched, an old, forgotten surge of power threatening to ignite, but I suppressed it. Not now. Not like this. My soul ached a fresh, sharper protest at the mere thought.
“Miracles are for the hopeful, Kazimir. We deal in probabilities,” Dmitri said, his voice smooth and cold, utterly devoid of emotion. “The initial blast signature was standard, but the dampening field… that’s unique. Far too precise for anyone but her.”
He knelt beside a crater, running a gloved finger along the scorched metal. “This is Ruzena’s work. Or rather, Rudi’s, as she prefers to be called now.” He paused, a flicker of something almost like amusement in his eyes. “She always did have a flair for the dramatic, even when trying to hide.”
Kazimir grunted. “She’s still in the city, then. We’ll find her, boss. The entire district is locked down.”
“Of course she is. She’s like a particularly stubborn cockroach,” Dmitri replied, standing up and dusting off his hands. “Maksim will be… displeased if she slips away again.” He paused, and a dark, unsettling smile touched his lips. “And I, for one, would rather not face his displeasure.”
I clutched the components tighter, my knuckles white. Maksim’s displeasure wasn’t merely a stern talking-to. It was a descent into a special kind of hell. The one where he ensured you could never run again. I needed that jammer, and I needed it now.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a small, furtive movement. Pasha. He’d slipped out of the vent, drawn by curiosity or perhaps a misguided desire to help. My stomach dropped through the soles of my boots, hollowed out by pure despair. I wanted to scream at him, to tell him to get back, but it was too late. He was already fumbling with something on the ground, a discarded Cartel communicator, its comms lens cracked but salvageable. He looked up at me, a hopeful, determined glint in his eyes, as if to say, *I can fix this.* He silently pocketed it.
“The vents,” Dmitri said, his voice suddenly sharp, cutting through the ambient hum. He wasn’t looking at me, but his head was tilted, his gaze tracking something. My heart lurched. Was it Pasha? No, he was too well hidden. But something in Dmitri’s posture, a subtle shift in his weight, told me he wasn’t just speculating.
He scanned the ceiling, his hand-lamp cutting through the gloom, its beam sweeping across the grates, moving closer, closer to where Pasha had just been, to where I was now. His eyes narrowed, focusing on a patch of disturbed dust near my makeshift hiding spot.
“I smell rats,” Dmitri said, his voice a low growl that sent an unpleasant prickle down my spine. His eyes, devoid of any warmth, finally locked onto the specific grate I’d used to access this level. He knew. “Kazimir. Flush them out. Incendiary rounds. Let’s see how well they run when the air itself is on fire.”