A heavy bootsole cracked against the reinforced acrylic frame of the mainframe annex.
Tazia pulled Ziva behind the central cooling tower before the echo died. The air tasted of sterile freon and ozone, hummed through by three thousand processing blades stacked inside towering pillars of smoked glass. Miro was asleep four levels up, locked behind three vault doors, but down here among the humming racks, there was only the cold roar of Kosta Praxis machinery.
"Don't twitch, little caterer," a voice grated.
Vane strode through the fractured threshold, a silver military sidearm raised level with his sternum. Blood crusted his left ear where Davorin’s guards had dragged him out of the residential wing two days prior, but his grin was raw, jagged triumph. In his left hand, he held a heavy portable slate. Its auxiliary lamp painted his cheekbones an ugly, bruised yellow.
"You think you're clever," Vane spat, stepping past the rows of blinking indicator diodes. "Playing the stuttering, fragile thing. Pissing on my decade of service because Davorin went soft in the groin over a bastard child."
Ziva’s shoulder wedged against Tazia’s ribs. Tazia’s lungs hitched into rapid, shallow heaves. Her palms grew damp; her knees knocked against the steel mesh flooring with an audible rattle. Her throat locked up, producing a choked, squeaking sound that looked like animal terror to any living man in Krovna.
Underneath the tremors, her mind ran like liquid nitrogen.
*He hasn't called the guards,* Tazia calculated. *He never pinged the internal security net. He came alone. He wants to drag us to Davorin himself to win back his leash.*
"V-Vane—please," Tazia stammered, raising quivering hands toward her chin. "Davorin... Davorin said you were cast out. If he finds you—"
"He’ll pin a medal on my chest!" Vane took three quick strides forward, the barrel tracking directly toward Tazia's forehead. "I have the footage. Every cycle. Your five-year-old brat sitting at the master hub, tearing through the K-9 foundational engines like a parasite. A prodigy? No normal child scrolls through six thousand encrypted subroutines in ninety seconds. You planted him here. You’re gutting this house from the marrow out."
"Step back," Ziva said, her voice thin but sharp as sheet metal.
Vane never even glanced down at her. "Shut your mouth, little rat. Both of you, hands behind your necks. We're going to the great hall. I want Davorin to watch the display while I break your knuckles one by—"
Ziva’s right foot slammed backward against the low utility duct.
During her clandestine sweeps of the sub-levels, she had cataloged the manual override switches for the high-intensity optical maintenance arrays.
*Click.*
Ten thousand lumens of industrial inspection strobes flared across the ceiling grid in a violent, multi-frequency burst designed to reveal microscopic fractures in fiber-optic casing. The sudden, savage flash bleached the subterranean vault pure white.
Vane barked an oath, his pupils searing as he swung his arm up to block the glare. His first blind shot blew out a glass cooling manifold above them, showering the floor with harmless, frosty crystals of condensed nitrogen.
Tazia did not hesitate.
She never bolted for the door. She lunged straight for the terminal array built into the secondary tier of the rack. Her palms and thumbs flew over the interface keys with brutal economy, punching in the sixteen-digit routing string Miro had whispered into her ear before falling asleep: the administrative backdoor to the fortress's localized cache.
*Transfer completed. Override broadcast feed. Swap directory Alpha-Nine for Directory Epsilon.*
The slate in Vane's hand beeped once, an automatic sync ping as it rejoined the local perimeter signal.
"Drop it!" a voice roared through the shattered doorway.
The air pressure in the room plummeted with the sudden violence of an opening blast hatch.
Davorin Kosta stood in the entrance, a heavy custom magnum gripped in his right hand. He wore no jacket; the sleeves of his black dress shirt were rolled to the elbows, exposing forearm muscles coiled like steel cables. Two elite manor enforcers flanked him, rifles leveled.
His gaze swept the equipment room, passing over the shattered glass, over Ziva crouched low by the conduit, and landed on Tazia. She dropped to her knees, trembling uncontrollably, her teeth chattering so hard they clicked. She curled into a ball, burying her face against her arms in visible, helpless hysteria.
Davorin's expression twisted into terrifying, predatory rage.
"Vane," Davorin said. The word fell flat, ringing like an iron bell. "I gave you your life. I took your badges, your stock options, and your rank, and let you walk out the front gate. And you bring iron into my home? Near my family?"
"Look at the slate, Davorin!" Vane screamed, wiping fluid from his scorched, bloodshot eyes. He held up the heavy slate with both hands, desperate, frantic. "Don't look at her fake tears! She’s playing you! The boy isn't just your son—he’s an engineered siphon! I recorded him at your desk! Look at the recording from four hours ago! Look at the child!"
Vane struck the play button and thrust the pane forward.
Davorin didn't take the tablet. He stepped closer, his dark eyes fixed on the illuminated glass.
The video did not show Miro.
On the high-resolution playback, Vane sat alone inside the primary logistics vault at midnight, three weeks prior. The footage clearly captured Vane’s face as he methodically transferred four hundred million Krovna-credits from Kosta Praxis's offshore contingency reserve into an unlisted account bearing the crest of the Vanev Cartel—Davorin's bloodiest corporate rivals.
Timestamped. Watermarked. Digitally signed with Vane's personal biometric signature, routed straight from Miro’s hidden algorithmic construct into the slate's local cache.
Vane stared at the monitor. The color drained from his lips until he looked like a corpse standing upright. "No... no, this isn't—this was deleted! I scrubbed this! This is the wrong—where is the boy?!"
Davorin’s chest rose slowly. A terrible, glacial stillness settled over his features.
"You robbed me," Davorin said softly.
"No! Davorin, listen to me, she swapped the files! The kid did something to the routing array! The kid is an operative—"
"You stole from my company," Davorin continued, his tone devoid of heat, devoid of humanity. "You plotted with the Vanevs. And then you crept back into my house with a firearm to butcher the mother of my son and cover your tracks."
"Davorin, please! By the blood we spilled in the lower districts, look at her! Look at her eyes! She isn't afraid of you!"
Davorin refused to look at Tazia. He didn't need to. He could hear her small, frantic gasps from the floor, her body shaking in what he believed to be sheer, helpless terror.
"You are nothing to me," Davorin whispered.
He raised the magnum and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot was deafening within the tight confines of the glass-lined corridor. Vane was lifted off his feet by the force of the high-caliber round, crashing hard against the equipment rack. The slate slipped from his grip, hitting the grated floor and shattering into fragments.
Silence fell, thick and heavy, broken only by the hum of the processors and the wet, rattling wheeze of a dying man.
Davorin lowered the gun, his breath slow, his face carved from grey basalt. He turned toward Tazia, his posture shifting instantly from executioner to something raw and fiercely protective. He took a step toward her, extending an arm to lift her from the blood-slick floor.
On the ground, Vane coughed, dark crimson bubbling past his lips. With the last ounce of strength in his failing body, he lifted a trembling, red-smeared finger, pointing it past Tazia, straight at the girl huddled behind the cooling tower.
His dying rasp cut through the quiet like a blade:
"Look at her pendant."