Cyrus appears at my side, a ghost in the darkness. “Together.”
We breach through the main doors.
Inside is pure chaos. Gunfire erupts from three directions, a muzzle flashes, illuminating terrified faces. Men shouting in Russian.
I register eight hostiles immediately. Two to the left. Three straight ahead. Three more on the metal walkway above.
My body moves through the space with confidence. First target down with a double tap to the chest. Second with a headshot. I feel Cyrus at my side, our movements choreographed through years of operating as a single unit.
“Ten o’clock,” I call out, already shifting to provide cover fire as Cyrus dispatches the threat.
A burning impact slams into my chest—twice in rapid succession. The ceramic plates in my vest absorb the rounds, but my ribs scream in protest. I push the pain away, compartmentalizing it like I’ve done a thousand times before.
“On me,” Cyrus shouts.
I follow, watching his blind spot as he watches mine. Two more hostiles neutralized with mechanical efficiency.
A flash of movement, a guard lunges from the shadows, knife glinting in the emergency lighting. I’m a half-second too slow on the warning.
“Cyrus!”
The blade slices into my brother’s shoulder before I put two rounds through the attacker’s skull.
“Last door on the right,” he says.
Three more guards rush us from the corridor ahead. We move as one entity—I drop to one knee while Cyrus fires over my head. Perfect harmony. Professional brutality.
“Down!”
I grab Cyrus by his vest and yank him backward just as a bullet tears through the space where his head was a millisecond before. The momentum brings him crashing against me, our bodies pressed together. His back is against my chest. His blood is warm on my hands.
One heartbeat. Two. Three.
Time stretches strangely before Cyrus pushes away, resuming our advance without acknowledgment.
We’re forces of nature, and everyone in this warehouse is already dead. They just don’t know it yet.
The building’s layout matches Felix’s intel perfectly. We navigate through the maze of corridors, stepping over bodies and moving with purpose toward the northeast sector, where our thermal scan showed a single heat signature in a small room.
Felix’s voice crackles in my earpiece. “Target location twenty meters ahead. Last door on the right.”
We approach the final corridor. Six doors, three on each side. My heartbeat doesn’t quicken—it steadies, finding the calm center I’ve cultivated through years of violence. But beneath that practiced calm, something else pulses—raw fear for Keira that I’ve never experienced for any other living being.
“Three... two... one...” I whisper, covering Cyrus as he positions himself.
Cyrus doesn’t hesitate. He kicks the door inward with such force that it nearly tears from its hinges. He enters first, weapon raised, his face a grisly mask of blood spatter—none of it his own. I follow a half-second behind, scanning for threats, covering his blind spots in the practiced dance we’ve perfected since childhood.
The room is small, concrete, and dimly lit by a single bulb. Volkov is nowhere to be seen.
And then I see her. Keira. Bound to a metal chair in the center of the room, her face bruised, lip split open, but eyes defiant. Alive.
Something shifts in the atmosphere as Cyrus’s eyes lock with Keira’s. The transformation is so profound, I feel it like a physical force—the killing machine that is my brother suddenly cracks open. His face, always a careful mask of control during operations, fractures. The relief that floods his features is so gutting, it’s almost unbearable to witness.
His gun lowers. “Keira,” he breathes.
I’ve never seen my brother vulnerable during an operation. Not once. The sight of it creates a strange ache in my chest as I move to secure the perimeter, giving him this moment while remaining vigilant.
I move in behind Cyrus, scanning for threats as I cross to Keira. Her wrists are bound with zip ties, cutting into her skinwhere she’s struggled against them. My knife is in my hand before I even register drawing it, the blade slicing through the plastic with surgical precision.
