I gather my files, nod once at Kane on my way out, and walk back toward my quarters with my spine straight, my composure intact, and my hands clasped behind my back so that no one in this mountain can see that they're shaking.
8
ROMAN
The secondary briefing room is smaller than the main command center, built for planning rather than presenting. A table that seats four, tactical maps pinned to a corkboard along one wall, a screen connected to Tommy's intelligence feeds, and no windows. We are inside a mountain, and mountains don't accommodate the human preference for natural light. The overhead LEDs cast everything in the flat, clinical glow that makes you forget whether it's morning or midnight.
It's morning. I know because Vix arrived with coffee, which means she raided the communal kitchen before anyone else was awake. She does that. She collects resources before competitors notice the supply exists. I watched her do it with intelligence contacts across multiple continents, and now she's doing it with the Echo Base coffee supply, which tells me she's adapting faster than she wants anyone to notice.
She sets her mug on the table, takes the chair across from me, and opens her laptop with the deliberate precision of a woman establishing a perimeter. The gauze on her knuckles has been changed since yesterday, fresh white wrapping that Willa must have replaced this morning, and her fingers move across thekeyboard with a careful stiffness, favoring the split skin beneath the bandage. My jaw still carries the yellow ghost of that impact. I don't mind. She earned it.
The table between us is narrow enough that our knees would touch if either of us shifted forward. Neither of us does.
"Zurich first." She pulls up a map of the city's financial district, overlaid with Committee infrastructure points she compiled from memory. "Volkov's primary financial pipeline runs through three institutions. Two are legitimate banks with compromised officers. The third is a private wealth management firm that exists entirely as a Committee front."
I study the map. Her intelligence is layered, meticulous, the product of years spent building a picture that most agencies would need a department and a budget to replicate. Vix built it with patience and contacts and a memory that retains account numbers the way other people retain song lyrics.
"Access points." I pull the map toward me and start marking entry vectors. "The legitimate banks are harder. Regulated, surveilled, armed security during operating hours. The wealth management firm is the softer target, but it's also the one Volkov will expect us to hit first."
"Which is why we hit the banks first."
I look up. She's watching me with the expression I remember from our early operations together, sharp and evaluating, testing whether I'll follow her logic or need it explained. I follow it. We strike the harder targets while Volkov's attention is fixed on the obvious one. By the time he realizes his legitimate banking infrastructure is compromised, we've moved on to the front company with whatever intelligence we extracted from the first two.
"Sequence the approaches a few days apart," I say. "First bank falls, Volkov tightens security on the front company but assumes the banks were the primary target. Second bank falls,he panics and redirects resources to protect the front company. We let him reinforce it, wait for his security posture to stabilize, and then hit it with the advantage of knowing exactly where his people are positioned."
Vix's mouth curves at one corner, barely perceptible. Professional approval, which from Victoria Cross is rarer than smiles and considerably more valuable. "A few weeks total. Travel, reconnaissance, execution, extraction."
"We'll need cover identities for each phase. Separate legends for each city, nothing that connects us between operations."
"I have dead legends cached across Europe. Identities I built for contingencies and never activated." Her fingers move across the keyboard, pulling up files, and I watch the way her right hand compensates for the swollen knuckles. "Clean passports, credit histories, accommodation records. Webb's people burned my active network, but they didn't know about the reserves."
This is what Vix is: not just an intelligence broker, not just a former MI6 officer with a talent for numbers and networks. She builds backup plans for her backup plans and caches identities across a continent because she understood, long before Webb proved her right, that everything she'd built could be destroyed in a single coordinated strike. It's the paranoia of a professional who has been betrayed before, and I hold a permanent place on that list.
We work through the approach routes for the first bank. Vix identifies the compromised officer, a middle-aged Swiss national who handles the Committee's accounts in exchange for a lifestyle his legitimate salary couldn't support. She has his schedule, his habits, his vulnerabilities. I was dead for a decade, but Vix was building this dossier for years, waiting for the right moment to deploy it.
The old rhythm comes back. I expected it and dreaded it in equal measure. When we worked together at MI6, therewas a shorthand between us that other teams envied. I'd identify a tactical vulnerability and Vix would already have the intelligence to exploit it. She'd flag a financial anomaly and I'd map the operational infrastructure behind it before she finished explaining the numbers. We thought in parallel, two minds running the same calculation from opposite ends and meeting in the middle.
It's happening again. She highlights a security gap in the bank's weekend staffing, and I'm already sketching the infiltration route before her finger lifts from the screen. She mentions that the compromised officer takes lunch at the same restaurant every Thursday, and I pull the restaurant's location on the map and start plotting CCTV coverage and approach angles before she finishes the sentence. We move around each other's analysis like water finding its level, and the efficiency of it is relentless and unbearable because it reminds me of everything I chose to destroy.
"Your approach to the target." I keep my voice neutral, measured. "Direct contact or surveillance first?"
"Surveillance. I want confirmation that his patterns haven't changed since my last data update." She pauses, and the silence holds weight. "The data is months old. I haven't been able to verify since Webb started burning my network."
"We build in a reconnaissance phase. Arrive early, observe for a few days, confirm his patterns before we move."
"Agreed."
Every word between us is measured, every silence deliberate. Vix is building walls with the speed of a woman who has had a lot of practice, and every time I edge toward anything that isn't directly related to the Zurich operation, she redirects with a discipline that would be impressive if it weren't aimed at me.
"We should discuss operational parameters," I say.
"We are discussing operational parameters."
"The ones that apply to us. Working in close quarters. Cover identities that require proximity. The Zurich approach means shared accommodation, shared cover, shared operational space for days at a time."
Her fingers still on the keyboard. "I'm aware of the logistics."
"Then you're aware that we need to establish how we work together. Not just the tactical framework. The personal one."
