In a chamber no blueprint had ever recorded, beneath foundations far older than the building they supported, a pair of eyes opened in the dark.
...
Viktor Thorne, leader of the underground organization known as Blood Pact, hadn't moved in forty minutes.
He sat where he always sat, one leg thrown over the armrest of his leather chair, his eyes fixed on a point in the air that Olga couldn't see.
His awakened interface hung in front of him, playing a silent loop of the same stream for the dozenth time. The boy's gauntlet buried past the elbow in a wound the size of a house, the counter beside his level climbing faster than the eye could follow.
Viktor replayed it. Then again.
"Olga. The teams I dispatched."
His assistant stood at the edge of the room with a leather-bound dossier the width of a brick tucked under one arm, her posture carrying the permanent air of quiet sufferance that defined her existence. "Still unable to establish proximity to the target, sir."
