The light cuts out, comes back, cuts out again. Not a real outage—just a hiccup. The neon tubes in the logistics hallway crackle, spitting cold sparks over the stacked crates. In the depot, the wall-mounted control screen lags: camera 3 freezes for half a second, then picks up again with filthy delay; the cursor trembles, jumps two squares at a time.
I look up, already on alert, but Ilya is a beat ahead. His hand leaves the crate we just labeled; he leans over the screen, squinting. Two fingers tap the casing as if that could knock sense into it.
— "That's not us," he says, flat. "Never seen that signature."
His voice carries that tight rasp that grips my chest. Another micro-cut swallows half the corridor: the bulbs die, come back as a thin, yellowish light, then return to their blurred white. A distant beep answers—some voltage stabilizer somewhere.
— "We packing up?" I ask, already closing the bin.
— "You go to Tinka and the others. Protocol. I'm heading to the ops room."
He stows his tool with a practiced motion, grabs his little kit of connectors, already moving. He passes so close the smell of metal and dry powder mixes with the heat of his skin, and he plants a quick kiss on my temple. Brief, but anchoring.
— "Stay with the group," he repeats, softer. "And... no shortcuts if it's crowded."
— "Be careful," I breathe.
He nods without a smile and strides off, his silhouette breaking and re-stitching in the fickle neon. The screen freezes again behind him, camera 7 drowns in electronic snow. I shoulder my strap, set my breath, and run for the stairs down to Tinka.
---
Mikel wraps a low-voiced brief with Piotr, backs to a wall of raw concrete. He points at a hand-drawn map, a narrow hallway trajectory. The paper barely shakes—no, it's the light above them pulsing.
All at once, the lighting flips from hard white to emergency yellow. A nasal beep fires up behind the partition. Piotr lifts his head, pupils pinned.
— "We move. Looks like a jamming start. Plan B."
Mikel folds the map, slides it into his jacket too fast. The yellow makes the hallways look like a belly from the inside. Everything seems lower, tighter. Far off, another beep answers, then silence, heavy.
— "Wait," Mikel blurts, throat tight. "Anya."
His eyes flick toward the branching corridor to the infirmary. No one. Just the light hesitating, blinking twice. A metal door slams farther on. Not her. His heart jumps a notch.
Piotr follows his gaze, clenches his jaw.
— "She knows the protocol better than we do. If we linger, we get in her way. Down we go; we'll catch her in the flow."
Mikel nods, but his eyes still drag back a second too long toward the unseen infirmary. Worry sets like a nail. He shifts his pack, winces where the skin is still new, and follows Piotr down the service stairs. Under their soles, the grates hum—more the building's heavy breathing when you clamp its ears than a tremor. The beep dies. The yellow stays.
---
Packet loss: 65%... then 72%... 81%...
The camera feeds stutter, a mosaic of pixelated silhouettes. One second, hallways. The next, smeared gray.
Ilya locks his jaw. His fingers are already skimming the mechanical keyboard. The cluster fans bellow with a rough draw.
— "Shit..."
He flips the feeds. Fiber cut? No. Ping's too clean. Not a failure. Forced deafness.
He yanks one plug, seats another. His hands move faster than his eyes. Lines of code roll; he hops console to console. His mouth is open, but no sound comes out.
Behind him, the door slides. Boris comes in, heavy, Olivia at his shoulder—calm on the surface, fingers clenched on her folder.
— "Status?" Boris asks.
— "Someone's plugging our ears," Ilya answers. "We can't hear past the yard."
A diagram washes the screen: dozens of perimeter sensors in red. All alert. All contradicting.
— "That," he adds, pointing, "isn't normal. They're priming us to swing at shadows."
— "Trigger Grey Protocol," Boris cuts. "Pre-evac internal."
---
The sirens drop into a low, sustained growl that vibrates in the walls. Light panels flip to red, stark and unambiguous: "All to designated points. No elevators."
I feel Elijah at my side before I see him. Our hands move on reflex: mag seated, helmet snug, torch clipped to the strap. No need to talk. Our eyes meet for a heartbeat—enough.
Around us, motion spikes. Mechanics snap their tool crates shut in a cascade of clicks. Civilians the Citadel shelters hurry for the stairs, bags slung over shoulders. The air tastes metallic with electrical tension, like the concrete itself is overheating.
— "Stay tight!" Tinka bellows from the rail. "Evac/assist team here! Med blocks, lower level, now!"
She deals orders like she's drilled them all her life. Hands go up, bodies cluster. Her eyes sweep the room and lock on me, hold a beat. No words needed: that's her "move, I've got eyes on you." Elijah thumps my shoulder.
— "We go down with them."
I nod, cinch my strap. The stomp of boots already drowns our breathing.
---
The air smells of ethanol and metal. Anya opens a medical bag, lines up gauze, morphine vials, saline pouches with methodical precision. Her focus cuts sharp, but Mikel clocks the too-fast rhythm of her breath.
He clears the threshold, Piotr at his back.
— "You coming with us?"
She shakes her head, snaps a kit shut.
— "Not until everyone's down. I evacuate with the wounded, not before."
She finally lifts her eyes to him and—surprise—smiles. Not long, just a second, but enough to catch on something in his chest.
— "You go. I'll find you downstairs."
He opens his mouth, half a protest, but Piotr cuts clean.
— "We move. We stay together."
Mikel nods, swallows the retort burning his throat. He turns away but carries that smile with him, a fixed point branded in hot iron.
---
The feeds barely settle. Ilya's run cables across the floor, lashed the clusters back together. The screens still snow at times, but they hold.
— "Grey Protocol engaged," Olivia reports as she returns.
The loudspeakers crackle, overdriven. Orders roll: "Upper levels, descend immediately. No elevators. Lookouts to posts."
Boris leans over the map, eyes fixed on the blinking sensors.
— "Those signals?"
— "False positives," Ilya snaps. "Selective jamming. They cut our horizon so we thrash in the dark."
He grits his teeth, slaps the console with his palm.
— "Give me ten minutes. I can rebuild a reliable schema."
Boris nods, fist planted on the table.
— "You have them. Not one more."
Ilya's already back at the keys. His hands go so fast the clack becomes a nervous drumbeat. One thought hammers in his skull: if this tips over, Mira's out there, in the corridors. And he's locked in here, no comms.
She's with Elijah. She'll be fine.
His breath stays short, but he keeps typing. Then the secondary screen explodes with colors that are too clean, too perfect. Tunnel schematics overlay the live map as if they'd always been there. Blue lines, neatly drawn, stretch into sub-levels.
— "What the—"
Olivia steps in, frowning.
— "These corridors don't exist anymore. Some were sealed years ago."
Ilya narrows his eyes; his fingers are already drumming code. He strips a display layer, digs into the markup. Metadata lines up. Fake. Injected from outside.
— "This map's a copy," he says. "Track 7 modified."
He snatches a thick marker, rips a paper chart off the wall. His motions are tight, nervy, precise. False routes get slashed out in angry black. Sweat beads at his temple.
— "That's a trap. Follow F and you end up under a cracked vault. It'll come down."
Olivia leans in, traces the paper with a finger.
— "There—A and C. Those structures still hold."
Boris nods, massive, fist clenched.
— "If they hit us, we evacuate through A and C. Never F. You hear me—never."
The consoles keep sizzling, pushing phantom corridors. Ilya feels like he's punching through endless webbing.
---
The air is heavy, saturated with body heat and sweat. It smells like oil, dust, metal still ringing from the sirens. The concrete walls sweat a harsh damp, like the Citadel is breathing wrong.
Tinka moves forward, rifle tight, those steel-blue eyes.
— "Groups of twelve," she barks. "If it blows, we take A. Elijah with me, point."
My brother nods without a word, face shut like an armored door.
To my right, a mech about my age staggers, sleeve glued with dried blood. A stitch popped in the crush. I catch him without thinking.
— "Hold this," I breathe, pressing a pad to him.
He shakes. I plant my fingers on his clammy skin, press hard. He grimaces, but the bleeding checks. I knot a bandage tight on top; he nods, teeth clenched.
— "Thanks," he rasps.
— "Stay on your feet. We'll need your hands," I answer.
I keep my head cold. If I let one shiver through, I crack.
A dull BOOM rolls above us. The ceiling shivers, dust sifts down like fine rain. Heads tip up, frozen, as if the vault might drop now.
A burst of static, then Boris's voice in the wall mics, grave and steady:
— "Stay calm. That wasn't us. Prepare to move."
Elijah shoots me a glance—quick, weighted. His chest rises faster. I breathe out slow, like that could keep everyone in one piece.
---
The alarm flattens into a single blade of sound—no variation, no breath. A metallic scream pinned into the skull. The heat of the lower levels breaks as we shove open the heavy door for corridor A: a cold, wet gust laced with droplets hits us hard.
Concrete gives way to an old masonry gallery, walls weeping, frozen trickles set into glassy streaks. The floor is a trap: plates of black ice from seeped water. My soles scrape, already slip.
— "Second group, on me," Tinka snaps. "Twelve behind. No double file!"
She takes point, lamp up. Her beam carves the puddles of shadow. Elijah is right in front of me, rifle across his chest.
An impact cracks overhead, so close the walls hum like strings. The light jerks, turns strobe. I wobble; my sole slides on a frozen slab.
An arm yanks me clean, fist locking my strap. Elijah shoves me back, hard.
— "Stay behind me," he orders, eyes like ice.
I nod, dry-throated, catch my breath. Tinka, unflinching, keeps counting down:
— "Landings... five... four... three..."
Another impact, farther off. A rumble rolling through stone, followed by a gust of dust. Not our corridor. Close, though. Too close.
The radios spit, full of breathy static. One mangled phrase punches through:
— "...DO NOT TAKE F... NOT F—"
Then nothing. My gut knots. Elijah curses under his breath but pushes on. No choice.
---
The human flow pours into the wrong passage. In the panic, despite the orders, a sub-team lunges for F. They think they'll save time, dodge the jam.
Mikel, swept in the tide, sees the dust first. A veil that lives, suspended, vibrating with each jolt. Like the ceiling is breathing.
— "STOP!" he screams, voice ragged. "Back! It's—"
Too late.
A sharp crack like a whip; the vault fissures. The whole span drops in a triangle. Dust detonates, swallows everything. Wood, metal, blocks of stone shear free in a roar from hell. Cries tangle, strangled—then drowned by the crash.
Piotr slams Mikel to the wall, pins him with his whole chest. A gray rain buries them. The sound caves, goes muffled, dull. Three seconds. Four. Nothing but the weight of the world falling.
Silence. Brief, impossible. Then groans.
— "There!" Anya gasps.
Her face is bloodless, but her hands snap. One glance, one decision:
— "We can pull one—not two. You, you, with me. The rest, back! Take A, now!"
Mikel shakes, but nods. His fingers clamp a stretcher. Anya's arm disappears into the dust until she finds a trapped chest strap. Piotr heaves a beam, tendons standing out. Mikel hauls.
A body slides free, whole, gasping. The other… stops screaming.
Mikel freezes, bile in his mouth, ears full of blankness. Anya turns on him, eyes hard but dry.
— "You breathing? On your feet?"
He nods, jerky.
— "Then help," she cuts.
He grinds his teeth, resets, grabs the stretcher and drags, boots scraping over a floor flooded with debris.
Behind them, corridor F goes quiet. Buried alive.
Boris's voice breaks in, deep, splitting everything:
— "F is condemned. Move through A and C. We are not coming back."
The words toll like a funeral bell. In the galleries, bodies press closer, faster, each one praying not to be next.
---
The engine roar drowns the sirens. The air reeks of cold diesel and grit. Neon overhead flickers, light skimming half-open ammo crates and stretchers stacked against walls.
Gunther clambers into the cab of a tarped relic with bald tires. No warm-up, no checks—he turns the key like squeezing a trigger. The engine coughs, groans, then roars, rough. The wheel shakes, the cab with it. He grits his teeth, raps the dash twice.
— "Come on, you piece of—"
Beside him, Tinka racks her rifle. Her eyes rake the doors inching open onto the night. The storm bites instantly: flurries whipping faces, cold gnawing skin raw.
Boris's order snaps over the radio:
— "Truck One rolls. North-East Cache, Cold Hangar. Truck Two takes East Road, then worksite. No stops. No turn-backs."
My breath is short. My fingers are buried in cloth already soaked with blood: the young mechanic's stitch is done for. The bed reeks of iron, oil, fear. We're jammed in among ammo crates and flour sacks, shoulder to shoulder.
Elijah slams the tailgate. His boots grind metal. Two knocks:
— "Go, Gunther!"
The truck lunges. I almost pitch forward, catch myself with one hand, keep the other pressed to the wound. The kid groans, teeth chattering more from cold than pain.
— "Hold on. You're gonna be okay," I whisper—more for me than for him.
On the ice, the truck fishtails. A hard jolt; the whole bed shudders; we slam together. Gunther corrects on instinct, a curse swallowed in the cab.
Then the noise: a rain hammering the tarp, metallic crackle. Not gravel—shrapnel from drones blown too close, falling in hot fragments. It sounds like the sky caving in.
Across from me, Elijah cuts me a tight glance. His hand is locked on his rifle, but his eyes are glued to my leg, like he's braced to see the blood start again.
---
Outside, it's worse than Mikel imagined. Snow walls up in a white barrier, opaque, laced with gusts that whip the face. Every breath burns the throat. The makeshift headlights carve a halo of barely a meter; the rest is swallowed by the blizzard.
He carries a medical kit, straps cinched tight. The webbing bites his collarbone, but he won't let go. Every few steps, he checks behind. Anya brings up the rear, face taut but lucid, satchel slapping her hip. She moves fast, focused; her eyes track silhouettes more than her own footing.
Ahead, Piotr is a hulking shadow, breath steady, almost mechanical, even with an unconscious man lashed to his back.
A drone pops somewhere far off. Brief flash whitening the sky, sound ripped away by wind. Fragments patter down somewhere behind.
Mikel grits his teeth and keeps going. He says nothing, but his body is noise. One thought hammers, simple, fixed: don't lose her. As long as he can make out Anya's shape in the snow, he can hold.
---
The ops room dies around Ilya. Servers crack out one by one. Screens zebra with static, then lock. He keeps typing, fingers iced by urgency. He saves two drives in time, pushes the stolen Loop files to an external. Nothing else. The rest vanishes in an electronic sigh.
Olivia sets a firm hand on his shoulder. Boris is already up.
— "Enough. We leave now. Everyone's out."
Ilya keeps his eyes on the black glass. His own pale face swims in it. A cold rage rises.
— "I'll come back and light this up again," he says.
A lie. He knows he won't.
He yanks the external, stuffs it in his bag, and follows Olivia and Boris. Their steps slap through empty corridors, the far echo of evacuees.
At the West exit, Ilya stops dead. His eyes rake the groups, every bundled shape, every bobbing lamp. No Mira. His gut clamps.
He has no idea which truck she boarded. None. That ignorance plows furrows between his ribs. She's everything. Until he hears her voice, until he sees her, nothing holds. His breathing snags, starts, snags again—and still he moves.
---
North-East Cache — Hangar
The truck grinds to a stop with a squeal swallowed by snow. Gunther kills the engine. Silence slams down—brutal, total. Only the wind left, cuffing the sheet metal like an animal trying to force its way in. The air is thick with frozen oil and cold rust.
I drop from the bed and stagger. My legs shake; my back's locked from clamping the mechanic's wound the whole ride. He's still breathing, thin. I settle him in a corner on a pile of tarps. My fingers are red, sticky, numb.
Tinka is already everywhere at once: two little mirrors wedged in the plank gaps, blind spots checked; then a string of bell chimes jury-rigged from bolts on the side doors. The slightest move will ring. No luxury, no second try.
— "You don't get tired, do you?" I pant.
— "I sleep when this is checked," she says without looking up.
Outside, Elijah and Gunther tarp the cab, then shovel snow over it for camo. Their breaths plume white.
I slide down a cold wall. My back thuds metal. The silence is torture—it rings too loud in my head.
---
West Cache — Machine Shop
The bunker is tiny, buried under an old workshop. It smells like old grease, dust, stale metal.
Ilya drops his bag, pulls the drives like they're vital organs. Almost immediately, he rips the back off an antique tube radio sitting on a shelf. His fingers barely shake—enough that Olivia notices. He clips in batteries, strips a wire with his teeth, breathes on a resistor. The tubes glow; a weak orange pulses in the dark. White hiss crackles in the speaker.
— "Citadel? West here, group two. Come in," he says in coded clear.
The hiss swallows every word. Nothing answers.
He swallows a curse and smacks the housing with his palm. Olivia tightens her hand on his shoulder.
— "She's strong," she says softly. "Tinka was with her. Her brother, too. She'll be all right."
He nods without looking, jaw locked. He doesn't say it, but he's all knot: he doesn't know where Mira is. And until he hears her voice, panic won't unclench his throat. Every silent second scrapes his chest raw.
---
South Cache — Concrete Shelter
The shelter is low, narrow, walls sweating. Half-dead bulbs pour a yellow, merciless light. A bucket of frozen water in the corner.
Anya sorts the wounded, quick hands, low voice:
— "Red now. Orange on watch. Green, don't move."
She lays out the med bags. Melted snow slicks her hair. Mikel anchors at her side: holding the lamp steady, cutting filthy bandages, bracing a drain while she stitches a raw wound. His fingers shake at first; he steadies them, matching his breath to hers. No luxury left to step away.
At the entrance, Piotr stands guard. A shape that almost blocks the ramp light. He blows into his hands, scans the tunnel darkness. A living wall.
Sometimes Mikel climbs halfway up the ladder, just enough to peek outside. Black sky, slashed with white trails. A drone whines high, sometimes, and disappears into the storm. His gut tightens each time—then he drops back down to Anya.
— "Hold like this," she says, placing his hand. "There. Feel it?"
— "Yeah. Like that," he repeats.
She looks up and gives him a smile—tired, but real.
— "You're doing this well."
He laughs, jittery; his voice breaks.
— "We lost—"
Anya lays her fingers on his forearm, just enough pressure.
— "We saved, too."
Mikel meets her eyes. Air comes back into his lungs, a little. He nods, tightens his grip, angles the lamp for her. They fall into the same rhythm, same motions—and the panic takes one step back.
The door grates. Piotr returns, snow in his hair, cheeks red. He shoulders it shut.
— "Stashed fuel cans two hundred meters out. If we move, we move light."
He drops his pack, exhales, and becomes a bulwark again. Mikel looks down at the IV. Drip. Drip. It keeps going—so do they.
---
In the quiet of the caches, news arrives in scraps. Local radios still snag fragments:
Corridor F: two confirmed dead, maybe four. Names passed in murmurs like prayers.
East Exit: a pickup slid off on ice. One dead, two injured.
Garage: a twenty-year-old mechanic, killed by shrapnel.
Immediate tally: 4 to 7 dead, several wounded. Not huge for a hit this size—but enough to mark a turn.
---
I shove the hangar door open and take thirty seconds outside. No more. The air is a knife down the throat, but I need it.
The snow is a frozen sea, shaved by wind. The horizon is gone, swallowed by white. No drones, no engines. Just that too-perfect silence that makes you want to scream.
My lungs refuse the air, like each sip might freeze me solid. And I think of him. Of Ilya. Is he in a truck? In a cache? Alive? My stomach knots so hard it cuts my breath.
I close the door and go back to work. Line up ammo crates. Check mags. Count ration boxes. My fingers are numb, but I force them. Work keeps the collapse away.
Elijah appears without a sound. He sets a heavy hand on my nape, presses just enough that I feel his warmth.
— "We'll find him."
I shut my eyes for a second. I don't answer, but I cling to it.
At the far end of the hangar, Gunther and Tinka are already arguing in low, firm voices.
— "If the sky clears tomorrow night, we try the pass," Gunther says.
— "Too risky," Tinka shoots back. "Patrols know that route."
— "Less risky than rotting here."
They draw invisible lines on the frozen floor, do the math in whispers. I keep counting boxes. Twenty-three… twenty-four… twenty-five…
---
The radio keeps buzzing, stubborn, like a fly against glass. For hours, Ilya rides the dials, tries every channel, murmurs codes. Nothing. Just white hiss.
Then a click. Faint. Distinct. Four choked code words make it through. A group confirmed alive. Not the one he hoped for. Not Mira.
His fist closes so hard his knuckles blanch. He writes it down, then stops cold. Up on the beam he chalked "North-East?" earlier. He scrubs it out—superstition or not, he's afraid of baiting bad luck.
Olivia's dozed off twenty minutes, wrapped in a coat too thin. Before she shut her eyes, she handed him her jacket. He's wearing it now, too big, smelling of wool and cold smoke. It weighs more than armor.
Boris paces apart, chewing on thoughts, turning circles.
Ilya's hands shake. One naked, reddened by cold; the other metal, unyielding. Two halves that don't match—but they hold. And he decides: the moment the weather breaks, the moment the snow gives a gap, he goes for North-East. Even if Boris orders them to wait. Even if it's insane. He goes.
Because he can't breathe not knowing. Not until he's heard Mira. Not until he's seen her. The ignorance scrapes bone; the only thought keeping him upright is getting to her.
---
The message travels by runners, scrawled on yellowed paper. Words dry, almost cold:
"No mass regrouping before 48 h. Codes change daily. No revenge. Survive. Gather."
It sounds like a promise. Or a sentence.
I read it in the frozen hangar. I hope Ilya's reading it too, somewhere safe. Maybe with Mikel.