The sound of the vault door sealing was final. It wasn't a click; it was a deep, metallic thud that vibrated through the floor and up into my teeth. Then, the silence rushed in—a heavy, artificial quiet that made the ringing in my ears sound like a scream.
I stood in the center of the dark room. The only light came from the sparks jumping out of the server vent where I had jammed the brass key. The smell of ozone and burnt plastic filled the small space.
Emergency Power: 15%, the computer voice announced. It sounded distorted now, skipping like a broken record. Oxygen Scrubbers: Offline.
I sank to the floor, my legs finally giving out. The adrenaline that had carried me through the destruction was evaporating, leaving behind a cold, hollow terror. I looked at the smashed burner phone at my feet. I had cut off my only lifeline to Viktor. I had destroyed Yuri's empire. And in doing so, I had buried myself alive.
"Jessy! Jessy, can you hear me?"
The voice was muffled, coming through the thick titanium of the door. Yuri. He sounded frantic—a sound I never thought I'd hear from a man who treated the world like a chessboard.
"I can hear you," I whispered, though I knew he couldn't hear me back. I crawled to the door and pressed my ear against the cold metal. I could hear the faint sound of heavy tools striking the exterior.
"Step back from the door!" Yuri yelled, his voice echoing through the vent system. "The secondary bolts are jammed. I have to use a thermite charge. Do you hear me? Get to the far corner and cover your face!"
I dragged myself to the back of the vault, curling into a ball behind the server rack.
"Why are you doing this, Yuri?" I screamed, my voice cracking. "Just let me die! You have nothing left to take from me! The Ledger is gone! The project is over!"
There was a long pause. For a moment, the only sound was the hiss of the dying servers.
"You think I'm here for the Ledger?" Yuri's voice came through, lower now, sounding closer to the ventilation grate. "To hell with the Ledger, Jessy. I've spent my whole life building walls to keep people out. I'm not letting those walls become your coffin."
The air in the room felt charged, static clinging to my skin. As I waited for the blast, my mind raced back to the decrypted files I had glimpsed. It wasn't just data—it was a confession. My father hadn't just built a wall to protect the Volkovs; he had built a back-door for UNI.
Every time I looked at the screen, I saw my father's signature in the code—a digital thumbprint that proved he had sold the coordinates of the "extraction" before the collision even happened. He hadn't been a victim. He had been a broker. I felt a cold, hollow ache in my chest that no amount of Yuri's protection could warm. I wasn't just a key to Yuri; I was a loose end to my own blood.
The walls of this sanctuary—and the villa in Italy where Yuri had taken me—didn't just hold stone; they held the weight of centuries of Volkov brutality and my father's betrayal. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the collision. The smell of burning rubber and the taste of copper.
Yuri's presence, even through the door, felt like a sudden drop in temperature. He didn't look like the man who had held me in the dark in New York anymore. Here, he was a predator in his natural habitat, yet he was fighting for a vault that held nothing but ash.
"The UNI is moving, Jessy," he called out again, his voice flat with lethal focus. "They've tracked the biometric signature of your father's last login. They know you're here."
"Let them come," I whispered. I was tired of being the 'Package.' I looked at the door, searching for a sign that he felt the same suffocating pressure I did. "If they take me, the code goes with me. You know that. Mikhail knows that."
Yuri stepped closer to the other side, his shadow momentarily blocking the light through the grate. "Mikhail doesn't want the code anymore, Jessy. He wants the leverage. He wants to show the board that he can break the Architect's greatest work. He doesn't want the key; he wants to melt it down."
The raw honesty in his voice was a physical blow. We weren't fighting for an empire anymore; we were fighting for the right to exist in the wreckage of one.