The elevator stopped three floors too early.

There was no jolt, no warning chime beyond the soft electronic tone that accompanied every other floor. The illuminated number above the doors simply changed from 7 to 6, and the lift settled with the quiet hydraulic sigh of a machine doing exactly what it had been told.

Tanya looked up.

“We need nine.”

Rain whispered against the narrow window set into the elevator’s rear wall. Beyond the streaked glass, the city was an indistinct arrangement of sodium light, concrete towers, and blurred red aircraft beacons. Somewhere far below, tires hissed over wet pavement.

Beside Tanya’s boot, K’hraal sat perfectly still.

His matte-black tactical harness disappeared against his striped coat except where thin ceramic inserts caught the elevator light. A passive camera unit rested close against one shoulder. Beneath his chest, a magnetic pouch no larger than Tanya’s palm was clipped securely to the webbing.

One paw rested casually against it.

Tanya glanced down.

K’hraal glanced up.

The doors opened.

The sixth-floor corridor was empty.

Fluorescent tubes ran the length of the ceiling, but every third fixture had gone dark. The remaining lights cast alternating bands of sterile white and gray shadow over stained carpet and identical numbered doors. Faded corporate signage still clung to the walls, relics from when the tower had offices, reception desks, and people who cared whether the elevators stopped on the right floor.

Now the building was mostly dead.

A service trolley stood abandoned near the far wall, one wheel turned sideways.

No alarm.

No footsteps.

No voices behind the doors.

Tanya’s hand drifted beneath her black field jacket, fingers brushing the grip of her custom Glock.

“Someone knows we’re here.”

K’hraal lifted his nose.

He sniffed once toward the corridor.

Twice.

Then sneezed.

Tanya looked down at him.

“Very tactical.”

K’hraal ignored her and padded into the hallway.

Of course he did.

Tanya stayed inside the elevator for another second, facing the open doors. She watched K’hraal step into the darkened corridor, then let her eyes travel past him to the stairwell entrance beyond. Nothing moved. No shadow crossed the opening. No figure appeared around the corner. The hallway remained still, but the stillness felt staged, too clean, too patient.

Still wrong.

Their intelligence had been uncomplicated.

A courier would arrive on the ninth floor carrying an encrypted storage wafer. Tanya would intercept him between the elevator lobby and a private suite, copy the routing key from his credentials, take the wafer, and disappear before anyone understood there had been an interception.

No spectacle.

No unnecessary bodies.

In, out, gone.

Tanya stepped from the elevator.

The doors slid shut behind her.

K’hraal was already halfway down the corridor.

“K’hraal.”

One ear rotated toward her.

He kept walking.

Tanya followed, pistol still holstered but her hand resting near it.

Room 610.

612.

Then K’hraal stopped.

614.

The door was slightly open.

Not enough to reveal the room beyond. Just a narrow black seam between the door and frame.

Tanya stopped several meters behind him.

“That isn’t our mission.”

K’hraal looked back at her.

Then pushed the door wider with his head.

Tanya closed her eyes for half a second.

“Of course.”

She drew her Glock.

The suppressor extended the weapon’s silhouette beneath the corridor lights. A compact amber tactical lamp sat under the barrel, dark for now. A laser module remained off. There was no reason to announce her position before she had to.

The door opened without resistance.

No tripwire pulled taut across the threshold.

No movement registered inside.

Tanya entered first, taking the near corner, muzzle tracking across the room while K’hraal slipped beneath her line of fire.

The room looked unfinished.

Bare concrete floor.

Unpainted walls.

A single fluorescent fixture buzzing overhead.

There were no cabinets, no terminal, no bed, no personal effects. Even the window had been covered from the inside with a sheet of dull gray composite.

In the center stood a folding table.

Two chairs faced each other across it.

And on the table sat an ancient cassette recorder.

Nothing else.

Tanya stopped moving.

The recorder was military issue, decades obsolete. Olive casing. Thick steel buttons worn silver at the edges. A black speaker grille occupied half the face, its perforations clogged with the faint gray residue of age.

A strip of faded white tape ran across the top.

Someone had written a single word on it in black marker.

VOLKOV

K’hraal looked at Tanya.

Tanya did not look back.

For several seconds, she forgot about the pistol in her hand.

The room seemed suddenly smaller.

The electrical buzz overhead receded beneath something older: a fragment of sound that never quite became a memory.

A metal door.

Cold air.

Someone speaking from the other side of glass.

Then nothing.

Tanya blinked.

The Glock was still pointed at the empty corner.

K’hraal gave a quiet chirp.

Before Tanya could answer, a chime sounded in the hallway.

The elevator.

She turned toward the door.

Above it, visible through the narrow opening, the floor indicator changed.

7.

Then 8.

Then—

9.

The elevator had resumed its journey without them.

Tanya crossed the room in three strides and snatched up the cassette recorder.

“Change of mission.”

K’hraal chirped.

“No, we’re still getting the wafer.”

Another chirp.

“And this.”

She shoved the recorder into her field pack.

Something moved below them.

Not nearby.

Lower.

A door slammed against concrete.

Then came the unmistakable rhythm of boots hammering up a stairwell.

Several sets.

Fast.

Tanya holstered the pistol long enough to tighten the pack against her shoulders.

“Move.”

She crossed the corridor at a run.

K’hraal shot ahead of her, claws finding traction on the carpet before he disappeared through the fire door into the stairwell.

Tanya followed.

The stairwell was colder than the corridor, all poured concrete and galvanized railings. Emergency lights washed everything in muted red. Rainwater had blown through a cracked landing window and collected along the edge of the steps, reflecting the glow like diluted blood.

K’hraal took the stairs three at a time.

His harness pouch bounced once beneath his chest.

Tanya noticed.

“You still have the bypass key?”

Chirp.

They reached the seventh-floor landing.

“The tracker?”

Chirp.

Eighth floor.

“The tuna?”

Silence.

Tanya stopped halfway up the next flight.

K’hraal froze two steps above her.

Slowly, very slowly, he looked away.

Tanya stared at him.

“You ate the emergency ration?”

A very small chirp.

Tanya opened her mouth.

Gunfire punched through the stairwell door beneath them.

Concrete spat from the wall.

A round struck the steel handrail with a violent metallic crack and disappeared downward in a shower of sparks.

K’hraal flattened himself against the stairs.

Tanya drew her pistol.

She did not fire immediately.

Two shadows moved below.

One weapon came through the doorway first.

Tanya fired twice.

The suppressed shots were sharp, mechanical coughs against the concrete. One round struck the man’s shoulder and spun him backward. The second hit the doorframe hard enough to force the figure behind him back into cover.

Not dead.

No longer advancing.

Good enough.

K’hraal was already moving again.

He bounded past Tanya toward the ninth floor, tail low, harness almost completely silent against his body.

Tanya followed.

Above them, the ninth-floor exit sign glowed green through the stairwell haze.

The original mission was still there.

The courier.

The wafer.

Whatever trap had redirected their elevator had not changed that.

But the weight inside Tanya’s pack had changed everything else.

VOLKOV.

She could feel the recorder striking lightly against her back with every step.

K’hraal reached the ninth-floor door and looked down at her impatiently.

For the first time since seeing the name, Tanya smiled.

“Yeah, yeah. Mission first.”

And together they disappeared through the door.