chapter 14 _Midnight Interrogation

Magnus Kaczmarek

​The digital clock in the underground corridor clicked over to 12:04 AM. The subterranean facility was dead silent, save for the low, rhythmic hum of the air filtration system cycling somewhere three floors beneath my boots.

​I stood outside the heavy steel door of Sub-Level 4, my hand hovering over the keycard scanner. I hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon, and the sharp, hollow ache in my ribs was a familiar friend a reminder that I was awake, functional, and in control. But as I swiped the card and watched the indicator light turn from amber to a harsh, cold green, my skin prickled with something that felt dangerously close to agitation.

​I didn't bring a tray. I didn't bring water. Food was a bridge, a subtle gesture of civility that gave a prisoner something to anchor their dignity to. Jarosława didn't deserve an anchor. Every hour she sat in that reinforced cell was an hour her syndicate's logistics network was quietly adjusting, rerouting supply lines, and cutting off the loose ends I was bleeding to catch.

​The heavy hydraulic lock disengaged with a dull thunk. I pushed the door open and stepped into the air-locked vestibule before entering her cell.

​The room was bathed in the dim, blue-tinted night illumination. It was eight paces wide by ten paces long. On the far side, sitting on the edge of the narrow metal cot, sat Jarosława "Jarlath" Sobieska.

​She hadn't been sleeping. Her back was straight, her feet flat on the concrete floor, her hands folded neatly in her lap over the gray canvas prisoner scrubs. Her posture was absurdly pristine for a woman locked four floors underground, the posture of a woman who had spent her entire life being watched and refused to give the observer the satisfaction of seeing her slump.

​As I stepped across the threshold, her amber eyes flicked up to meet mine. They were clear, dangerously sharp, and devoid of the panicked haze most people wore after forty-eight hours in isolation.

​"No late-night tea, Kaczmarek?" her voice was a raspy murmur, gravelly from silence, but laced with that quiet, arrogant composure that made something deep in my chest tighten like a pulled wire. "You're slipping. Your hospitality used to have a bit more polish."

​I didn't answer. I walked slowly across the polished floor, the heavy heels of my boots echoing off the reinforced concrete walls. I stopped inches away from the floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass barrier dividing the room, staring down at her.

​"You haven't touched your water since eight," I said, my voice flat, clipped, stripped of any warmth. "You're dehydrating yourself. A stupid tactic if you're trying to keep your mind sharp."

​"I don't like the taste of the tap down here," she said smoothly, standing up from the cot. She didn't rush. She moved with a slow, feline deliberation, smoothing the front of her canvas top before taking three steps toward the glass. "It smells like bleach and desperation. Reminds me too much of you."

​She stopped on her side of the partition. We were separated by two inches of laminated ballistic glass, but standing this close, I could see the tiny, golden flecks in her irises. I could see the faint, dark violet shadows under her eyes, and the rhythmic, rapid pulse pounding against the delicate skin at the base of her throat.

​She was scared. Good. She was supposed to be scared.

​So why was my own heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird?

​I leaned in, resting my knuckles against the cold glass, crowding her space until my shadow swallowed her completely. "Let's skip the theatrics, Jarlath. Your brother's perimeter guards in Gdańsk were hit at nine tonight. The entire northern sector is in chaos."

​A microscopic flicker of something worry, calculation, rage rippled across her features before she smoothed it over with a cold, blank smile. "Is that supposed to bother me? You know as well as I do that my brother doesn't consult me on his tactical deployments."

​"He doesn't have to," I said, dropping my voice to a harsh whisper that rattled against the glass. "Because you already gave him the layout before we picked you up at the docks. You set up a dead-man's switch on the regional server, didn't you?"

​I stepped closer, pressing my weight against the barrier until I was staring straight down into her eyes. The proximity was a tactical choice a standard psychological pressure point designed to induce claustrophobia, to force a subject to lean back and give up ground.

​Except she didn't lean back.

​Instead, Jarosława stepped forward, matching my movement until her chest was nearly touching the glass from her side. Her warm breath fogged a tiny, oval patch on the cold surface between our faces.

​"If I had set a dead-man's switch, Magnus," she whispered, her voice dropping into that quiet, intimate register that felt like a razor dragging across soft skin, "you wouldn't be standing here trying to intimidate a girl in a cage. You'd be out there frantically burning your own paper trails."

​My jaw clenched so hard a muscle jumped near my ear.

​It was always like this with her. A game of inches. A constant, suffocating tug-of-war where every attempt to corner her only seemed to draw me deeper into her orbit. I could feel the heat radiating off her through the barrier or maybe my own body was just betraying me, mistaking the adrenaline of an interrogation for something far more dangerous.

​My heart was beating too fast. My lungs felt restricted, as if the air in the cell had suddenly grown thick, heavy, and starved of oxygen. I hated the way my pulse spiked when she said my name. I hated that I knew the exact shade of amber her eyes turned when she was lying, and I hated, more than anything, that I couldn't look away.

​"You think you're safe in here," I rasped, lowering my face until we were nose-to-nose, separated only by the cold sheet of polymer. "You think because I need your information, I won't tear this cell apart piece by piece until I find what you hid."

​"Try it," she whispered, her eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made the hair on my arms stand up. "Search me, Magnus. Bring your guards in. Put your hands on me yourself. See if that gives you the answers you're looking for... or if it just proves how terrified you are of what happens when you touch me."

​The air between us snapped like a high-voltage wire.

​My blood burned. Every instinct I had honed over fifteen years of black-ops field work screamed at me to step back, to re-establish distance, to regain my professional coldness. But I was pinned there, tethered by the raw, suffocating friction of her stare.

​I raised my hand, my fingers flattening against the glass right over where her collarbone met her throat. On the other side, her breath hitched, her eyelids fluttering for a fraction of a second before she forced them open again.

​"You're a poison, Jarlath," I growled softly.

​"Then stop drinking me in," she replied, her voice barely audible over the hum of the ventilation.

​Before I could reply, the heavy red emergency light above the cell door began to strobe violently, bathing the room in a sickening, rhythmic crimson wash.

​A loud, piercing klaxon shattered the quiet, shrieking through the concrete corridors of the sub-level facility.

​WHIRRRR. WHIRRRR. WHIRRRR.

“I jumped in surprise and dropped my hand from the glass when my radio suddenly became very loud with static and people shouting in panic.

​"Command to Kaczmarek! Command to Kaczmarek!" the voice of the perimeter chief barked through my earpiece, broken by the sound of automatic gunfire echoing in the background. "The primary power grid has been cut! We have a heavy breaching team inside Sub-Level 2—they're using thermite on the blast doors! Repeat, we are under heavy attack!"

​I spun around toward the door, my hand instinctively flying to the sidearm at my hip.

​Behind me, soft against the glass, came the sound of a low, slow laugh.

​I turned my head back just enough to see Jarosława standing in the strobe of the red emergency light. She wasn't looking at the ceiling. She wasn't looking at the door. She was watching me, a dark, dangerous smile slowly spreading across her lips.

​"That's not my brother, Magnus," she whispered calmly, her amber eyes gleaming in the crimson light as the heavy steel door behind me suddenly gave a deafening, metallic groan and blew inward off its hinges in a shower of sparks.