chapter 31_Wera’s Desperate Clues

POV:Wera

​The hum of the server stack in my bedroom was usually the only thing that kept the noise of Warsaw from bleeding into my head. Five custom-built towers, their cooling fans whirring at a steady, rhythmic pulse, blinking green and amber in the dark. It was my sound. My world. Safe, predictable, and completely isolated from whatever mess was happening outside my fourth-floor apartment window.

​Until the static broke.

​It wasn't a standard ping. It didn't come through the public relays or the secure darknet channels I usually monitored for local contract work. It was a high-frequency, fragmented signal, cutting raw and jagged through my terminal line, overriding my active protocols.

​I leaned forward, my fingers freezing over the mechanical keyboard. On the primary monitor, lines of raw code began to cascade, distorted by heavy atmospheric interference, but the signature header was unmistakable.

“Emergency message from Delta-9. It’s coming from the Kampinos area.

​My heart took a sharp, erratic plunge against my ribs.

​Kampinos was supposed to be a dead zone. The old satellite relay array out near the forest edge had been decommissioned two years ago when the initial border skirmishes started heating up. Nobody used Delta-9. Nobody except the military command and the field extraction teams working under red-level clearance.

​Which meant Maya was there.

​"No, no, no," I whispered, the word dry and scratchy in my throat. I dragged a hand over my face, my palm coming away damp with cold sweat. "You weren't supposed to be anywhere near the northern grid. You said Cracow. You swore it was Cracow."

​I slammed my fingers against the keys, overriding the signal's native encryption to pull the telemetry payload embedded inside the packet. My breath hitched in my chest, a tight, suffocating pressure that made my lungs feel far too small.

​The signal was breaking apart, decaying by the second. The data payload wasn't a report. It was an automated distress burst sent from a terminal being physically destroyed.

​Thermal anomaly detected. System critical. Node 4 burning.

​Underneath the automated system diagnostics, packed into the tiny, unformatted buffer space at the end of the packet, was a manually typed string of plain text. Three words, written in the private code Maya and I had used since we were kids hiding under our blankets with cheap flashlights.

​W—THEY KNOW—RUN.

I suddenly felt dizzy, like the room was moving.The steady hum of my cooling fans suddenly sounded like a roar, rushing in my ears like static.

​Maya was in Kampinos. The relay was burning. And if Delta-9 was down, her unit was blind, cut off from central command in the middle of an escalating strike zone.

​I stood up so fast my desk chair slammed back into the wall, the heavy plastic frame cracking against the plaster. My hands were shaking not a gentle tremor, but a violent, uncontrollable spasm that made it impossible to grip the edge of the desk.

​Think. Wera, think.

​I couldn't call the authorities. If Maya was using an emergency cipher on a dark relay, it meant whatever was happening out there wasn't an official operation. If I flagged this through standard military channels, I might as well paint a target on her back myself.

​I was on my own.

​I moved on pure, unadulterated panic, but my body executed the motions through years of muscle memory. I reached under the desk and pulled out the heavy, reinforced flight case of my mobile server rig. It weighed nearly forty pounds, packed with high-gain directional antennas, raw processing units, and signal-spoofing hardware. I shoved two extra power banks into my tactical bag, my fingers fumbling with the zippers, tears stinging hot behind my eyelids.

​"Don't you dare die out there," I choked out, zipping the bag closed so hard the teeth caught on the canvas. "Don't you dare do this to me."

​The apartment felt suffocating, the walls closing in like a vise. I grabbed my coat, hauled the heavy server rig over my shoulder, and burst into the dimly lit hallway.

​The stairwell smelled of old dust and damp concrete. I ran down four flights, the metal handle of the flight case biting deep into the palm of my hand, each step sending a jarring shock up my spine. My mind was a chaotic loop of worst-case scenarios, artillery strikes, black-ops sweepers, Maya trapped in a burning control room with nowhere to run.

​When I pushed open the heavy front door of the apartment building, the cool Warsaw night air hit me like an ice bath. The street was quiet, bathed in the sickly orange glow of sodium streetlights.

​I didn't have a car. I hadn't needed one in years. But down the block, parked under a broken streetlight, sat an old grey hatchback belonging to Pan Kowalski, the retired mechanic from apartment 2B. He always left the spare key behind the front tire on Friday nights after returning late from the garage.

​I didn't hesitate. Moral boundaries don't exist when your sister's vital signs are dropping on a burning server page.

​I dropped to my knees on the damp pavement, reaching blindly under the wheel well of the hatchback. My fingers brushed against grease and dirt before clamping down on the small, magnetic metal box. I pulled it out, thumbed open the latch, and grabbed the key.

​My hands shook so violently it took three attempts to insert the key into the driver’s side lock. The mechanism turned with a harsh, ungreased clunk.

​I threw the server rig onto the passenger seat, slammed the door, and jammed the key into the ignition. The old engine sputtered, coughed twice, and then roared to life with a rough, uneven rattle. I threw the car into gear, stomped on the accelerator, and tore away from the curb, the tires screeching against the wet asphalt.

​The drive north toward Kampinos was a blur of blurred streetlights and rain-slicked highway. Out here, past the city perimeter, the dark felt deeper, heavier. The sky toward the northwest wasn't dark,it was tinted with a low, dull orange glow that had nothing to do with city lights.

​The forest was burning.

​My terminal on the passenger seat let out a high-pitched, rhythmic chime. A second packet was coming through, weaker than the first, full of missing bytes and corrupted sectors.

​I reached over with one hand, keeping the other glued to the steering wheel, and tapped the decryption macro on the touchscreen.

​The screen flickered. The telemetry line didn't display coordinates this time.

​It displayed an active, real-time biometric feed linked directly to Maya's tactical suit.

​Her heart rate was 180 beats per minute. Her blood oxygen level was dropping into the low eighties. And right below the numbers, a red system alert began to flash with a slow, agonizing pulse:

​CRITICAL IMPACT DETECTED. CABIN PRESSURE LOST. UNIDENTIFIED SIGNAL APPROACHING SOURCE LOCATION.

​A loud, metallic crash echoed from the forest line ahead, followed by a shockwave that rattled the glass in my dashboard. I slammed my foot deeper onto the gas pedal, the speedometer needle creeping past safe limits as the road vanished into the dark wood.

Then my computer screen suddenly went completely black.

It wasn't a crash, and I hadn't lost the signal.

Someone had shut it down remotely from inside my own car.