LOGINOliverChana sends the link at six fourteen in the morning, before I’m even out of bed.The message is one line, no preamble.She has it, accompanied by a link.I sit up slowly so I don’t wake Kir. Reach for my laptop on the floor by the bed. He stirs anyway. He sleeps the way an apex predator sleeps, with one ear permanently on the room."What?""Chana.""Where?""Kitchen, probably. She’s up.""Why are you up?""Because she sent a thing."He grunts and rolls onto his back. His hand comes up and rests on my thigh through the blanket, heavy and warm, and stays there while I open the laptop.The link is a Kenzi Molina video. The journalist Kir found on YouTube who broke the story about the link between the rich people dropping like flies and ignored cases of sexual assault.She posted at four in the morning Eastern. Two hours and fourteen minutes ago. The view counter at the bottom of the video is at four hundred and twelve thousand and climbing fast enough that I can see the digits
OliverThe flat we’ve rented for the day is on the third floor of a yellow building two blocks from Vanguard's Prague staging site, and it smells like boiled cabbage."This is the worst place I’ve ever been in," Chana says from the kitchen."You haven't seen the bathroom yet.""I don’t want to see the bathroom.""There’s mold growing on the mold, Chana. There are species of mold in there that science has not yet named.""Stop."We’ve been here forty minutes and the kitchen table has been turned into our workstation. Two laptops side by side, three monitors propped against the wall, a tangle of cabling running to a portable power-distribution unit Oba sourced last night. The grid map on Chana’s left monitor is alive. Green lines for active circuits, amber for the substation feeders, red for the three secured lines running into Vanguard's building. We’ve been pulling at the substation's data layer since dawn. "Their UPS is asleep," Chana mutters."Their UPS is napping. There’s a di
OliverThe Brno safe house is a converted farmhouse forty minutes outside the city, set into the side of a low hill.It has a barn that’s been rebuilt as a training space and a kitchen that smells like every meal that has ever been cooked in it. One of Oba's contacts owns it. The contact is in Greece for the winter and the keys live in a clay pot by the front door.Eleven of us spilled out of the van two hours ago, ate a hot meal Dom and Tariq put together while the rest of us hauled bags, and started peeling off into bedrooms by ten. Kir and I have the loft.A long bed under a sloping ceiling. Heavy wool blankets. A wood stove in the corner that’s currently loaded but unlit. A single round window at the gable end, looking out at nothing but black fields and the suggestion of a tree line.It’s like something straight out of a fantasy.I’ve made double sure the bolt on the door is locked.Kir’s at the window with his back to me, watching the yard the way he watches the surroundings
KirOba has acquired a van.It is white, unmarked, fourteen years old, and large enough to seat all eleven of us with cargo space left over. Oba acquires things. The provenance is not always something the team needs in writing."Insurance?" I ask."Insured.""To whom?""A man in Lille who does not exist.""Oba.""It’s fully papered. Plates clean, vehicle clean. We’re a group of people on an extended hiking holiday in the Czech mountains. We even have brochures in the glove box."I suppose we look fit enough to be hikers. And like an extremely eclectic group of friends.Oliver climbs into the front passenger seat without asking. Chana takes the seat behind him. Tariq and Saint claim the row behind that. Dom, Max, Butcher and Ray fold themselves into the third row. Oba and Jozef take the rear bench, where Oba immediately begins arranging a small, tidy nest of snacks, two thermoses, a bag of clementines, and a folded blanket.I drive.We stop at an internet café Oliver has scouted
OliverThe first strike lands across both shoulders and my brain stops working.Not figuratively. Properly. The thirty tails come down in a perfect heavy sweep that travels the full width of my upper back, and every coherent thought I had a second ago goes white. My weight pitches forward against the cuffs. My breath punches out of me. The sound I’ve been holding in my throat finally gets free, low and ragged, into the warm hush of the room.Kir is precise. He’s so fucking expertly precise.The next strike lands a fraction lower, parallel, perfectly stacked. Then a third, lower still, shading the meat between my shoulder blades. He’s laying down a foundation. He’s mapping me.The plug hums against the base of my spine in a low, steady note, and every time the leather lands the vibration ripples up through my pelvis like he’s playing me on two instruments at once.Behind me I hear the soft scrape of his boot on the hardwood as he repositions. The flogger reverses. The next str
KirOliver radios Evelyn at four in the afternoon.He keys the mike from the sofa, legs folded under him, a chipped plate balanced on his knee with the last of the bread and cheese from the safe house. He’s been quiet since we got back from Saint’s apartment. The team is back. The plan is set. Tomorrow we leave for Prague.Evelyn needs to be told."Mother hen," Oliver says into the handset.Static. Then a deep sigh before she responds, "Baby bird.""We’re moving tomorrow."A long pause. The kind that means she has questions she’s not going to ask."I would like to come over before you go," she says. "I won’t stay long. I have something for you."Oliver's mouth tightens. "When?""Within the hour.""Fine."He clicks off and sets the handset on the coffee table without looking at me."You do not have to see her," I tell him. "Yes, I do. If she has something useful, I want to know what it is. And if she has something useless, I want her gone before we leave."He stands up, picks up th
OliverThe Grande Corniche is not a road designed for high-speed pursuits. It’s a narrow, winding ribbon of asphalt cut directly into the side of a limestone mountain. On the right, the rock wall goes straight up. On the left, the cliff drops hundreds of feet into the Mediterranean. There are n
OliverI hit the enter key hard enough to make the laptop screen wobble.Chana doesn’t even blink, her eyes glued to her own monitor. "If you crack the casing on that, you can explain it to Kir.""The hardware is fine," I snap.My right leg is bouncing. It’s been bouncing for the last hour. The d
KirThe distance across the concrete floor is exactly forty-two feet.I know, because I’ve calculated the precise time it would take me to cross it, rip the monitors off the desk, and smash them into pieces.My hands are curled into fists so tight the knuckles are stark white against my skin. The
OliverI’m still floating in a bubble of euphoria when we arrive at the warehouse.A few hours ago, I was buried under Kir’s crushing weight. I was wrapped in the safest, warmest dark I’ve ever known, listening to the rough drag of his breath against my neck. For a few hours, the syndicate didn't







