THE SISTER'S VOICE

The recording was a lie.

Anya stared at Dr. Chen, alive, smiling, standing over an empty chair, and felt rage unlike anything she'd ever experienced. Pure. Incandescent. The kind that made her vision narrow to a pinpoint.

"Where is she?" Her voice was deadly calm. The calm before violence.

"Your sister?" Dr. Chen's smile widened. "Safe. For now. This facility...this whole wing....was designed to test you. To see if you'd come. To see how far you'd go."

"Where. Is. She."

"Building C. Like I said before. But not the medical wing." Dr. Chen pulled out a tablet. Showed thermal imaging. "Here. Basement level. Storage area. We've been keeping her there the whole time."

Dimitri's hand on Anya's shoulder. Steadying. "That's a two-mile run through hostile territory."

"I know."

"We'll never make it."

"I will." She looked at him. Let him feel her certainty through the bond. "You provide covering fire. I run. I get her. I bring her back."

"Anya..."

"This is what I'm trained for. Solo extraction under fire. Let me do my job."

The bond pulled. She felt his resistance. His desperate need to protect her. But also his understanding that she was right.

"Okay," he said finally. "We create a diversion. You run. But..." His hand tightened. "You come back to me. Understand? You don't die heroically. You come back."

"Deal."

Dr. Chen was still smiling. "Touching. Really. But you're not going anywhere. I've already triggered the alarm. Guards are coming. Thirty of them. You're trapped."

Anya moved.

Three steps. Faster than thought. Her fist connected with Dr. Chen's jaw, precise, brutal, perfectly placed to stun without killing.

The doctor dropped. Unconscious.

"Bitch," Anya muttered. Then she was moving, grabbing Dr. Chen's tablet, her access card, her comm unit.

The door burst open. Guards. Five of them. Armed. Ready.

Anya didn't slow down. She shot the first two before they could fire. Dimitri got the third. The fourth took a round to the knee, she needed him alive.

He went down screaming.

She was on him in seconds. Gun to his head. "Building C. How many guards?"

"Fuck you."

She shot him in the other knee. "How many?"

"Twenty! Twenty guards! Please..."

"Radio codes?"

He gave them. Sobbing. Begging.

She knocked him out. Took his radio. His weapons.

"That was cold," Dimitri said.

"I'm a professional." She checked the stolen tablet. Building C layout. Guard positions. Katya's location, basement storage, just like Chen said.

Two miles. Through a facility on lockdown. With thirty-plus guards hunting them.

"Impossible," Dimitri said, reading over her shoulder.

"Probably." She looked at him. "That's why you're not coming. You and Nikolai hold this position.

Create chaos. Make them think we're barricaded here. While I slip out the back."

"Anya..."

"Dimitri." She grabbed his face. Made him look at her. "I need you to trust me. Trust that I can do this. That I'm good enough."

The bond sang. She felt his fear. His love. His absolute certainty that losing her would break him.

But also his trust.

"Go," he said. "Get your sister. I'll hold them off."

She kissed him. Hard. Fast. Then she was running.

Out the back door. Down the corridor. Past offices and labs. Her operator brain navigating the blueprint she'd memorized.

Behind her, gunfire. Explosions. Dimitri and Nikolai making good on their promise to create chaos.

She ran.

Building C was connected by an underground tunnel. Service access. She hit it at full speed, rifle up, scanning corners.

Clear.

Too clear.

The lights went out.

Emergency lighting kicked in. Red. Ominous. Alarm klaxons screaming.

Then she heard it. Boots. Many boots. Coming from both directions.

Trapped.

Anya pressed against the wall. Counted footsteps. Eight from the front. Six from behind.

Fourteen hostiles. One corridor. No cover.

Fuck it.

She pulled out her last grenade. Flashbang. Threw it toward the group behind her. Covered her ears.

The explosion was deafening even muffled.

Screaming. Confusion.

She was already moving forward. Toward the eight ahead. Firing. Center mass. Head shots. Every round counted.

Three down. Five. Seven.

The last one got a shot off. She felt it graze her side, hot, painful, not fatal.

She put two in his chest.

Then the group behind recovered. Firing blind. Rounds sparking off concrete.

Anya dropped. Rolled. Came up firing. Four more down.

The last two ran.

She let them.

Kept moving. Building C entrance ahead.

Biometric lock.

She pressed Dr. Chen's stolen access card to the scanner.

Red light. ACCESS DENIED.

"Fuck!" She tried again. Same result.

The lock needed a palm print. Retinal scan.

Something Chen's card couldn't fake.

Anya pulled out C4. Shaped charge. Pressed it to the lock mechanism. Set timer. Ten seconds.

Backed up. Covered her ears.

The explosion was precise. Professional. The lock shattered.

The door swung open.

Inside, Building C. Darker. Colder. The smell of old blood and fear.

This was where they broke people. Where they turned omegas into breeding stock. Where Katya had been held for ten years.

Rage. Fresh. All-consuming.

Anya moved through the building like death. Any guard who appeared died quickly. Efficiently. She didn't have time for mercy. Didn't have time for anything except reaching her sister.

Basement level. Storage area.

The room was small. Cold. A single figure huddled in the corner.

"Katya?"

The figure looked up. Anya saw her sister's face, older, thinner, traumatized but alive.

"Anya?" Katya's voice was broken. "Is this real? Are you really..."

"I'm real. I'm here. I'm getting you out."

She crossed to her sister. Started cutting zip ties. Katya was shaking. Crying. Clutching Anya like she'd disappear.

"Can you walk?" Anya asked.

"I... I think so."

"Good. Because we need to run."

She pulled Katya up. Wrapped her jacket around her sister's shoulders. The facility jumpsuit Katya wore was thin. Inadequate.

They moved toward the door.

That's when Anya saw it. The communications panel on the wall. Military grade. Connected to multiple frequencies.

Project Seventh frequencies.

An idea formed. Crazy. Dangerous. Perfect.

"Wait here," she told Katya.

She moved to the panel. Started entering codes, ones she'd memorized from her CIA days, ones she'd stolen from Dr. Chen's tablet.

Access granted.

She pulled up every frequency Project Seventh used. Every channel. Every communication line.

Then she keyed the microphone.

"This is Objective Seven," she said. Her voice cold. Final. The voice of someone who'd stopped playing defense and started playing offense. "To everyone listening...Eleanor Voss, Project Seventh leadership, every operative in this shadow organization...I'm declaring war."

Silence on the other end. Then static. Then voices. Confused. Angry. Demanding identification.

"You know who I am. You trained me. You made me into a weapon. Now that weapon is pointed at you." She smiled. Cold. "You came after my pack. You took my sister. You tried to control me. Bad decisions. All of them."

"Agent Volkov..." Eleanor's voice. Furious. "Stand down. That's an order."

"I don't take your orders anymore. I'm pack now. Luna. And I'm coming for all of you." She leaned into the mic. "Everyone who participated in Project Seventh, everyone who hurt my sister, who tried to break my pack, you're marked. I'm going to find you. I'm going to burn your organization to the ground. And I'm going to make sure everyone knows what you did."

"You're signing your death warrant," Eleanor hissed.

"No. I'm signing yours."

Anya cut the transmission.

Alarms blared. Louder now. More urgent. She'd just painted a target on herself visible from space.

"That was either really brave or really stupid," Katya said.

"Both. Always both." Anya grabbed her sister's hand. "Come on. We need to move before..."

The door exploded inward.

Not blown. Ripped off its hinges. A figure in the doorway, huge, alpha, covered in blood.

Dimitri.

"I heard your broadcast," he said. His eyes were wild. Feral. The alpha who'd just fought through god-knows-how-many guards to reach his mate. "Declaring war without consulting your alpha.

Bold."

"I'm Luna. I don't need permission."

He smiled. Feral. Proud. "No. You don't." Then he saw Katya. His expression softened fractionally. "You must be the sister. Welcome to the pack."

Katya stared at him. At the blood. The weapons. The aura of barely leashed violence.

"Is he always like this?" she asked Anya.

"Only when he's being protective. You'll get used to it."

Dimitri's comm crackled. Nikolai's voice: "Dima. We've got a problem. Wing C is crawling with guards. At least fifty. They're locking down every exit. We're trapped."

"Copy. We're in Building C basement. Heading to you now."

"Don't. They're between us. You'll never make it."

"Then we find another way out." Anya was already studying the tablet. Looking for options. "There. Service tunnels. Runs from Building C to the perimeter fence. If we can reach it..."

"We're twenty feet underground," Dimitri pointed out. "How do we reach..."

Anya smiled. "We go up."

She pointed to the ceiling. To the ventilation shaft that ran the length of the building.

"That's insane," Katya whispered.

"Yes," Anya agreed. "But we're short on sane options."

They stacked crates. Reached the vent. Anya went first, her training kicking in, the tight spaces she'd navigated in a dozen black sites making this almost easy.

Then Katya. Slower. Scared. But following.

Dimitri came last. Barely fit. His shoulders scraping the sides.

They crawled. Through darkness. Through cold metal. Following the shaft that ran toward freedom.

Behind them, voices. Guards. Searching. Getting closer.

"Faster," Anya urged.

They reached a junction. She checked the tablet.

"Left. Fifty meters. Then we drop into the service tunnel."

They turned left. Crawled faster. The shaft was getting tighter. Harder to breathe.

Then light ahead. The exit point.

Anya dropped first. Into a concrete tunnel. Old. Unused. Perfect.

Katya followed. Then Dimitri. They ran. The tunnel sloped upward. Toward the surface. Toward escape.

Gunfire behind them. They'd been spotted.

"Run!" Dimitri roared.

They ran. Legs burning. Lungs screaming. The exit fifty meters. Forty. Thirty.

They burst out into Alaska night. Cold. Dark. Free.

The extraction vehicle was waiting. Nikolai at the wheel. Alexei in the passenger seat, bloody but alive.

"Get in!" Nikolai screamed.

They piled in. The vehicle peeled out before the doors closed.

Behind them, the facility. Alarms. Searchlights. Guards pouring out.

But they were gone. Racing into the wilderness. Disappearing into the night.

Anya held Katya. Her sister was shaking. Crying. But alive. Safe. Free.

"We did it," she whispered.

"We did," Dimitri agreed. His arm around both of them. "Now we just have to survive the war you declared."

Anya smiled. Fierce. Feral. "Let them come. I'm done running. Done hiding. Project Seventh wants a war? They're going to get one."

The bond sang. Three alphas. One Luna. One sister. One pack.

Against the world.

Against Project Seventh.

Against everyone who thought they could break them.

Bring it on.