Midnight Crown
His hand at her back, his body between her and every doorway they passed — not discussion, just physics.
Service stairs. Floor by floor.
The Tower communicated its damage as they climbed — cracked walls, a fire suppression failure on five, the comms hub on seven still crackling with residual gunfire. Dom moved through it with the specific economy of a man who had stopped wasting motion sometime in his twenties and hadn't started again. Two Shadow agents on nine. Thirty seconds. They kept moving.
Sublevel three was cold, server-lit, the hum of fifteen years of Laev financial infrastructure audible through the floor before they reached the door.