The headquarters of the Order of Luminos was a monument to brutalist efficiency, a concrete and steel fortress buried beneath the unassuming façade of a corporate logistics hub on the outskirts of Vienna. To the world, it was a data center. To Lena, it had been home, a sanctuary, the very center of her universe. Tonight, it was the heart of the enemy, and she was here to cut it out.
She crouched in the damp shadows of a drainage culvert across the perimeter road, the cold night air a sharp sting in her lungs. Beside her, Rhysand was a statue of coiled tension, his stillness more unnerving than any overt threat. His gaze was fixed on the single, unassuming service entrance she’d pointed out. A few feet away, Annelise stood with two other vampires, their forms flickering at the edges of human perception, ready to move with impossible speed.
“The patrol sweep is in ninety seconds,” Lena whispered, her voice a low, steady hum despite the frantic drumming in her chest. Every part of this place was etched into her muscle memory: the patrol routes, the camera blind spots, the shift change protocols. She had used this knowledge to keep herself alive. Now, she was using it to tear down the walls. “Level one security is biometric. My palm print and voice command are still active in the system. Voronin wouldn’t risk tipping his hand by purging my credentials until he was certain I was a lost cause.”
“He is certain now,” Rhysand murmured, his eyes never leaving the target. “He just doesn’t know we are at his door.”
Annelise stepped forward, her expression sharp and pragmatic. “My pair will create a diversion at the primary loading bay on your signal. They will draw the bulk of the rapid response team to the west wing. It should buy you ten minutes.” It wasn’t a question. It was a tactical assessment, cold and precise. Lena felt a flicker of grudging respect. Annelise wasn’t fighting for her or for some grand ideal; she was fighting for survival, and that made her a terrifyingly effective ally.
“Ten minutes is all we’ll need to reach the sub-levels,” Lena confirmed, giving Annelise a curt nod.
Rhysand’s hand found hers, his fingers cool and strong, a grounding pressure in the chaos of her thoughts. He didn’t look at her, but she felt his focus narrow, his entire being aligning with hers. Last night, they had made a new vow, a promise born not of a forgotten past but of a chosen present. Now, they would see it through.
“Ready?” he asked.
Lena drew a breath that tasted of steel and ozone. She was invading her own home, turning her weapons on men and women she had once called brothers and sisters. There was a sickening knot in her stomach, a viper of guilt and grief. But beneath it, harder and sharper, was the conviction that this was the only way. Voronin’s vision wasn’t about protection; it was about annihilation. He had twisted the Order’s purpose into a reflection of his own bitter obsession.
“Ready,” she answered, her voice solid rock.
She gave the signal. Across the compound, a concussive blast echoed through the night, followed by the distant shatter of reinforced glass. Shouted alarms and the piercing shriek of klaxons immediately sliced through the silence. The diversion had begun.
“Now,” she commanded.
They moved as one. Rhysand was a blur, covering the fifty yards of open ground in the space of a heartbeat. Lena was right behind him, her legs pumping, her training taking over. She reached the steel door, pressing her palm against the scanner. A green light flickered.
“Authorization required,” a synthesized voice stated.
“Petrova, Lena. Access code Epsilon-Seven-Niner,” she said, the words feeling like ash in her mouth.
There was a hiss of depressurizing air and the heavy clank of a mag-lock disengaging. The door slid open into a sterile white corridor, bathed in the cold, unforgiving light of fluorescent panels. The air smelled of disinfectant and faint electricity—the scent of her former life.
They slipped inside, the door sealing behind them just as the first pair of guards rounded the far corner. There was no time for surprise. The hunters were clad in the Order’s black tactical gear, armed with silver-laced flechette rifles. Their eyes widened for a fraction of a second before training took over.
Rhysand was on them before they could even raise their weapons. He moved not like a man, but like a force of nature—a whisper of displaced air, a flicker of shadow. One guard went down with a sickening crunch of bone, his neck bent at an impossible angle. The other managed to fire a single wild shot that sparked off the wall before Rhysand’s hand closed over his face. The fight was over in less than three seconds.
“This way,” Lena urged, already moving. “The main concourse will be locked down. We need the maintenance tunnels.”
She led him through a labyrinth of corridors she knew as well as the lines on her own hand. The blare of the alarm was a constant, oppressive weight, punctuated by the sounds of distant combat—the high-pitched whine of vampire snarls clashing with the percussive bark of gunfire. Annelise’s diversion was working. The main force was being drawn away from them.
They dropped into a maintenance shaft, the air thick with the smell of dust and old machinery. Down here, the polished white walls gave way to exposed conduit and raw concrete. It was a grimy, forgotten underbelly, and their best route to the heart of the facility.
“Annelise is holding Sector Gamma,” Rhysand said, his hearing preternaturally sharp. “They’ve pinned down the first response wave. She is… formidable.”
“She’s a survivor,” Lena replied, her focus absolute as she navigated a junction of pipes. “It’s what your kind does best.”
They emerged into a service corridor directly beneath the primary research wing. The relative quiet was more unnerving than the noise. The core of the facility was on high alert.
They rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a four-man fire team. This time, there was no surprise. These were elite hunters, veterans. Their rifles snapped up, spitting a hail of silver.
Lena reacted instinctively, shoving Rhysand back as she drew her own blades, the familiar silver alloy singing as it left the sheaths. She deflected two shots, the impact jarring her arms to the bone, the scent of burning silver sharp in her nostrils. Rhysand blurred past her, a whirlwind of black cloth and violence. He disarmed one hunter and used another as a shield against the incoming fire.
Lena engaged the third, a young man named Tomas. She had sparred with him a hundred times in the training halls. She knew he favored a low stance, that he had a slight weakness on his left side. His eyes met hers, and in them, she saw not hatred, but a profound, gut-wrenching confusion.
“Lena?” he breathed, his attack faltering for a crucial second. “What are you—?”
She didn’t have the luxury of an answer. She couldn’t kill him. But she couldn’t let him stop her. She swept his legs out from under him, the flat of her blade connecting with the side of his helmet in a ringing crack of metal on composite. He crumpled, unconscious but alive. The guilt was a physical blow, stealing her breath.
She turned to see Rhysand finishing the last hunter, his movements brutally efficient. He looked at her, then at the unconscious form of Tomas, a question in his dark eyes.
“I knew him,” was all she said. He simply nodded, a flicker of understanding in his gaze. There was no judgment, only a shared purpose.
They pressed on, fighting their way through pockets of resistance. Their synergy was terrifying. Lena’s knowledge of tactics and technology fused with Rhysand’s raw power. She would call out firing angles, identify weaknesses in armor, and predict hunter formations, while he executed the plan with inhuman speed and strength. They were a blade and a tempest, a scalpel and a maul, and the Order’s defenses broke before them.
Finally, they reached their destination: a heavy, reinforced blast door marked with biohazard symbols and the stark lettering: HELIOS LAB – LEVEL 5 CLEARANCE ONLY.
The corridor leading to it was a kill box. Automated turrets were mounted on the ceiling, and a squad of Voronin’s personal guard—the most fanatical, the most deadly—stood waiting for them.
“They knew we were coming for this,” Lena stated, her body tense.
“They knew someone would,” Rhysand corrected. “But they did not account for you.”
Before the turrets could acquire a lock, he surged forward, moving so fast he was a distortion in the air. He ripped one gun from its mounting and used it as a shield, its heavy steel plating screaming as bullets from the other turret tore into it.
Lena broke right, sliding across the polished floor. She threw one of her knives with pinpoint accuracy, shattering the optical lens of the second turret. It began firing blindly, chewing up the ceiling and forcing the guards to duck for cover.
That was the only opening they needed.
Rhysand crashed into the hunter line like a cannonball, his fists breaking through armor and bone. Lena was right behind him, her blades a blur of silver light. She fought not with the cold precision she had been taught, but with a desperate fire, a ferocity born of love and betrayal. This was the nexus of her past and her future, and she would not fail.
The last guard fell, his helmet rolling across the floor to stop at her feet. The corridor was suddenly silent, save for the hum of the damaged turret and their own ragged breaths. The blast door loomed before them, thick, impenetrable, and locked.
“It’s dead-bolted from the inside. And shielded,” Lena panted, running a hand over the control panel. “My credentials won’t work here. Nothing short of a plasma charge will open it.”
Rhysand stepped up beside her, placing a hand on the cold steel. He closed his eyes, his expression becoming distant, ancient. A low growl rumbled in his chest, and the air around him grew heavy, thick with a power that felt older than the concrete walls.
“He has forgotten,” Rhysand whispered, his voice a chilling echo of primordial force, “what it means to cage something that does not wish to be caged.”
He drew his hand back, and the shadows in the corridor seemed to coalesce around his fist. He struck the door. Not with the clang of flesh on metal, but with a sound like the world splitting apart—a deep, resonant boom that vibrated through the floor and into Lena’s very bones.
A web of cracks spiderwebbed out from the point of impact. He struck it again. The cracks widened, and the thick steel groaned, warping inward. With a final, deafening roar of effort, he tore his hand back, ripping a jagged hole in the center of the blast door.
Through the mangled steel, in the stark, blue-white light of the laboratory beyond, a figure stood waiting. Master Voronin. And he was smiling.