Jinx moved like water flowing in the dark.
Her heart was still doing a frantic tap-dance against her ribs.
One minute, she was dead meat.
The next, a ghost in the machine had sent the DGC goons on a wild goose chase.
It wasn't luck.
Luck didn't exist in the Undercroft.
Luck was a story you told yourself before a trapdoor opened under your feet.
This was something else.
A third player.
And she hated third players.
They were unpredictable variables in an equation that was already trying its damnedest to kill you.
"Status?" she whispered into her comm, the word a puff of cold air.
"Still here," Michael's voice crackled back, tinny and distant. "Watching you from my five-star rooftop resort."
"Did you see what happened down there?"
"Yeah," he said. "Somebody spoofed their comms. Sent them running after a ghost."
A ghost helping a ghost.
How poetic.
"Wasn't you?" she asked, though she already knew the answer.
"My only special power is making bad decisions and witty remarks," he replied. "Hacking a military-grade DGC network is a little above my pay grade."
So, we have a guardian angel.
Or another devil waiting for its turn.
She pushed the thought away.
One problem at a time.
She moved down the long, silent aisle, the looming metal doors of the storage units like a row of silent, metal coffins.
Each unit was a box of secrets.
Forgotten furniture. Old photographs. Maybe a body or two. This was Red Hook, after all.
Her scanner showed no active energy signatures nearby.
The black-ops team was still chasing Chloe's ghost signal at the south gate.
The coast was clear.
For now.
She found it at the end of Aisle G.
Unit 347.
It looked just like all the others.
A big, corrugated steel door, painted a faded, peeling red.
A heavy-duty industrial lock that looked like it could survive a small explosion.
Probably has, she thought.
This was it.
The whole reason for this suicidal, insane, career-ending mission.
The key to Michael's past.
The key to her own future, if she could just live long enough to have one.
"I'm at the door," she murmured into the comm.
"Copy that," Michael's voice came back. "I've got eyes on your six. No movement."
"Stay that way," she grunted.
She knelt in front of the lock, pulling a small, leather toolkit from a pouch on her thigh.
It was Leo's old kit.
The tools were worn, the handles smooth from years of use.
She could almost feel the phantom weight of his hand over hers as she selected a tension wrench.
Don't think about that.
Not now.
Work the problem.
She inserted the wrench, applying a gentle, steady pressure.
She slid a thin, custom-made pick into the lock.
She closed her eyes, focusing not on what she could see, but on what she could feel.
The faint clicks of the tumblers.
The subtle shifts in the mechanism.
It was a language she understood. A conversation between her fingers and the steel.
Click.
One tumbler down.
Click.
Another.
This was a high-end, military-grade lock. Probably had anti-tamper mechanisms. Maybe a small explosive charge for unauthorized entry.
Standard DGC paranoia.
She smiled, a faint, humorless twist of her lips.
Amateurs.
Click.
The third tumbler fell into place.
She was almost there.
She just needed a few more seconds of quiet. A few more moments of peace.
BZZZT.
A burst of static erupted in her ear, so loud and sharp it made her yelp, dropping the pick.
"What was that?" Michael's voice crackled, full of alarm. "Jinx, talk to me!"
"Static!" she hissed, snatching her hand away from her comm unit as if it had burned her. "Something's interfering with the signal."
The static cleared.
It was replaced by a new voice.
It was clean.
It was feminine.
It was calm, cool, and utterly, terrifyingly in control.
"You're in over your head, scrapper."
Jinx froze, her blood turning to ice.
The voice wasn't coming from her comm unit.
It was coming from inside her own head.
No, not her head.
The comm. Her comm, which was supposed to be on a closed, encrypted channel that she and Jax had built themselves.
Impossible.
"Who is this?" Jinx growled, her hand dropping from the lock and going straight to the pistol on her hip. "How did you get on this channel?"
"The same way I got past the DGC's firewalls," the voice replied, smooth as polished glass. "I'm better at it than they are."
"You," Michael's voice cut in. "You're the one who spoofed their comms."
"The ghost in the machine," he breathed.
"A necessary intervention," the voice stated, devoid of any emotion. "Your friend was about to get herself turned into a fine, gray mist. It would have been a waste of a potentially useful asset."
Asset.
The word hung in the air, cold and clinical.
"I'm not your asset, you ghost-voiced b*tch," Jinx snarled, her paranoia kicking into overdrive. "Who are you? What do you want?"
There was a pause.
"My name is Chloe," the voice said simply. "And what I want is General Gideon's head on a platter."
Jinx and Michael were both silent.
Gideon.
The name echoed in the comms, a shared curse that bound the three of them together.
"He killed my partner," Chloe's voice continued, a single, sharp crack in her otherwise perfect, professional armor. "He covered it up. The DGC buried it."
"The operation you've stumbled into," she said, her voice turning back to cold, hard steel, "is a direct line to him."
"That makes you, and the anomaly you're with, a temporary, and likely disposable, part of my mission."
Jinx felt a surge of pure, undiluted rage.
"We're not your pawns!"
"Aren't you?" Chloe countered, her voice dangerously calm. "You're trapped in a cage. The boy on the roof is about to be swarmed by a team of professional killers. Your plan, as audacious as it was, has failed."
"You are out of options."
"I, however, am not."
As she spoke, a small, red light on a security camera mounted on the corner of the building flickered once, then turned green.
"I've just fed the entire facility's security system a repeating thirty-second loop," Chloe explained, her tone that of a professor lecturing a pair of slow students. "To them, you're not there. You're invisible."
"You have approximately five minutes before their system analysts flag the anomaly and override my hack."
"Get what you came for."
"I'll handle your exit."
The command was absolute.
It was not a request. It was not an offer of help.
It was an order.
Jinx stood there, her mind reeling.
This woman, this ghost on the radio, had just taken complete control of their entire operation.
She was smarter than them.
She was better equipped than them.
And she was ten steps ahead of everyone.
Jinx hated her.
She also knew, with a sinking, bitter certainty, that they were going to do exactly what she said.
"Fine," Jinx bit out, the word tasting like defeat.
She turned back to the lock.
"But the moment this is over, you and I are going to have a talk."
"I look forward to it," Chloe's voice replied, with no warmth at all.
Jinx's fingers, now steady with a new, cold fury, went back to work.
Click.
Click.
KLUNK.
The final tumbler fell.
The lock was open.
She grabbed the heavy latch on the door and pulled.
It slid open with a loud, groaning shriek of protesting, rusted metal.
She peered into the dark, musty space.
It was empty.
Completely empty.
Except for one thing.
In the exact center of the concrete floor, sitting alone, was a single, large, military-grade containment crate.
It was sealed with a heavy, magnetic lock.
And on the side, stenciled in faded white letters, was a familiar, chilling symbol.
A stylized chimera.
A snake, a lion, and a goat, all twisted into one monstrous form.
The official logo of Project Chimera.
And from inside the crate, she heard a low, soft, whining sound.
Like a dog, whimpering in its sleep.