Chapter Text
Present day
Azriel could feel it — the quickness under his ribs, the thin edge of impatience that came from waiting too long to move. Rain slid from the lip of the rooftop and darkened the collar of his jacket.
Nightfall crouched beside him, still as a statue. Anvil paced a half-step back, restless.
Azriel kept his eyes on the building across the alley.
“Two guards on the east stairwell,” Nightfall murmured, voice low enough to be swallowed by the rain. “One on the mezzanine. Cameras looped for another—”
“Twenty-three seconds,” Rose cut in.
Her voice came through the earpiece clean and steady, as if she’d been watching the feed all along. As if nothing about this required effort.
“Rose,” Anvil chuckled, relief bleeding through. “Was starting to think we’d have to muddle through without you.”
“Apologies, big guy. Here now.”
“I don’t know why we don’t borrow you more often. Viper would’ve snapped at me for breathing too loud by now.”
“You’re borrowing her because this is Shadow’s op,” Nightfall said, quiet and final.
Rose didn’t argue.
“Service door on the right,” she said instead. “Half-hidden behind the waste chute. It isn’t marked on the schematic.”
Azriel’s gaze flicked to where she meant.
“It should be.”
“It should,” she agreed. “It’ll be unmonitored for seven seconds every twenty.”
Azriel crossed the open gap in one smooth glide, landed without sound, and had his hand on the door before the cameras swung back.
Seven seconds was generous, if you knew what you were doing.
The door opened with a reluctant groan.
“Stairs. Don’t use the lift.”
The others followed with practiced ease. Azriel led them down into the stairwell, the air damp and metallic, the walls stained with age.
On the second landing, Rose said, “Stop.”
He stopped.
Boots thudded above them — heavy, careless. Someone coming down. Someone who didn’t know there were predators in the dark.
“Wait.”
Azriel pressed into the shadow beneath the stairs, blade already in hand. The guard rounded the corner.
Azriel stepped out.
A wet sound. A brief impact.
The body hit the concrete and did not move again.
Ahead, the corridor brightened — the light harsher, cleaner. Azriel followed Rose’s guidance as if she could see each turn, each threshold, with her own eyes.
“Next door on your left.”
He pivoted and pushed through.
Inside, the room was cold enough to bite. Server racks lined the walls, their lights blinking steadily, indifferent and watchful.
Azriel took in the layout in a single sweep. Three access points. Two visible cameras, one hidden where the ceiling dipped. Redundant power lines fed through the floor and ceiling alike.
Whatever was stored here, it was not meant to be removed quietly.
“First security sweep arriving soon,” Rose said. “You won’t have long before the alarm is tripped.”
Nightfall shifted immediately, repositioning toward the far wall, eyes tracking the corridor beyond the door. Anvil moved to block the entrance, heavy and solid — a deterrent more than a guard.
Azriel crossed to the primary rack and dropped to one knee. The casing was warm beneath his gloves.
“Shadow,” Rose continued, steady, “once you’re in, you won’t have time to browse. You take what’s there and you leave.”
“Understood.”
His tools slid free. The first lock yielded easily enough.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside — measured, unhurried.
Nightfall glanced once at Anvil. Anvil gave a single nod.
The door opened.
The first guard stepped inside, already reaching for his comm. Anvil closed the distance in two strides and took him down hard and quiet.
The second guard got his weapon halfway up before Nightfall intercepted — a sharp crack of bone against metal. The body folded, boneless.
Azriel didn’t look up.
The system resisted now, encrypting and re-encrypting itself in real time, trying to fragment the data as it moved. He adjusted, rerouted, forced the stream to hold together.
“Twenty seconds,” Rose said.
More footsteps. Faster this time.
Anvil dragged the bodies clear and reset his stance in the doorway, blocking it with his bulk.
“Ten.”
Azriel’s fingers flew. The transfer bar crawled forward, agonisingly slow.
“Five.”
The data completed with a soft confirmation tone.
“Got it,” Azriel said.
For a fraction of a second, nothing happened.
Azriel pulled the drive free. “Rose?”
Static hissed softly in his ear — when she spoke again, the change was unmistakable.
“Shadow, you’re being redirected.”
His spine went rigid.
“Explain.”
“No time.”
Trust wasn’t a feeling. It was a ledger, balanced over a hundred missions — a hundred moments where someone could have been wrong and hadn’t been.
There was no one Azriel trusted more than the voice in his ear.
“Copy.”
“Maintenance corridor, east wall,” Rose said. “Twelve seconds from door open.”
Nightfall was already moving. “Anvil—split.”
Anvil peeled off without hesitation, taking the secondary corridor, heavy footsteps retreating in the opposite direction.
“I’m transferring you now,” Rose said, calm as ever. “Anvil to Viper. Nightfall to Archer.”
Nightfall paused only long enough to meet Azriel’s eyes — a sharp, assessing look — then turned and disappeared down the hall.
The comms shifted.
Two channels gone.
Only Rose remained.
“Go,” she told him.
Azriel didn’t argue. He moved when she told him to move, slipping into the maintenance corridor and out into the rain as the building closed behind him.
Only once he was clear did he speak again.
“What did you see?”
A beat.
Then, carefully: “The data includes live agent identifiers,” Rose said, voice barely a whisper. “Location markers. Handler access points.”
Azriel’s grip tightened around the drive.
“Which one?” he asked.
Silence.
“Rose, which one of us is compromised?”
Then: “You still owe me a cup of tea.”
That phrase wasn’t operational. It wasn’t in any file.
It was history.
“El—”
The line went dead.
•••
5 years earlier
Azriel was on the floor of a borrowed safe house, his back against the kitchen cabinet, blood slick beneath his ribs. He’d made it inside because Rose had put him there — step by step, turn by turn, her voice steady enough to lean on when his legs hadn’t been.
“Stay with me,” Rose said.
He grunted in reply, as his vision narrowed to a thin, pulsing tunnel.
“Is there anything near you? Anything you can use?”
He turned his head. The kitchen table was only a few feet away, but it might as well have been another building.
“A kettle,” he said faintly. “I could make a cup of tea.”
Silence.
Then: “Now is not the time for jokes, Shadow.”
He smiled anyway, breath hitching. “I thought you liked it when I joked.”
Her exhale came sharp, relieved despite herself. “I like it when you’re alive. Now don’t move — medic’s two minutes away.”
Two minutes was a long time.
He focused on the sound of her breathing instead — the faithful tapping of keys beneath it, the quiet competence of someone doing five things at once and doing them well.
In the fog of his fading consciousness, he found himself wondering what she looked like. Whether her hands moved the way her voice did — precise, careful. Whether she frowned when she concentrated. It struck him, suddenly and oddly, that if this was the end, that would be the one thing he’d never know.
The medic burst through the door not long after that.
As they lifted him, Azriel caught the channel again, clung to it.
“Rose,” he said, the word slurring. “When this is over—”
“Save it,” she said quickly.
He didn’t.
“I’d love to make you a cup of tea one day.”