The shuttle shuddered through another pocket of turbulence as they fell toward Kharun Bay. Outside the reinforced viewport, wind-driven snow sliced horizontal across the world like an argument. Matteo knuckled the armrest, watching his little brother wrestle the controls.

"Jesus, Alessio, you sure you can land this thing?"

"Shut up, I've got it." Alessio's knuckles were white on the stick, but his voice carried that stubborn Rossi confidence. The kid had been flying shuttles around Genesis Platform since he was fourteen, but atmospheric entry in a blizzard was different from docking maneuvers in vacuum.

"Remind me again why we couldn't just ask Dad for permission?"

"Because Dad would've said no." Matteo checked his energy rifle for the third time. "And because Karen isn't sending me on any more missions after St. Petersburg."

"Is that why we stole a shuttle from the IFC instead?" Evan called from across the cargo bay.

"Borrowed," Matteo corrected. "It's part of the delivery contract to the UER anyway. We're just... running quality assurance on it."

The shuttle bucked again. Through the storm, Matteo caught glimpses of devastation below. Kharun Bay sprawled like a wound across the coastline, but their approach vector took them over the ruins of what had once been a residential district. There had been a portal overflow about a year ago. Buildings had been destroyed, and the whole neighborhood had been abandoned. Perfect cover for an unauthorized landing.

"Approaching the landing zone," Alessio called back. "Everyone strapped in?"

Matteo looked around the cargo bay. His team sat locked into their crash seats, medium armor gleaming under the shuttle's harsh lighting. Evan checked his energy rifle again. Sarah was working on her tablet, running final systems checks. Jules stretched his neck, the movement restricted by his armor's collar. And Samira...

Samira looked like she was about to throw up. She hated atmospheric entry, always had.

The shuttle touched down with a bone-jarring thud in what had once been a typical Soviet apartment block. Twisted metal and broken concrete crunched under the landing struts. Snow immediately began piling against the viewports as the engines spun down.

"Welcome to scenic Kharun Bay," Alessio announced. "Current temperature: freezing. Wind speed: yes. Visibility: what visibility?"

Matteo unstrapped and moved toward the airlock, checking his gear one last time. The energy rifle felt solid against his shoulder. His medium armor's environmental seals hissed as they pressurized. On his HUD, five green dots showed his team's status.

All ready.

"Alright, guys." He turned to face them. "This isn't like our usual operations. We don't have backup from IFC support teams or the Alder Corporation on the moon, just us and whoever Izumi was able to scrounge up on short notice. We go in, we get Anastasia and we get out. That's the primary objective. Anyone who wants to back out can stay with the shuttle."

Nobody moved.

"Good. Alessio, you keep this bird warm. If we're not back in four hours—"

"I'll come save you," his little brother finished. "I know."

The airlock cycled, and Kharun Bay's bitter frozen wind hit them.

The wind cut through every gap in his armor, carrying the smell of salt and diesel fuel. They picked their way through the ruins, broken glass crunching under their boots, until they reached the edge of the devastation zone.

A figure approached through the snow despite the treacherous footing. Medium armor, energy carbine slung across her back, and a grin that belonged on someone who lived for this kind of chaos.

"Matteo fucking Rossi." Her voice carried warmth despite the bitter cold. "Should've known you'd show up eventually."

"Izumi." He clasped her armored hand. "Thanks for the backup. I know this puts you in a tough spot."

"Please. Karen's going to be pissed at both of us, but she'll get over it." Izumi Tomiichi had been running Hyeon Logistics since she was twenty-two, and she'd never met a problem she couldn't solve with enough firepower and creative thinking. "Besides, we're both IFC subsidiaries. We look out for each other."

She didn't mention that she'd been hoping for an excuse to work with Echo Team again. The Moon and Mars portal circuits had kept their companies crossing paths for the past year, and Matteo Rossi was... well, he was exactly the kind of reckless idiot who'd steal a shuttle to rescue someone in trouble.

"What's the situation?"

Izumi gestured toward the industrial district, barely visible through the storm. "The holding facility is in the old Saltworks area. Former fish processing plant. My scout teams have been watching it for the last couple of hours. Forty-three people inside, twelve guards visible. We've had eyes on it."

She led them through the ruins to where her command vehicle sat hidden behind a collapsed apartment building. The LCV 'Strategos' looked like it had been built to survive the apocalypse, its reinforced hull and extended communications array giving it the appearance of a mobile fortress.

"Forty-three people inside the facility," Izumi continued, pulling up data on a tablet mounted inside the vehicle. "Most of them in holding areas that look like converted freezer units. Guard strength is twelve visible, but there could be more."

Matteo felt something cold that had nothing to do with the weather settle in his stomach. "How many of your people?"

"Seventeen total. Three of my teams." She pointed through the Strategos's armored windows. "Plus three Valkyries for mobility and fire support. We were only five hours out when you called."

The Valkyries sat around the command vehicle, their matte black frames nearly invisible against the snow. Each buggy carried a crew of four and a mounted energy minigun that could chew through most armor plating.

"Approach routes?"

"We have three options." Izumi spread a hand-drawn map across the table. "Main entrance is watched, but it's the most direct. Service dock on the water side has lighter security but you're exposed to crossfire from the tower positions. Or..." She tapped a section of the building's north wall. "Maintenance access here. Single guard, but someone needs to disable their surveillance without triggering alarms."

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Matteo looked at Samira. In her Lunar scout suit, she was practically invisible even standing right next to them. "Think you can handle it?"

"Please." Samira's voice carried more confidence than it had on the shuttle. "They won't see me coming. Their security is standard corporate-grade. I can bypass it in my sleep."

"Here's what we're going to do." Matteo pulled out his own tablet, sketching positions around the facility. "Samira goes in through maintenance, neutralizes the guard and kills their surveillance. That gives us maybe fifteen minutes before they realize something's wrong."

He marked positions around the facility. "Evan, Jules, you take one of the Valkyries and hit the dock. Make noise, draw attention. Sarah, you're with Izumi's team and me. We go through the main entrance once Samira's cleared the way."

"And if things go sideways?" Evan asked.

"Team Two is setting up overwatch positions on the surrounding buildings. Team Three has the perimeter locked down. Nobody gets in or out without us knowing about it." Izumi checked her own weapon. "They'll also be our extraction cover if we need to leave in a hurry."

The ride through downtown Kharun Bay was like driving through a neon fever dream. Matteo gripped the roll cage of the lead Valkyrie as Izumi navigated streets where Cyrillic street signs shared space with glowing Chinese characters.

UER flags hung from official buildings, but the real power was obvious in the private security cordons around glass towers that hadn't existed five years ago. Oligarch money, flowing through shell companies.

"Welcome to the new economy," Izumi's voice came over the comms, pointing to a convoy of black SUVs escorting a sleek limousine through an intersection. "Half the city's on someone's payroll, and the other half knows better than to ask questions."

They passed under the railway viaduct where the Lantern Bazaar cast colored light through the snow. Even at this hour, people moved through the neon corridor - buyers, sellers, and middlemen who specialized in transactions that left no paper trail.

"The facility's in the old industrial district," Izumi continued, steering around a police checkpoint that seemed more interested in checking identification than stopping crime. "Used to be legitimate fish processing. Now..." She gestured at a building where expensive cars sat in a guarded parking lot. "Different kind of processing."

Izumi activated her comm system. "All teams, this is Hyeon Control. We are moving to assault positions. Repeat, moving to assault positions."

They moved through the storm in two groups. Matteo followed Izumi toward the main facility, their boots crunching through snow that had turned the industrial wasteland into an alien landscape. Behind them, Hyeon operatives moved in practiced formation, their armor dark against the white.

Matteo's comm crackled with a private channel message from his brother. "Matteo, Dad is going to kill us."

"We're going to be just fine, just got to save Anastasia. That's the mission."

The facility loomed ahead, a Soviet-era monument that had been converted into something far uglier. Lights burned behind barred windows, and steam rose from vents that suggested the building's heating system was working overtime.

His comm crackled. "I'm at the maintenance access," came Samira's voice, barely above a whisper. "One guard, looks half-frozen. Give me two minutes."

Matteo crouched behind a shipping container, watching the facility's main entrance. Two guards huddled by the heavy steel door, stamping their feet and blowing on their hands. They looked miserable and not particularly alert.

"Guard down," Samira reported. "I'm inside. Jesus, Matteo, this place has multiple sub-levels, a medical wing, and smells like a morgue. And the surveillance system..." A pause. "It's not just security cameras. They're monitoring something else. Medical readings, maybe?"

"How long until you can disable the alarms?"

"Give me five minutes. Maybe ten."

"Copy that. All teams, we're holding position until surveillance is down."

The wind howled across the industrial wasteland, carrying the sound of machinery and something that might have been voices. In the distance, Matteo could see the lights of Kharun Bay proper, where legitimate businesses operated alongside the kind of enterprises that thrived in the spaces between laws.

"Surveillance is down," Samira's voice came through crystal clear. "You've got your window, but it won't last long. This place has backup systems I can't reach from here."

"All teams, this is Control," Izumi's voice carried the authority of someone who'd found her calling and loved every second of it. Four and a half years since the System arrived, and she'd gone from nobody to running her own company at twenty-two. "Fifteen minutes on the clock. Move now."

Matteo sprinted toward the main entrance, energy rifle raised. Behind him, Hyeon operatives spread out in formation. To his left, he could hear the distinctive roar of a Valkyrie's engine as Evan and Jules moved toward the service dock.

The two door guards looked up just as Matteo's rifle painted targeting lasers across their chests. One of them opened his mouth to shout.

He never got the chance.

Blue energy bolts lit up the night, turning snow to steam as they found their targets. The guards dropped, their weapons clattering on frozen concrete.

"Breach!"

The facility's main door exploded inward and alarms began wailing as Matteo charged through the smoke, his visor's heads-up display painting targets in red overlay.

The first hallway was chaos. Guards scrambling for weapons, voices shouting in russian, the crack-hiss of energy weapons echoing off concrete walls.

A guard rounded the corner ahead of him with a modified kinetic weapon in his hands. Matteo's targeting system locked on automatically, his rifle's energy bolt catching the man center mass before he could raise his weapon.

His comm crackled with status reports: "Service dock secured," from Evan. "East corridor clear," from one of Izumi's teams. "I found the control room."

But no sign of Anastasia.

"Samira, where are you? I need eyes on the prisoner areas."

"Lower level. Follow the main corridor to the stairs, then down. Matteo..." Her voice went quiet. "There are a lot more people here than we thought. And some of them... they're not in good shape."

He found the stairs just as another group of guards came around the corner behind him. Energy bolts sizzled past his head, leaving scorch marks on the concrete walls. He dove, rolled, came up firing.

The lower level was a nightmare. Rows of cells that had once been industrial freezer units, most of them occupied. Faces pressed against reinforced glass, eyes wide with terror and desperation.

"Anastasia!" He called her name, his voice echoing in the cold, sterile corridor. He moved from cell to cell, his rifle ready. "Anastasia Volkov!"

"Here!" The voice came from the far end of the corridor. "I'm here!"

He ran toward the sound, his boots pounding on the metal grating. He found her in the very last cell, huddled in the back corner. She looked smaller than he remembered, and her face was pale, but when she saw him, her dark eyes widened with a desperate, disbelieving light.

Even through the reinforced glass, even in the harsh fluorescent lighting, she was exactly as beautiful as he remembered.

"Took you long enough," she said, and despite everything, despite the danger and the chaos and the sound of combat echoing through the facility above them, she smiled.

Matteo raised his rifle and aimed at the cell's electronic locking mechanism. Luca could have probably hacked this, but Matteo had no time to lose.

"Step back," he said.

The energy bolt turned the lock into a shower of sparks and molten slag. With a groan of protesting metal, the door swung open.

"Time to go," he said, extending his hand.

Anastasia moved forward, her eyes never leaving his. She reached out...

Just as her fingers brushed his, a cold male voice cut across every comm channel in clipped English with a Russian burr: "Welcome to Kharun Bay. The Director sends his regards."

The main lights in the cell block snapped off, plunging the corridor into blackness. A heartbeat later, terrifying red emergency strobes began to flash, painting the scene in rhythmic pulses of blood-colored light. The wail of a new, deeper alarm klaxon echoed from all around them, far louder than the initial breach alarm.

His comm exploded with chaos.

"It's a trap," Izumi hissed. "They were waiting for us."

Matteo tightened his grip on Anastasia and yanked her out of the cell. "Move!" he barked. "Service dock. Now!"

He tightened his grip on Anastasia's hand, pulling her out of the cell. "No time for the roof now. They'll have it locked down." He scanned the corridor, his visor switching to thermal vision. Guards were beginning to pour in from a secondary access point at the far end, silhouetted in the strobing red. They were being pincered.

He activated his squad-wide comm channel, his voice cutting through the panic. "All teams, this is Echo-One! Fall back and regroup at the waterside dock, quick! I repeat, all teams, rendezvous at the service dock! Alessio, get the shuttle airborne! We need a hot extract from the dock, now!"

He pulled Anastasia, propelling her forward. "Stay with me," he said, his eyes already scanning the ceiling for a maintenance ladder or access panel. "Move!"

He had his girl. Now they just had to fight their way out of hell alive.

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