The night passed with heavy silence. A drizzle coated the mountains, turning soil to slick mud and shrouding the world in low-hanging mist. When dawn arrived, it bled in slowly, casting pale light across the jagged ridge above the cave.
Amira woke before the others, her fingers instinctively wrapped around the pistol beneath her jacket. She didn't dream anymore just fragments of voices, blood, and Celeste's face. Every morning now felt like a reset. Another chance to kill or be killed.
Lucia emerged next, her breath fogging as she checked the files again. "We'll need to move fast," she murmured. "The coordinates place the vault somewhere beneath an old museum in Prague's Lesser Town."
"And Valeria will know we're coming," Amira said, not even looking up.
By the time the others rose, tension was already thick. Gabriel looked marginally better. He was stronger, stubbornly refusing to be carried. Elias provided a detailed route a dangerous trek to the border through an abandoned rail line used during Cold War smuggling.
They left the cave in a tight line. Zion kept close to Amira, though they barely spoke. Something hung unsaid between them something fraying under the weight of everything they'd seen.
Halfway through the chapter's 2,500+ word span, the group is ambushed while crossing a shallow ravine. The trees exploded in gunfire.
"Down!" Amira screamed, diving into the mud as bullets ripped overhead.
Zion returned fire, dragging Gabriel behind a rock wall. Rosalie took a round through the shoulder, crying out. Lucia tossed a smoke canister, clouding the field.
Three of Valeria's men moved in, dressed like local hunters, rifles raised. One flanked Amira but she was ready. She shot him through the chest, point-blank, without blinking.
Elias tackled the second attacker, stabbing him in the thigh before shooting him through the jaw. The third escaped.
Silence returned, ragged and smoking. Blood ran down Rosalie's arm. Amira stood over the bodies, her face unreadable.
"No more running," she said. "We find the vault, we expose every single name. We burn them."
That night, they camped beneath an overpass outside a Czech village. Rosalie's wound was bandaged. Elias built a fire.
Zion sat beside Amira. She didn't pull away when he reached for her hand.
"You're not alone in this," he said quietly.
She didn't speak. But she held his hand a little tighter.
Across the continent, Valeria watched satellite feeds of the aftermath.
"Let her come," she said, glass of red wine in hand. "But no one leaves clean."