Raven did not turn.
She did not rush.
She did not react the way most people did when they sensed danger behind them.
She simply became still.
Not frozen.
Focused.
Every sound in the data vault sharpened.
The low hum of servers. The faint hiss of circulating air. The microscopic scrape of fabric somewhere near the doorway.
Not a guard's boots.
Too light.
Not a technician either.
Wrong cadence.
Someone trained.
Raven's thumb eased the safety off her weapon.
She waited.
The silence stretched.
Then a shadow detached itself from the darkness between server racks.
Raven moved.
She pivoted on the ball of her foot and fired.
The first shot took the figure in the shoulder, spinning him sideways. The second struck center mass before he could recover.
The body hit the floor hard.
Raven was already moving.
Another shape lunged from the opposite side.
Raven dropped low, sliding across the polished floor as a blade whistled over her head.
She came up beneath the attacker's guard and drove her knife upward into his ribcage.
A sharp exhale.
She twisted.
Pulled free.
Blood sprayed warm against her gloves.
Raven didn't slow.
Footsteps thundered in the corridor beyond the vault.
Not guards.
Too coordinated.
A response team.
So the quiet had been bait.
Raven's lips curved into a faint, humorless smile.
Good.
She holstered her knife, grabbed the data drive from the terminal, and sprinted.
Gunfire erupted as she crossed the threshold.
Bullets chewed into the doorframe behind her.
Raven vaulted over the fallen body in the corridor and slid into a roll, coming up firing.
Two men dropped.
Another ducked behind a support column.
Raven threw a small sphere from her belt.
It clinked once.
Then detonated.
Not an explosion.
A flash.
A concussion of light and sound.
The man screamed.
Raven shot him.
She ran.
Not blindly.
Not panicked.
Every turn was already mapped in her mind.
Left. Stairs. Up two levels. Vent access.
She took the stairs three at a time.
Rounds cracked past her head.
One grazed her upper arm.
She felt it.
Registered it.
Ignored it.
Pain was data.
She burst through the stairwell door and dove into a side corridor.
A heavy security door slammed shut behind her.
Raven didn't stop.
She slid under a closing blast shutter, sparks raining down as it sealed behind her.
For a fraction of a second, everything went dark.
Emergency lights kicked in.
Red.
Raven sprinted toward the maintenance hatch at the far end of the hall.
Two figures emerged from intersecting corridors.
Raven jumped.
She ran straight at them.
The first raised his weapon.
Raven shot him through the visor.
She drove her shoulder into the second, smashing him into the wall hard enough to crack tile.
He tried to stab.
Raven caught his wrist.
Snapped it.
Took his gun.
Shot him with it.
She reached the hatch and tore it open.
Cold night air rushed in.
Raven climbed.
Hands gripping metal rungs.
Boots scraping.
She emerged onto the rooftop as alarms finally began to scream across the complex.
Too late.
Raven sprinted across the roof and leapt.
Wind tore at her cloak.
She landed on the adjacent building, rolled, and kept moving.
Another jump.
Another.
Behind her, floodlights snapped on.
Raven disappeared into shadow.
She hit the street three blocks away.
Didn't slow.
Didn't look back.
She ducked into an alley and vaulted a chain-link fence.
A black vehicle rolled silently into position.
The rear door slid open.
Raven dove inside.
The door sealed.
The car accelerated.
Only then did Raven exhale.
Not in relief.
In transition.
She pulled off her helmet.
Her hands were steady.
Her breathing even.
The world outside blurred past tinted windows.
Raven reached into her belt and removed the data drive.
Then she reached for her laptop.
The shift was subtle.
Her shoulders drew inward.
Her jaw tightened.
Her eyes lost their predatory stillness.
Something else took its place.
Urgency.
Not the loud kind.
The meticulous kind.
She opened the laptop.
Plugged in the drive.
Lines of code flooded the screen.
Raven—
No.
She didn't think about the name.
She didn't think about anything.
She worked.
She opened access logs from the vault.
Scrubbed timestamps.
Rewrote routing data.
Inserted ghost traffic.
Her fingers moved fast now.
Not reckless.
Desperate.
She pulled up the facility's internal monitoring system.
Deleted camera traces.
Overwrote with looped footage from six hours earlier.
She paused.
Checked again.
Found a minor inconsistency.
Her throat tightened.
She fixed it.
Then checked everything again.
And again.
Sweat beaded at her temples.
Her leg bounced.
Stopped.
She forced it still.
If they traced the breach back to Vespera.
If they traced it to the organization.
If anyone died because of her oversight—
She swallowed hard.
No.
No loose ends.
She pulled network traffic from surrounding districts.
Injected false pings.
Built three different digital escape routes.
Collapsed two of them.
Left one active.
Her breathing grew shallow.
She didn't notice.
Her hands shook.
She noticed that.
She curled her fingers into her palm.
Waited.
Uncurled them.
Kept going.
She encrypted the data.
Then encrypted the encryption.
Then split the file into fragments.
Then hid each fragment inside unrelated archives.
Medical records.
Shipping manifests.
Weather models.
Her eyes burned.
She didn't blink.
The car drove.
Minutes passed.
She didn't look up once.
When she finally leaned back, her shoulders sagged.
Not from exhaustion.
From release.
She ran one final diagnostic sweep.
Clean.
No active traces.
No backdoors.
No alerts.
She closed the laptop.
Held it against her chest for a moment.
Then placed it carefully beside her.
Only then did she look down at her arm.
Blood soaked the sleeve.
She pressed a cloth against it.
Didn't hiss.
Didn't flinch.
The car slowed.
Turned.
Descended into an underground bay.
Lights flickered on.
Steel doors slid open.
The vehicle rolled to a stop.
Raven sat very still.
The mission was over.
The data was secured.
The world had not ended.
Yet.
She reached for the door handle.
Paused.
Then straightened her spine.
Lifted her chin.
When the door opened and she stepped out, the woman who emerged looked calm.
Untouched.
Unbothered.
Raven was back.
The headquarters swallowed her whole.
And somewhere deep inside her chest, something small and fragile curled tighter—
waiting.