The moment Kara slid the sleek, obsidian terminal across the polished desk towards her, Ileana felt the world narrow. The cool plastic beneath her hovering palms felt alien, threatening. Her own breath sounded loud and shallow in her ears. Every instinct, honed by years of survival in Skinner's shadow, screamed at her to bolt, to vanish into the city's sprawl.
She stared at the blinking cursor — a tiny, demanding eye. And cutting through the thrum of servers and the weight of Darren's unseen gaze, she heard him.
Skinner's voice, rough with cheap vodka and cheaper cigars, echoing from a command suite choked with cathode-ray glow and smoke in Bucharest:
"Make the code bleed, ShadowBloom. Make it scream for mercy it won't get."
