Flash was already seated at the terminal, his fingers flying across the keyboard again as he monitored everything.
On the wall, a mosaic of dozens of windows lit up: live news feeds, breaking reports, blurry footage from the hall they had just left, and the archival documents they had dumped online.
"Look at the news… how many sensations we caused in a single day…" Gideon said with a smile.
"Breaking bulletins, blurry shots from the hall, archival documents we leaked."
"I see," Ethan replied.
Headlines flashed by faster than the eye could read:
"Power Shift in the Corvin Clan." "Secret Laboratories Discovered." "Biological Experiments: Confirmation."
Ethan took a step closer to the screen.
"They're… not even trying to suppress this?"
"They are trying," Flash answered without looking away from the keyboard.
"Too late. They're not succeeding," Gideon said.
"The signal spread through mirrors. It's already been re-uploaded in thirty countries. See for yourself."
Bruno walked over to the table, leaned on it with both palms, and bent closer to the screens.
"Humans?"
Flash switched one of the windows. Footage from helicopters appeared, black vans, people in tactical gear descending into the tunnels with flashlights and weapons. Night vision footage with its characteristic green tint.
"Special services are moving fast," Flash said.
"Someone's been waiting for an excuse for a long time. They're already inside Elizabeth's lair."
On one of the screens, a news anchor with a tense smile spoke into the camera. Her voice was professionally steady, but her eyes betrayed anxiety:
"…if the authenticity of the documents is confirmed, this could mean an unprecedented crisis between shadow structures and official authorities…"
Bullet quietly hissed at the sound of her voice, her tiny teeth glinting in the screen's light.
Ethan ran a hand over his face, wiping away invisible fatigue.
"We wanted to create this uproar," he said quietly.
"But this…" Ethan gave a weak smile.
He fell silent, watching the footage flicker across the screen: stretchers, people wrapped in thermal blankets, medics bustling around the survivors.
"They found survivors," he whispered.
Flash nodded, his fingers pausing on the keyboard.
"Yeah."
For a second, the usual irony vanished from his voice, replaced only by tired relief.
"So it wasn't for nothing," Ethan said, sinking onto a chair.
Bruno slowly looked at him, arms crossed.
"This is only the beginning."
The screens flickered. A new window opened with Anna. Her name was appearing in headlines more and more often.
"She held her ground," Flash said, enlarging the image.
"From the leaks, Kane is alive, but she absorbed his power."
Ethan leaned back in his chair.
"Was that part of the plan?"
"No," Flash replied quietly.
"It was an opportunity. She decided to use it herself."
The silence in the room grew thick.
Flash turned down the volume on the news windows, but the images continued to flicker,bright and insistent.
Ethan stared at the screens and, for the first time, truly realized the scale of what they had done.
"We've opened up a ton of new problems," he said softly.
Flash leaned back in his seat, rubbing his temples.
"Yeah."
"And?"
Bruno gazed at the concrete wall as if he could see straight through it, the entire city, the streets, the shadows, the humans and vampires now irritated by the wail of sirens.
"The main thing now is to make sure nothing is standing behind her that we're not ready for."
"We'd better start preparing."
Inside the shelter, the sound of the sirens was muffled, like a reminder that the night had ended and the real storm was only just beginning.
The servers hummed with a steady, almost lulling background noise, a low, monotonous drone like the breathing of a hidden mechanism that never sleeps. Yet there wasn't a drop of calm in the shelter.
The air was heavy, saturated with the smell of ozone from the electronics and the faint metallic tang of lingering adrenaline in the cramped space.
The bare concrete walls, covered with a web of cables and dim lamps, cast long shadows, making the room feel like a spider's web where everyone was waiting for the next tremor.
Flash tapped the touch panel with his fingers, a light, almost careless motion and muted the news channels.
The images remained: scrolling tickers at the bottom of the screens, experts with strained smiles, diagrams of the catacombs with marked entry points already noted by the special forces.
Now they watched everything in silence, without the voices of the anchors, without the shouts of the crowd,only the visual chaos, which felt even more deafening.
Ethan sat on a metal crate, elbows on his knees, fingers locked together. His shoulders were still tense, his gaze fixed on the floor where his discarded jacket lay like a reminder of the role he had just played.
"She pulled it off," he said at last, lifting his head. His voice was quiet, but carried a note of surprise and relief.
"Did you see? She actually defeated Kane…"
Flash gave a short, humorless grunt without looking away from the screen.
"I saw."
"And?" Ethan leaned forward, eyes narrowing.
Flash spun his chair around, crossed one leg over the other, and looked him straight in the eye.
"And that worries me."
Bruno looked up from the tablet in his hands, his fingers freezing on the screen.
"Because she became stronger?"
"Because she became the mistress of those creatures," Flash answered calmly, tapping his finger on the table for emphasis.
"They draw everything to them, and we don't even properly know how to kill the bastards.
When the leader of the bloodsuckers changes, the entire balance goes to hell."
Ethan frowned, his brows drawing together into a deep crease.