Sarai knew something was wrong before the first alarm sounded.
It was in the way Virek moved.
He was already awake when she stepped into the kitchen, dressed, alert, one hand braced lightly against the counter as he checked something on a small screen she had not seen him use before. The room still held the soft gray light of early morning, but none of it felt quiet in the way it had the day before.
It felt suspended.
"You look like you already hate the day," Sarai said, reaching for a mug.
Virek looked up. "We're leaving in ten."
She paused. "That is not how normal people start mornings."
"It's not a normal morning."
Sarai stared at him for a second, then set the mug back down untouched. "Okay. I need everyone in my life to stop saying things like that without context."
"You'll get it in a minute."
"That is not context."
Before he could answer, the sound came.
A sharp electronic pulse cut through the house, followed by a second, lower tone that seemed to vibrate through the walls instead of simply sounding from them.
Sarai froze. "No."
Virek was already moving.
The screen in his hand lit red.
Odessa appeared in the doorway to the hall at the exact same time Elias came in from the opposite direction, which would have been alarming if Sarai had not already accepted that everyone in this orbit seemed capable of materializing where they were needed.
"West line," Elias said. "Two inside the perimeter. One more hanging back."
Nyla stepped into the kitchen behind him, breathless and wide-eyed but still functioning. "Okay, I hate this one."
Sarai pointed at her. "See? That's how I know it's bad."
Virek's attention cut to Sarai immediately. "Upstairs. Now."
She did not move.
"No."
His expression did not change, but something in the room did. The air around him tightened, not with panic but with decision.
"Sarai."
"I said no because you keep saying 'go upstairs' like I'm supposed to just disappear into soft lighting while people climb your fence."
Odessa crossed to the far cabinet and pulled open a concealed panel, exposing two compact weapons and a slim black case. "You are not armed enough to argue from principle right now."
"That sentence is insane," Sarai shot back.
"It is also true," Odessa replied.
Virek stepped in front of her. "You are not staying in this room."
Sarai looked up at him. "Then give me something useful to do."
The words landed harder than she expected them to.
For half a second, nobody moved.
Then Virek said, "Stay behind me. If I tell you to move, you move. If I tell you to get down, you don't ask why."
Sarai held his gaze. "Fine."
Nyla blinked. "Oh, I don't know if I like that."
"You don't have to," Sarai said.
Virek's voice cut across both of them. "This isn't a debate."
A second impact hit somewhere deeper in the house.
Not an alarm this time.
A door.
Forced.
The sound carried through the floor like a blunt strike to the ribs.
Sarai felt her pulse jump hard once.
Then everything started at once.
Elias moved for the hall. Odessa took the smaller weapon and passed the second to Corvin, who had appeared from nowhere again, massive and calm in a way that did not improve anything. Nyla grabbed Sarai's arm for a second, squeezed once, then let go.
"Do exactly what he says," she said.
"That is deeply not my personality."
"Today it is."
Virek pulled a knife from somewhere under the back of his jacket with a motion so smooth Sarai almost missed it.
Then he looked at her.
Not over her. Not past her.
At her.
"Stay close."
She nodded once. "I heard you."
He moved.
Sarai followed.
The hallway felt narrower now, the house stripped down to angles and sound. She heard one of the back windows explode before she saw anything, glass breaking inward in a hard, violent crash that sent Odessa swearing under her breath from the rear room.
Then the first man came around the corner.
He was dressed in black, face partially covered, weapon already up.
Sarai barely had time to register him before Virek crossed the distance.
It happened too fast to feel dramatic.
One second the man had the angle, and the next he didn't.
Virek got inside the line of the weapon before the shot could clear properly, his forearm slamming into the man's wrist hard enough to redirect the barrel. The gun fired once into the wall, deafening in the enclosed space, and Virek drove the knife up under the man's ribs with a short, brutal force that folded him instantly.
The sound the man made was wet and wrong.
Blood spilled fast, darkening the front of his jacket before Virek ripped the blade free and shoved the body into the wall hard enough to make the frame shudder.
Sarai stopped breathing for a second.
Not because she had never seen violence before.
Because she had never seen it move like that.
A second figure came through the shattered glass behind them.
Elias took the shot first.
The man jerked sideways, blood blooming from his shoulder, but he stayed up long enough to fire back. The round tore a chunk of plaster from the archway beside Sarai's head, spraying dust and sharp grit across her cheek.
She ducked instinctively.
"Down," Virek snapped.
This time, she did not argue.
She dropped hard, palms scraping against the floor as another shot cracked overhead.
Corvin hit the second intruder like a truck.
There was no finesse in it, just sheer mass and force. He slammed the man into the broken window frame, and glass bit into both of them, shards skidding across the floor as Odessa stepped in and fired once clean through the attacker's throat.
The blood came hot and immediate, splashing across the inside of the wall in a fan of red that looked almost black in the dim light.
Sarai swallowed hard.
Nyla, from the back room, said, "Okay, see, this is why I stay in administration."
"Move!" Virek barked.
Sarai looked up.
A third man had made it deeper into the house than the others, coming through the side entry with a blade instead of a gun. He was bigger than the first two, fast in a way that looked trained, and he was looking directly at her.
That changed everything.
Virek saw it too.
The intruder lunged.
Sarai moved sideways just as Virek hit him from the flank, one hand catching the attacker's forearm, the other slamming into the side of his knee. There was a sickening pop as the joint bent the wrong way, and the man crashed to one side with a strangled yell.
He still swung.
The blade caught Virek across the upper arm, not deep but enough.
Sarai saw the line of red open through the fabric.
"Virek—"
He ended it before she finished saying his name.
He trapped the man's wrist, drove the heel of his palm up under the jaw, then took the attacker down hard onto the edge of the low entry table. Bone cracked loud enough to make Sarai flinch, and when Virek drove the knife down this time, it went through the underside of the man's chin and out through the soft tissue near the cheek.
The body jerked once.
Then again.
Then stopped.
For a second, all Sarai could hear was breathing.
Her own.
Virek's.
Someone else cursing in the back room.
Blood ran off the table in a slow, thick line, dripping steadily onto the floor.
The silence that followed was uglier than the noise.
Then Elias looked toward the front monitor and said, "Last one's moving."
Virek turned immediately.
"Outside?"
"Yes."
"Trying to leave?"
"Trying to report."
Virek wiped the knife once on the dead man's sleeve, then looked at Sarai.
She knew what he was going to say before he said it.
"Stay here."
"No."
His jaw tightened. "Sarai."
"He was looking for me," she said, breathing harder now but steady enough. "You do not get to tell me to stay calm in a blood-covered hallway after that."
For the first time since the attack started, something hot and immediate flashed through his expression.
Not anger at her.
At the situation.
At the fact that she was right.
Odessa spoke from behind them. "Go. We've got the house."
Virek looked at Sarai for one hard second, then said, "You stay on me."
She nodded. "Done."
They moved fast.
Outside, the morning air hit cold and clean in a way that felt obscene after the inside of the house. The third man had already made it across the side yard and toward the tree line, one hand pressed to an earpiece, the other clutching something metallic and small.
"Phone," Sarai said.
"I know."
The man looked back once.
That was his mistake.
Virek cut across the yard instead of following the path, taking the shortest line between two fixed points the way only someone with no wasted instincts could. The attacker raised a weapon too late.
Virek hit him at full speed.
They went down hard in the wet grass, momentum carrying them through mud and leaves. The gun went off once into the ground, kicking dirt and blood into the air as Virek tore it free and slammed the man's wrist against a rock until the fingers opened.
The scream that followed ripped raw through the trees.
Sarai stopped just short of them, chest heaving, every nerve in her body lit.
The attacker reached for the device clipped to his vest.
Sarai saw it.
"Left side," she shouted.
Virek shifted instantly, caught the man's hand, and broke two fingers backward with a brutal snap before driving his forearm into the man's throat.
The attacker gagged.
Virek ripped the device free and threw it into the mud.
Then he finished it.
No hesitation.
No speech.
Just one sharp twist, one wet crack, and the man's body sagged beneath him.
Blood bubbled at the edge of the man's mouth and spread into the grass in dark, soaking patches.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then Virek stood.
He looked at Sarai immediately.
She looked at the blood on his arm, the tear in his sleeve, the mud on his hands, and then at the bodies behind the tree line she did not need to see to know were there.
"Okay," she said, breathless. "That was insane."
"Yes."
She laughed once, because what else was there to do. "I really need your people to stop being right about my nervous system."
He took one step closer. "Are you hit?"
She blinked. "No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
He looked at her face, her hands, the line of her shoulders, checking anyway.
That landed.
Again.
Sarai stared at him. "You're bleeding."
"It's minor."
She pointed at his arm. "I need everybody around you to stop calling fresh stab wounds minor."
That almost did it.
Almost.
He took another step closer. "You followed direction."
Sarai looked at him for a second, then let out a breath. "I know. Very unlike me. Please appreciate what I'm overcoming."
Something in his face gave, just enough to be seen.
"I do," he said.
And somehow, standing in wet grass with blood sinking into the ground around them, that was the most intimate thing he could have said.