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I hear footsteps in the hallway. Voices calling out in Russian, urgent and clipped. The door to my room doesn’t open, which means no one is coming to check on me.

I wish there was a window. I don’t even want a decent view, just natural sunlight and something to look at would be better than this.

Then the lights come back on, but only partially. The overhead fixture stays dark, but a smaller emergency light clicks on near the door, casting a dim glow across the room.

The door opens. It’s Andrei, Maxim’s second-in-command, and he looks less composed than I’ve ever seen him.

“Come with me,” he says.

“What’s happening?”

“Another attack, to a different system this time. We need you.”

I should say no. I should refuse, demand an explanation, insist on better treatment before I lift another finger to help these people. The words don’t come. Instead, I follow him out of the room and into the hallway.

The estate is controlled chaos. Guards are moving through the corridors with flashlights, checking doors and securing perimeters. The emergency lighting casts everything in a pale yellow glow that makes the walls look sickly. I can hear systems rebooting, alarms resetting, the general murmur of an organization trying to stabilize.

Andrei leads me to a different part of the mansion than before. It’s a plain control room with fewer screens and more personal touches. A desk with papers on it. A chair that looks like it’s been used recently.

Maxim is already there, standing in front of the main monitor with his back to the door. He turns when I enter, and our eyes meet for a moment before he looks away.

“The internal security system has been compromised,” he says without preamble. “Someone found a weakness in the fail-safes and exploited it. We’ve contained the immediate threat, but I need to understand how they got in.”

I move to the terminal, acutely aware of how close he’s standing. The room is small, and there’s no way to access the screens without being near him.

“I’ll need access to the system logs,” I say.

He pulls up a chair and gestures for me to sit. I do, and he positions himself beside me, close enough that I can feel the warmth of his body without touching.

I try to focus on the screens.

The attack is different from the ransomware. Someone was looking for a specific vulnerability in the security infrastructure, and they found it. The logs show a pattern of probing that started days ago, gradually escalating until tonight’s breach.

“They were testing the perimeter,” I say. “Looking for weak points. This wasn’t random.”

“Can you trace the source?”

“Maybe. Give me a minute.”

I start working, pulling up data streams and running analysis protocols. The system is more familiar to me now after yesterday’s work, which makes the process faster. It also means I’m more aware of Maxim’s presence beside me. I can hear his breathing and smell the scent of his sandalwood cologne.

I try to ignore it. I try to focus on the code, on the patterns, on finding the source of the attack.

Except he’s right there, and my body won’t stop noticing.

“There,” I say, pointing to a section of the log. “That’s the entry point. They came through the backup generator protocol, used it as a side channel to access the main security grid.”

Maxim leans in to see what I’m pointing at. His shoulder presses against mine, and I feel the contact like a spark.

“How do we close it?”

I reach across him to access a different monitor, my arm brushing his chest as I move. At the same moment, he shifts toward me to see the screen, and suddenly I’m trapped between him and the desk.

I don’t move. Neither does he.

We stay like that for a moment that stretches too long. His body is warm and solid behind me, his face close enough that I can feel his breath on my cheek. The screen in front of me shows lines of code that I’m no longer reading.

Then I try to pull back.