"Smart is what got us into this mess, Anastasia," Silas growled, his eyes scanning the perimeter of the Grand Jakarta Hotel. The building loomed like a monolithic tombstone against the humid night sky. "Get your hand off me. We have twenty minutes before the guard shift rotates at the loading bay."Anastasia didn't move. Her fingers tightened on his collar, her knuckles white. "If you charge through that front lobby with your gun drawn, you aren't a hero. You’re a statistic. We have one shot to get inside the service corridors, and if you trip the silent alarm, Riven moves Dorian to a secondary location before we even hit the freight elevator."Silas stared at her, his pulse drumming against his eardrums. "Do you have the bypass codes or not?"She reached into her coat, pulling out a small, unassuming black drive. "I have them. But they’re encrypted with a rolling algorithm. I need you to hold the comms interference at the junction box while I mirror the gate’s signal. Are you steady

“I need you to bridge the two red leads,” Anastasia’s voice crackled through the comms, cold and precise, stripping away the tension of the moment with sheer professional utility. “Do not cut the blue wire. If you cut the blue, the surge will fry the local node and trigger a hard lockdown. We’ll be buried in steel before we even get the door to crack.”Silas wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his tactical glove, his eyes squinting against the dim glow of his work light. “Red leads. Bridge them. And if I spark the bypass, does the camera loop hold?”“The loop will hold for exactly one hundred and eighty seconds. If we aren’t inside the service lift by then, we’re dead in the water,” she replied. Her voice dropped a register, betraying a rare flicker of nerves. “Silas, the encryption is shifting. I’m seeing Riven’s signature protocol in the background. He knows something is poking at his firewall.”Silas didn't hesitate. He stripped the insulation from the cables with hi