Her lungs burned as thick plaster dust filled the air, coughing violently behind her sleeve as the subterranean chamber shook like the belly of a dying beast. Steel girders twisted overhead, screaming under the sudden, immense weight of the collapsing chapel above.

Through the haze of blinding strobe lights and falling stone, her eyes locked onto the figure in the elevator cab.

He looked thinner than he had in the yellowed newspaper clippings, his sharp jawline silvered with age and his tailored coat smudged with soot, but those cold, slate-grey eyes were undeniable. The father she had buried in an empty casket fifteen years ago was staring directly at her.

«Get in!» he barked, his voice cutting through the thundering roar of collapsing masonry with authorative precision. «Now, Clara!»

Julian scrambled to his feet from the dust, raising his suppressed pistol directly toward the elevator, but before he could squeeze the trigger, a burst of submachine gun fire chewed through the floorboards at his feet. Julian dove behind a fallen server rack, his curse lost beneath the deafening shrieks of twisting metal.

Alejandro lunged from the shadows, grabbing her upper arm with a grip that bruised. «Clara, move!»

She shoved him back with every ounce of strength she possessed, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. «Don’t touch me!» she screamed, retreating toward the elevator. «You killed my family!»

«I didn’t know who was in the house!» Alejandro yelled back, his eyes raw with panic as a massive stone slab plunged from the ceiling, obliterating the desk where the radio had sat seconds before. «I spent fifteen years protecting you to atone for that night! If you stay with him, he’ll finish what he started!»

A shuddering groan echoed through the foundation as the main support pillar snapped. The vault door jammed tighter into its frame, sealing off any hope of reversing their path.

Her father held out a gloved hand from inside the cab. «He’s telling the truth about one thing, Clara—we have ten seconds before the entire structure drops into the river bed. Step inside!»

Her head spun. Trusting her husband had brought her to a death chamber. Trusting her guardian had linked her to her family’s murder. Now, a dead man was reaching out from the dark, demanding her survival.

She vaulted over a pile of broken masonry and threw herself into the elevator cab just as a massive boulder crashed directly where she had been standing seconds before. Alejandro leapt forward to follow, his fingers brushing the steel frame of the elevator door—but her father slammed the manual override lever down.

The heavy steel gate slammed shut, severing Alejandro’s pursuit.

«Wait!» she shouted, pressing her face against the reinforced glass panel as the elevator shuddered violently and began a rapid, stomach-churning ascent.

Through the dust-clouded glass of the receding floor, she saw Alejandro turn his gun toward Julian. But Julian wasn’t looking at Alejandro. He was looking straight up at her through the dark, a cold, sickening smile spreading across his blood-spattered face as he pulled a small black remote from his breast pocket and thumbed a toggle switch.

Inside the rising elevator, a sharp, electronic hum vibrated from beneath her feet.

Her father’s head snapped toward the floorboards. The warm, commanding presence in his eyes vanished, replaced by sheer, naked terror.

«He tracked the signal,» her father whispered, his jaw dropping. «The microchip isn’t just a drive, Clara. It’s a localized beacon.»

Before she could process his words, the elevator ground to a violent, screeching halt halfway up the shaft, suspended in absolute darkness between floors. The cables above them moaned under sudden, artificial tension.

Slowly, the overhead ceiling hatch of the elevator cab began to rattle.

Something heavy had landed on top of the car.

Her father raised his weapon, aim trained directly at the hatch as the metal rivets began to pop one by one under immense force. «Stay behind me,» he growled, stepping in front of her. «Whatever happens, do not let go of that chip.»

She braced herself against the side wall, her knuckles white, her pulse hammering in her ears as the ceiling hatch was torn entirely off its hinges with a horrifying screech of rending steel.

A hand reached down through the opening—not covered in tactical gear or dust, but wrapped in a silk sleeve bearing the unmistakable crest of the Raven Syndicate.

«Thank you for digging him up for us, Clara,» a smooth, unfamiliar female voice purred from the darkness above the shaft. «We’ve been hunting your father for fifteen years. And now, you’ve brought him right to us.»

A sharp metallic cylinder was dropped through the open hatch, bouncing once on the elevator floor before releasing a dense, sweet-smelling purple gas that instantly filled the confined space.

Her father collapsed to his knees, his gun slipping from his paralyzed grip as he clawed at his throat. She dropped alongside him, her vision swimming as her muscles turned to water. Through the thickening purple haze, she watched as two shadowy figures lowered themselves into the cab, lifting her father’s limp body toward the roof.

As her consciousness slipped away, one of the figures leaned down, plucking the microchip from her frozen fingers.

The figure leaned close to her ear, whispering with chilling familiarity, «Your mother sends her regards.»