*LONDON: 21 December 2004, 08:31 GMT*

[color=red:a5d9d725a1]Priority One Message, Code: Alpha 261552[/color]
From: Prodigal_Daughter24
To: Agency HQ

Wings bent, not broken. Proceeding to Location 5-Bravo-32-Zulu.

"We received this message from Agent Spiner, twenty minutes ago." points Nightengale at the immense LCD screen in the Agency HQ briefing room.

"No one would have this protocol other than Agent Hummingbird, so we have to believe this is authentic."

Elsewhere...

Jess paces around Anatoli's apartment, staring at the computer screen.

"They really should have noticed it by now. Reload the page and see if there's a message for me."

[color=red:2ad40717a3]Priority One Message, Code: Alpha ******[/color]
From: Reluctant_Father01
To: Prodigal_Daughter24

Proceed to drop location Delta 162 (55.0° N 82.9° E).Comm Bundle will be found in pedestal of A.P...

Jess scrolls the mousewheel down to read the remainder of the message just as the entire apartment goes black. The sound of a battering ram pounds the steel door, rattling the locks and shaking the room.

Jess pulls her Makarov and looks over to Elena; the undoubtly interesting look on her face is swallowed by the blackness.

"You sold all the guns, right?"

Elena holds her hands up, shooting an equally puzzled look back at Jess.

"Yes. I told no one! I even took a different way back to the square. Those guys must be for him!"

She nods over to a frantic Anatoli, who is immediately begins enabling the automated hard drive wipes on his machines.

(typing like a madman)

"Fuck you, Elena! I pay the local cops one thousand dollars a month to stay the hell out of my business. Those guys out there are FSB! I know it."

Anatoli punches away at his keyboard stopping long enough to retrieve a pistol from a drawer, placing it on the desktop while spilling over a stack of illegal CDs in process. The authorities outside continue to smash at the heavy steel door to little avail. The hacker turns around and shouts epithets and slurs at them.

"Fucking pig dogs! Go away!"

He goes back to typing, looking over at the potential stand-off brewing between Elena and Jess.

"Do not worry, my little babushkas. They would need explosives to open that door."

The crushing noise stops with the terrified expression on Elena's face appearing to genuine in nature. For perhaps the first time in her acquaitance with the Russian, Jess can smell the fear enveloping Elena.

"I swear, Jessica...on my dead grandmother. I did not tell anyone!"

Jess takes a good hard look at Elena - and apparently decides not to point her gun at the sniper.

"We can sort out the information leak once we get out of here alive."

Looking around, Jessica cocks her gun.

"I believe in coincidences, coincidences happen every day. But I don't trust coincidences."

Momentarily relieved, Elena pulls out a pistol stashed behind her back.

(pulls the slide back)

"Agreed. As always. There's got to be another way out of here, right?" addressing Anatoli who keeps on typing.

"Regretably, no.", stammers Anatoli.

"The windows are barred over and the concrete walls are two feet thick....why else do you think I live here? It is definitely not for the view of the asbestos plant."

Shouting is heard from outside, proceeded by a few dull thuds on the door. Elena's eyes go wide gesturing for Jess to move with her to the far end of the room.

"Anatoli? You said something about explosives?"

That gets the hacker's attention.

"Oh....Fuck!"

His hands jump up from the keyboard, grasping the pistol beside him, Anatoli's chair spinning wildly as he heeds Elena's advice.

Back in London...

The briefing room's phone rings. Nightengale's assistant takes the call while he goes over possible extraction sites for Jess.

-Sir, sorry to interrupt. Agent Hummingbird's transmission went dead two minutes ago.

-Have they tried to re-establish?

-Yessir. No luck.

Nightengale sighs slightly, maintaining composure.

"Thomas (his assistant). Notify Agency HQ that I am green-lighting the rescue operation of Agent Hummingbird."

(turning to the team)

"It seems our friend can't stay out of harm's way. There is a jet being prepped at Heathrow for your departure. I'd pack warm. Krasnoyarsk is quite cold this time of year."

Jess chooses to get behind a sturdy metal bookcase, filled with Anatoli's collection of coding books, pr0n, and associated Western men's magazine.

*Boom* *Boom* *SMASH*

The room fills with smoke as the heavy door comes crashing down after being blown off its hinges.

*BANG* *BANG

Grenades are deployed. Having gone through this drill countless times in Agency training, Jess knew better, shutting her eyes and clasping her ears in advance. Opening up to get a quick look before the breaching team enter, Jess sees Elena dazed and confused beside her...

...but where in the hell is Anatoli???

Jess backs up, taking up a defensive position near antique wooden desk. Hammer pulled back, she waits, shifting her stance for proper fire control. As Jess does so, her footfall sinks slightly on a small recessed area of the floor.

The infiltrators (4 total) armed with AKs and wearing Russian Army BDUs move into the room in a standard 2x2 formation, sweeping the immediate area for hostiles. They spot the dazed Elena, on her knees but quickly regaining her senses. Her vision still slightly blurred, she fires her pistol as they approach. The first bullet tags one of the soldiers in the arm, the second flying wide of its mark.

Bravely putting herself between Jess and harm's way, Elena moves toward the opposite end of the apartment, drawing the Kalashnikovs' fire.

Orange muzzle-flashes illuminate the nearly pitch-black room while Jess desperately tries to find the escape hatch's release mechanism. Going only by touch, she finds a spring-loaded button on the corner of hatchlid.

A momentary rush of stale air blows across Jess' face, the hatch raising just enough to afford passage. She slinks her way into the narrow opening, the toe of her boot catching of ladder rung about a meter down from the recess above.

The last glimpse Jess gets before closing the hatch is the bristling flashes of the soldiers' automatic gunfire from the opposite end of the apartment.

As Jess half-climbs, half-slides down the ladder, there's a curious emotional void inside her as she leaves Elena to what constitutes certain death. Rationally, she knows that she should feel something, *anything*...but the sort of incredible calm one only gets from a good shell-shocking cushions any blow that might try to get to Jessica.

Somebody's paying for this, and his name starts with A...

The crudely constructed ladder continues downward for another fifty or so meters before ending in what appears to be a flooded out t-junction for a long-since-used ventilation system. Jess' boots sink to her ankles in cold stagnant liquid as she steps off the last ladder rung.

At the end of one of the corridors (about 10 meters away) is a dim lightbulb hanging above a rusty metal sign which reads, "EMERGENCY EXIT" in Russian.

Approaching with caution and pistol drawn, Jess finds below the sign a heavy iron door. It is unlocked and ajar. The distance sounds of feet sloshing in the water can be heard beyond the egress.

(Edited by Dieter at 4:44 pm on Sep. 24, 2004)

Jess readies her pistol and starts to chase after the footsteps.

Somebody up there just doesn't like me.

Jess pushes the door open, cringing as the hinges groan under the strain of years of rust and moisture.

There goes my edge.

Following the sloshing footsteps for a good distance ahead of her, Jess stops momentarily to get her bearings and hears the sound of some sort of bulkhead screw being twisted open.

That can't be more than 20m away, says Jess to herself.

She hasn't passed any junctions or noticable openings in the past 5 minutes, so it's a safe bet the sound is coming from something straight ahead, most likely under the cover of a nearly pitch-black corridor.

Jessica breaks into a run, throwing caution to the wind.

Just punched your ticket, Anatoli...

The deliberately slow twisting of the bulkhead quickly turns into a hell-bent thrashing of the mechanism as Jess' footfalls approach.

Flashes of downrange gunfire illuminate the dark corridor ahead of Jess followed up by the sound of ricocheting bullets bouncing off the thick concrete walls around her.

"Yeah. You're a student, alright...like Elena has a been a choir-girl all her life. Stupid fucking bitches." curses Anatoli, struggling to escape from the scene.

Jess returns some fire.

"Backstabbing little piece of shit!"

Jess' shots light up Anatoli's position, missing their marks but illustrating his frantic attempt to escape. Obviously out of breath and in a great fatigue, the Russian stops opening the bulkhead and holds up his arms in a surrendering fashion.

Anatoli shouts back at Jess accusatively,

"Hey! Was it me who came looking for you? I had a six-figure income flowing through that apartment. Why the hell would I want to lose it all...especially for you two crazy bitches? Hmm?"

Jess keeps her gun up, but her brain is working overtime filtering through the implications.

"Where does this tunnel lead?"