Read Chapter 15: The Crawl Back

The maintenance junction stank of cordite and copper. Mercer pressed his palm against his left side, feeling the wet heat of his own blood soaking through the shirt beneath his jacket. The bullet had gone through—clean, he thought—but clean didn’t mean painless, and every step sent a bright ribbon of fire arcing up his ribs.

“You’re bleeding more than you’re letting on,” Camille said from ahead. She was already moving, flashlight cutting a narrow cone into the dark of the service tunnel. The blast had sealed the junction behind them with a wall of twisted metal and concrete dust. The only way forward was the way they’d come.

“I’ll manage.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.” He forced himself to move faster, matching her pace. The tunnel curved slightly, the ceiling low enough that he had to duck his head. Water dripped somewhere to his left. The sound of it was impossibly loud in the silence.

They walked for several minutes without speaking. The wound throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat. Mercer counted steps to keep his head clear. Fifty. A hundred. The tunnel walls shimmered with damp. He thought he could feel the weight of the sea above them, the entire Channel pressing down on the concrete like a held breath.

“You’re going to tell me about Prague,” he said.

Camille didn’t slow. “Now?”

“We’re alone. We’ve got time. And I’ve just been shot because of a man whose secrets you keep.”

“I don’t keep his secrets.” Her voice was flat. “I keep my own.”

“Then tell me yours.”

She stopped. Turned. The flashlight caught her face from below, carving shadows into her jaw. For a moment she looked older, harder than the woman he’d met at St. Pancras. “I was in Prague three years ago. Undercover with the SGO. Sokolov was running a network through the old Soviet embassy buildings. My job was to get close to his financier, a man named Vaclav Dvorak. I was doing that when Anna Kessler showed up.”

“The informant.”

“She was MI6. Your side. Young, eager, and in way over her head. She’d found something—Dvorak’s real ledger, the one that tracked payments to brokers across Europe—and she thought she could use it to cut her own deal with Sokolov. She didn’t understand that Sokolov doesn’t negotiate. He collects leverage.”

“And you watched him kill her.”

Camille’s jaw tightened. “I watched her die because I chose not to intervene. I was twenty feet away with a clear shot at Sokolov’s back. But if I’d taken it, I’d have blown my cover. Dvorak would have disappeared. The entire operation would have collapsed. So I let her die, and I told my superiors that Kessler was killed by a local militia group before I ever made contact. I created a false report to protect the mission.”

“And to protect yourself.”

“That too.” She held his gaze. “You wanted the truth. There it is. I’m not proud of it. But I’d do it again if the mission required it. Anna Kessler was a casualty. I’m sorry she had to be one, but I’m not sorry I made the call.”

Mercer let the silence sit between them. The tunnel hummed with the distant vibration of the train passing overhead, a low thrum through the concrete. He thought about his father’s name on that paper. About the debt he’d spent five years trying to bury. About how easy it was to tell yourself that a small betrayal was justified if the mission came first.

“We’re not so different,” he said.

“No,” she agreed. “We’re not.”

She turned and resumed walking. Mercer followed, his side screaming now, the wetness under his jacket spreading. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep this pace. The next access point was supposed to be half a kilometer ahead, but that was before the junction had collapsed. Before the blast had possibly sealed off more than just their exit.

The tunnel opened into a wider service alcove. Pipes lined the walls, thick and rusted, and there was a ladder bolted to the far side leading up to a hatch. Camille played her flashlight over it. The hatch was sealed with a heavy locking wheel, bright orange paint peeling off the metal.

“That’s our way back in,” she said.

Mercer moved to the ladder, but his legs buckled halfway up. He caught himself on the rungs, gritting his teeth as the wound twisted. Camille was at his side in an instant, one hand on his shoulder.

“Let me go first,” she said.

“No.”

“You can barely stand. If Sokolov’s waiting on the other side, you’ll be dead before you clear the hatch.”

“And you won’t?”

“I’m not the one bleeding out.”

He wanted to argue. He could feel the strength draining from him, a cold sweat beading on his forehead. But she was right, and they both knew it. He stepped aside, letting her climb past him. She worked the locking wheel in quick, smooth motions, and the hatch popped open with a hiss of pressure.

Cold air rushed in. The sound of the train was louder now—the screech of wheels on track, the rumble of the carriage overhead. She peered through the opening, then dropped back down.

“We’re in the maintenance bay between cars. Empty. But there’s something else.”

“What?”

“Listen.”

He strained his ears. Beneath the mechanical noise, a voice crackled over a PA system, tinny and distant. It was repeating the same announcement in French, then English.

“…arrive Gare du Nord at 08:45. Thank you for travelling with Eurostar.”

Mercer frowned. “That’s early. We’re not due until 09:20.”

“It’s not early,” Camille said slowly. “We’ve been in the tunnel longer than we thought. And we were traveling east the whole time.”

“London is west of Paris. If we were heading to London, we’d be moving toward the coast, not away from it.”

Her flashlight beam traced the line of pipes along the tunnel wall. “Unless we’re not on the London train anymore.”

Mercer’s mind snapped into focus. The breach point. The handoff. Sokolov hadn’t just escaped through the maintenance exit—he’d rerouted something. The train itself.

“How many access points have we passed?” he asked.

“Four that I counted. Two service junctions. A ventilation shaft.”

“And we assumed they all led back to the same track?”

Camille was already climbing the ladder again. “We assumed a lot of things.”

She pushed the hatch open fully and swung herself up into the gap between the carriages. Mercer forced himself to follow, ignoring the fire in his side as he hauled himself over the lip. He landed hard on the metal floor of the maintenance bay, the impact sending a shockwave through his ribs.

Below them, through a narrow window set into the floor, he could see the track. But it wasn’t the main tunnel’s open rail bed. The walls were close, curved, and covered in thick cables. Light flickered from overhead fixtures spaced every few meters.

“This isn’t the main line,” he said.

“No. It’s not.”

The PA crackled again. This time, when the announcement came, the English version was different.

“…thank you for your patience. Eurostar train 9030 will now arrive at Gare du Nord at 08:45, ahead of schedule. We apologise for any inconvenience.”

Train 9030. The London-bound service was 9028.

Mercer looked at Camille. Her face was pale in the dim light.

“We’re not on the London train,” she said again. “We were never on the London train.”

Above them, through the thin metal floor, they could hear footsteps moving along the carriage. Sokolov’s men, or someone else’s. The maintenance bay was a dead end unless they kept moving forward.

Mercer pushed himself to his feet, one hand pressed tight against his side. “Then we need to find the control car. Figure out where this thing is actually going.”

Camille was already moving toward the far door, the one that led into the next carriage. She reached for the handle, pulled, and found it locked.

“That’s not good.”

The PA system crackled again. But this time the message was different. A man’s voice, quiet, close—as if he were standing right on the other side of the door.

“Hello, Camille. I was wondering when you’d catch up.”

Sokolov’s voice. Then the line went dead.