Chapter 224: How Is She Accepting This?

Hours passed. Energy drinks were consumed. Coffee was made and remade. The clock on the wall moved from midnight to early morning.

By day break everything was ready.

Thomas pulled up the final version of the recruitment agency profile on the monitor. Marco reviewed it line by line, checking for inconsistencies, looking for weak points, testing the strength of the false identity.

It was perfect.

It was absolutely and completely perfect.

"When does The Covenant post the recruitment notice?" Dimitri asked.

"Friday morning," Thomas said, checking his encrypted monitoring of The Covenant’s recruitment forums. "Approximately 8 AM EST. They’ll post the announcement for qualified virologists, and within hours we submit Volkov’s application through PharmTech Staffing Solutions."

"Turnaround time?" Dimitri asked.

"The Covenant typically responds to applications within twenty-four hours," Claude said. "They contact candidates, schedule interviews, make hiring decisions within forty-eight to seventy-two hours. By Monday morning, they could be requesting that Volkov report for his first day."

Which meant:

Friday: Recruitment announcement Friday afternoon: Volkov’s application submitted through PharmTech Staffing Solutions.

Saturday: Interview.

Sunday: Job offer Monday: Infiltration begins

"That’s a seven-day timeline from recruitment to insertion," Marco said. "Which is exactly what we need to meet the fourteen-day protocol."

Dimitri nodded slowly. Seven days for The Covenant to vet Volkov, conduct interviews, verify credentials, and make a hiring decision. Seven days for them to move him into position and begin his actual intelligence gathering.

Seven days before James transmitted his final burst of data from inside the facility.

"There’s one more thing," Mike said quietly. He pulled up a document on the screen....something that made Marco’s blood run cold.

It was a medical exam form. The kind used by research facilities to document a subject’s physical condition before experimentation.

"When Volkov arrives at the facility," Mike explained, "The Covenant will want to establish his baseline physical condition. Not as a test subject, as a consultant being brought into the organization. But they’ll still want documentation. Medical records. Blood work. Vitals."

"Which means they’ll discover he’s not actually Aleksandr Volkov," Marco said.

"Not immediately," Mike said. "The blood work won’t show anything unusual. Dimitri is healthy, no genetic markers that would contradict a Russian heritage, nothing that would raise immediate red flags. But if they ever run DNA analysis, if they ever cross-reference his biometric data with any law enforcement or government database, they’ll discover the deception."

"So we operate on the assumption that once Dimitri is inside the facility, he has a limited window before the deception is discovered," Marco said. "We don’t have months. We have days."

"Maybe a week," Thomas said. "If they don’t run sophisticated biometric analysis. If they’re focused on the research rather than deep vetting. But the moment they become suspicious, the moment they decide to verify his identity more thoroughly, he’s compromised."

Dimitri’s expression didn’t change. He’d already understood the risk. He’d already accepted the timeline.

"Which is why the extraction has to be perfectly timed," Dimitri said. "I get inside. I gather intelligence. I identify the deployment location and methodology. I destroy the research data and viral samples. And I get out before they have any reason to run the kind of biometric analysis that would expose the false identity."

"Sixty hours maximum," Marco said. "From insertion to extraction. That’s your window."

"Sixty hours," Dimitri repeated. He looked at the monitors displaying Aleksandr Volkov’s fake history. At the carefully constructed identity that would get him inside The Covenant’s facility. At the lie that was his only chance at survival.

"Then we make sure those sixty hours count," Dimitri said quietly.

Marco watched as Dimitri turned away from the monitors and walked toward the window, looking out at the Manhattan skyline below. The sun was beginning to rise, Friday morning light spreading across the city.

Friday. The day The Covenant would post their recruitment notice. The day that would set everything in motion.

The day that would change everything.

"Get some sleep," Marco said to the room. "All of you. We have twelve hours before The Covenant posts, and we need to be completely sharp when they do. One mistake, one miscalculation, and this entire operation fails."

Thomas and Claude didn’t argue. They simply shut down their computers and stumbled toward the conference room where cots had been set up for exactly this purpose.

Mike paused at the door and looked at Dimitri.

"Eve?" Dimitri asked, reading the question in his best friend’s eyes.

"How is she accepting this?" Mike asked"

"I am preparing her for my departure," Dimitri said. "I want to spend the afternoon with her before everything accelerates."

Mike nodded and left.

Dimitri remained at the window, watching the sunrise paint the city in shades of amber and rose and gold.

Aleksandr Volkov was born on a Friday morning in Manhattan.

And Dimitri Valentino was about to walk into the most dangerous operation of his life.

***

POV: THOMAS

8:47 AM.

Friday morning.

Thomas had his eyes locked on The Covenant’s recruitment forum, watching for the post that would change everything.

The coffee beside him was cold. Had been cold for an hour. He’d forgotten about it the moment he’d made it, too focused on the monitors in front of him.

Around him, the office was moving with controlled urgency. Marco was reviewing security protocols for Dimitri’s insertion. Claude was doing final checks on the PharmTech Staffing Solutions digital presence. Mike was on a conference call with extraction teams, coordinating timing and logistics.

And Dimitri was moving between them all, reviewing everything, asking questions, pushing for details, preparing for a mission that in less than two weeks would either save millions of lives or cost him his own.

Thomas checked the forum again.

8:52 AM.

Still nothing.

The Covenant typically posted recruitment notices at exactly 9 AM EST on Friday mornings. It was consistent. It was predictable. Which was the only advantage they had.

8:58 AM.

Thomas’s heart rate increased slightly. Two minutes. In two minutes, the post would appear. In two minutes, everything would be in motion.

He pulled up the PharmTech Staffing Solutions email client on a secondary monitor. The application was already drafted, ready to send the moment The Covenant’s recruitment announcement went live.

All it took was one keystroke. One submission. One moment of electronic action that would set Dimitri on a path toward either redemption or death.

8:59 AM.

Thomas watched the forum refresh.

The post appeared.