LOVE BUG

CHAPTER 78: IMPOSSIBLE

Are you ready for it? 😈🎵 Definitely go listen to the Taylor Swift's song to set the mood 😘 (you can find it in the Love Bug playlist)

It's still night. Anastasia is clinging to this fact like to her compass pendant as she can't find her bearings in the dimness of this back street.

This time, she won't walk by the 'We serve and protect' inscription, and it is better this way, in the shadows and eery silence of the night. Although even here, nothing is quiet.

There is a muted rumbling echoing in the air like a tumult happening, which those large walls around are barely containing, unless it is just her shaky nerves growing more and more restless with the tick-tock of the clock?

She is about to find out as Hadi and she arrive at the door, which she knows too well... the shiny metal and the small device on the side, and when the swipe card is in her hand, she takes in how much she is trembling.

She can't even slip the thin card into the slit, and the more she tries to breathe, the more the tremors are spreading until she almost drops the entry pass on the ground.

It takes three attempts before she finally gets the card in with both of her hands gripping tightly the small rectangle, and then, she has to wait for the door to unlock, or not.

That's how these few seconds she has never really paid attention to before become the most excruciating of her life.

She can't stare at the small device and the three dots mocking her, and even less glance around, too afraid to catch sight of what is happening around, particularly in the front of the building.

So she looks at Hadi, her voice quavering more than her hands as she whispers, "Do you think it's possible?"

She has to know. Her mom and Andy are the best to encourage her, but she needs the truth.

"It's impossible."

Maybe she doesn't need the truth, as she is about to collapse on the ground with it and her shaky hope and nerves. Still, she will get inside crawling if she needs to.

"But you proved that if someone can do the impossible, it's you," Hadi continues with the tiniest hint of a smile stretching his lips and the same piercing honesty she would have never thought she would be thankful for in his eyes.

She doesn't get to reply as the beep of the device signals the door is unlocked, though the belief he has given her surely shows in her determined nod when she turns to the door, and he follows her, all their attention going back to the mission.

The second they step inside, the familiarity of the narrow hallway hits her, and if everything has felt hazy in her mind before, now, every detail appears clearly like waking up after a blurry nightmare.

She could almost believe it is just another day of work, if there weren't this ache in her chest and Hadi whispering in his earpiece,

"We're inside."

She switches on her earpiece too, barely catching Andy's reply over the strong beats of her heart.

Her heart, she hasn't felt it since she has discovered Nathaniel's sentence, but just being here, closer, it recognizes his presence, no matter where he can be.

"Sacha is waiting in the ammunition room in the west wing, and Ana, you'll go in the south's one, but first, you need to get out of this part to the main hallway–"

"I know." She leads the way, her feet walking instinctively with each thud vibrating against her pendant, so loudly that she can't even hear Hadi's steps behind.