Zorro’s voice crackled softly in his ear. “Sound loops. Could be directional audio. They’re pumping fear into the canopy.”
A rustle up ahead. Movement, not fast, not loud. Something white flashed between the trees. Small. Slender. Human? Flint dropped low, growling. Bear raised a fist…halt.
Bailee stepped in, soft and quiet. “Bear…that looked like a girl.”
He’d seen it too. Pale paint. Tattered dress. Dark eyes reflecting light just long enough to vanish. He exhaled through his nose. “That’s the illusion. That’s what they’ve been selling.”
They advanced slowly now, wary of tripwires, hidden sentries, the psychological warfare draped in the myth of the Whispering Earth.
Without warning, gunfire tore through the silence. A burst, then another. Muzzle flashes lit the jungle wall.
“Contact left!” Zorro shouted.
Bear dropped low, returned fire. “Flank wide! Push them back toward the cave!”
Gunfire burst in steady rhythm, the team fanning out. Flint launched into the brush with lethal grace. Bailee fired from behind a tree, methodical and unflinching. Sayers covered her six, taking a grazing hit to the shoulder, but stayed standing.
Figures broke from cover, camouflaged men with tactical gear smeared in false tribal paint. Bear’s mind cataloged every detail. They wanted to be seen as myth. As monsters. But they bled like men.
He drove forward, firing as he moved, clearing space for the team to press toward the cave. The traffickers entered, the team followed, and they ran after them, night vision giving them eyes in the dark.
One of the traffickers tossed something metallic, which bounced off rocks with a ping.
“Grenade!” Joker shouted.
Boom.
Rock and earth exploded downward. The entrance began to collapse.
“Fall back!” Bailee screamed but it was too late.
The world cracked. Dirt swallowed light. Then there was only dust and dark.
The world went white, then black. Bear hit the ground hard, shoulder first, the blast still ringing in his ears. Dust poured in like smoke, thick, choking, blinding. He couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear. Could only move. He rolled, came up into a crouch, weapon ready.
Flint was there, pressed to his side, body tense but unhurt. His growl was low, uncertain.
Bailee.
Bear turned, coughed, wiped grit from his eyes. Shapes flickered through the haze. Stone shards. Cracked vines. The collapsed mouth of the cave, now a wall of jagged rock.
“Bailee,” he rasped.
A cough. Then a voice. “Here.”
He lunged toward the sound.
She was half-buried beneath a fallen branch, covered in dust, blood on her temple, but conscious. Alive. Her rifle was gone, buried or blown, but she was already pulling a sidearm free.
“Easy,” he said, crouching. “You hurt?”
She shook her head, winced. “No breaks. Just rattled.” Her eyes flicked upward. “Where’s the team?”
He didn’t answer because he didn’t know.
He depressed his comm. “Bear to Joker. What is your status?” Nothing but static. Bear looked around. “The rock is interfering,” he said. No signal could get through. He prayed his brothers were all right, but with no comms, no light from behind, the only way forward was deeper.
Bear reached down and pulled her up. She swayed once, then steadied. Flint took point automatically, scanning the tunnel ahead.
