It was only the beginning.
70
Beckett
The industrial zone loomed ahead—rows of warehouses, rusted cranes frozen against the skyline, shadows thick enough to hide an army. Hydra’s kind of ground.
And that’s exactly where they wanted us.
Cyclone’s voice crackled in my ear, tense but steady. “Drones confirm heavy heat signatures inside the main block. They’ve got men on rooftops, ground level, and trucks circling behind. We’re funneled in.”
A trap. No question.
“Then we break it before it closes,” I snapped.
Elara’s hand brushed mine as we pressed against the corner of a warehouse, her eyes sharp despite the sweat streaking her face. “Beckett, if we go in there—”
“We’re not going in,” I cut her off, scanning the rusted catwalks and shadowed doors. “We’re tearing the place apart from the outside. Hydra wants us caged. I’m not giving them that satisfaction.”
River crouched low, reloading with a sharp click. “What’s the plan?”
I exhaled hard, eyes tracking the movements in the shadows. Hydra was patient. Too patient. They thought they had us boxed. But patience was a blade—it cut both ways.
“Oliver, Gage—create noise on the south end. Blow their trucks if you have to. River, keep our right clean. Cyclone, keep that drone up—we need eyes everywhere. I’ll punch the hole.”
“And me?” Elara’s voice was steady, but I caught the edge beneath it.
I turned to her, jaw clenched. Everything in me wanted to tell her to stay behind me. To hide. To let me burn this place to the ground while she waited in the dark.
But she wasn’t hiding anymore. Not after what I’d seen in the streets. Not after the way she stood with me when every gun in this city was pointed her way.
“You stay on my flank,” I said. “Close. You see an opening, you take it. But you don’t leave my side. Ever.”
Her eyes locked on mine. Fierce. Unflinching. “Together.”
The word hit me harder than any bullet.
“Together,” I echoed.
A Hydra shout carried across the zone, sharp and guttural. Lights flared to life, cutting through the dark. The trap was sprung.
I lifted my rifle, heart steady, pulse pounding with brutal certainty.
Roger Grand thought he’d caged us. Thought he’d dragged us into his hell.
But he was about to learn—wolves don’t die in cages.
They tear the bars down.
71
Beckett
We hit them like a live wire.
The south end detonations—Oliver and Gage did their job and then some—turned the industrial zone inside out. Trucks went up in black blossoms of fire, metal screamed as it warped, and the air filled with the kind of chaos that makes an ambush fold in on itself. Hydra fighters scattered like rats from a sinking ship, and for the first brutal minute we had the upper hand.
“Punch the hole, Beckett!” River shouted, voice raw but steady. His muzzle flares cut chunks out of the nearest line of men. Cyclone’s drone painted every shadow for us, lines of red on a screen only he could read, and his feed fed me the world in small, useful bites.
