My position on the rim gave me a clear view of the stage below us. It was at our end of the amphitheater, but the original seating down this side was covered in grass and moss. Running down would be like running down a hill, rather than a proper set of ringed stairs.
The crowd filled every available space, phones raised toward whatever was happening. Center stage, the phoenix statue caught the spotlights—wings spread wide, head tilted toward the sky.
And Noah, slack in a chair on a platform beside the statue, head lolling forward.
“Scarlett, report.”
“I’m stage left, in the wings. Malcolm’s with me. Jayce is near the soundboard.” Her voice carried that forced calm she used when things were about to go to shit. “Noah doesn’t look conscious. Drugged, maybe. Beyond Pavel, Isaac, and Thomas, we’d estimate at least six Fenix operatives, probably more.”
I studied the setup. Why gather us here? Why the elaborate misdirection with the drainage system, the fake deployment hardware, the empty trucks?
The lights spinning from the top row all pointed inward, as though replicating the canvas tarp that would have hung over top of the amphitheater.
A figure in an ornate golden mask stepped up to the microphone at the front of the stage, his arms raised like a priest at an altar. The music dimmed again. “Tonight, you witness the marriage of ancient wisdom and modern science.” His voiceboomed through the sound system. He’d been the one talking earlier. “Prepare to witness the phoenix’s rise!”
White mist erupted from nozzles around the golden statue. The crowd cheered, thinking it was part of the show.
“No!” Brooke’s scream hit me in the chest. Terror. Utter terror.
The memory slammed into me so hard I nearly doubled over. She’d seen the gunman that day. Heard the bullets fly. She’d screamed the second I’d made contact with her, knowing I was risking my life for her.
Thatwas the scream that had lived in my nightmares for six years.
But my body was already moving. The concertgoers below. Scarlett on that stage. Malcolm. Jayce.
Brooke.
Their faces pushed my memories aside. People I’d kill for. People I’d die for.
And Brooke was finally back on that list.
Not just on it. At the top of my list.
I dropped from the rim to the grassed berm, boots sliding on the slope. The white mist expanded outward from the phoenix.
Could be aerosolized Greek Fire. Could be nothing.
Didn’t fucking matter.
Behind me, Brooke’s voice cracked with desperation. “Rav, don’t! Don’t get burned!”
My shoulder ached where the bullets had gone in. A year of surgeries. Many more in physiotherapy. I could smell that lab in Afghanistan.
Geraniums.
It had smelled like flowers while I lay on the ground dying, and my woman screamed in pain.
But my legs kept pumping. The occasional step blurred beneath my boots, and whatever gash I had on my thighthreatened to force me to stop. Some part of my brain noted the crowd parting—annoyed faces, worried faces, phones swinging toward me instead of the stage.
The mist kept expanding, beautiful and terrible in the stage lights.
Through my earpiece, cutting through everything else, Percival’s voice: “Lab’s been sanitized, but we’ve got intel. One of the detainees is talking. He says—” Static cut him off for a few beats. “—gone to the egg.”
The egg?
What the fuck was the egg?
My mind tried to process this new information while my body continued its trajectory toward the stage. I had to stop this before anyone died. I was almost at the barrier when the mist drifted over the first rows of the audience.
