Fence line. Outbuilding. Main structure with light bleeding through a cracked window. A tower in the distance with a weak red blink.
I taste adrenaline like iron.
“Stack,” I murmur into comms, and my team shifts into place without talking. We move like we’ve trained together for years, because we have. Everything in us is built for this: bad terrain, bad visibility, a bad guy holding something precious.
But this time the “something precious” has a laugh that lives in my ribs now.
Chen’s voice crackles. “Crewe, drone activity is spiking. They’re minutes out.”
“Understood,” I say. “We’re going in.”
We reach the main building—an old operations shack retrofitted into something more. There’s a keypad on the door. A camera above it.
I point. My teammate takes it out clean and quiet. The light on the camera dies.
We breach.
The door gives with a controlled shove. Warm air spills out, thick with electronics and stale coffee and the faint chemical sting of disinfectant. My vision adjusts to dim interior light—screens glowing, wires snaking, equipment stacked too neatly for a place that’s supposed to be dead.
The room is split. There’s an outer space that looks like a makeshift command center, and a closed door deeper in. Voices leak through that door.
A man’s voice. It’s smooth and confident. Stanton.
Another voice. It’s lower and tighter. Hammond.
My jaw locks.
I signal my team. They fan out like silent shadows.
“On three,” I breathe.
One.
Two.
Three.
We hit the door.
It swings open hard.
For one suspended second, everything freezes—the men inside staring, their hands half-raised, their faces caught between shock and calculation.
Then everything moves.
Hammond is at a console, fingers hovering over keys like he can still fix this with a few clicks. Stanton stands near another screen, suit jacket off, sleeves rolled up like he thinks he’s a soldier instead of a parasite.
And Riley?—
She’s in a chair near the far wall, wrists bound, cheeks pale, hair mussed, eyes wide and furious.
Her gaze locks on mine.
Relief hits her face so fast it almost breaks me.
My chest tightens so hard it hurts. “Riley,” I breathe.
She tries to stand. The ties hold her back.
