We finish our coffee. Clean up. The morning passes with agonizing slowness. Every minute stretching as we wait.
Finally: eleven hundred hours.
I power on my phone. Dial Merric. He answers immediately.
“Nadia.”
“Merric. Status?”
“We landed two hours ago. Currently en route. Five of us total.”
Five. More than I hoped. “Who?”
“Me, Rook, Sienna, Dane, and Briar.”
My breath catches. Those are some of our best. Rook’s tactical mind. Sienna’s speed. Dane’s raw power. Briar’s precision.
“That’s good. That’s really good.”
“What are we walking into?”
I give him the essentials. Syndicate research facility. Hybrid prisoners. Heavy security. Jericho’s intelligence on layout. The plan we’d developed before everything went wrong.
Merric listens. Asks pointed questions. Jericho adds details when relevant.
“Timing?” Merric asks.
“Guard shift change at Fifteen hundred hours,” Jericho says. “Security gaps for approximately eight minutes during rotation. That’s our window.”
“Tight.”
“Very.”
“All right,” Merric says. “We rendezvous at your coordinates. What time do you need us there?”
“Fifteen forty-five at the latest,” I say. “We need time to coordinate before the window opens.”
“We’ll be there. And Nadia?”
“Yeah?”
“You trust the source?”
“I trust him.”
Silence. Then: “Okay. See you at fifteen forty-five.”
The line goes dead. I power off immediately.
Jericho is watching me. “He sounds solid.”
“He is.” I check the time. “We should move. Scout the facility. Be in position.”
We gather gear. Load the truck. Move with efficiency born from years of operations.
The drive is tense. We’re heading directly toward a facility that might kill us all. Toward impossible odds that only got slightly better with five more fighters.
But we’re going anyway.
