I grunt and stagger backward. “Fuck.”
Pain explodes through my chest, stealing my breath, but I force myself to keep moving.
Dr. Schuyler screams as I stumble, clutching at my side where blood is already soaking through my jacket.
I deposit Dr. Schuyler at the doorway. “Stay there,” I order before whirling around to find Bianca.
“Alessandro!” Bianca’s voice cuts through the chaos, but she’s pinned down behind an overturned car, blood streaming from her shoulder and a fresh wound along her scalp where another bullet skimmed her skull.
“Goddammit Bianca!” I yell, starting to move toward her—pain be damned—but then I pause.
I see a sniper.
Muzzle flash from a fourth-floor window, the distinctive bark of a .308 that’s been targeting our position.
The shooter adjusts his aim, the rifle swinging toward where Dr. Schuyler huddles in the doorway.
I throw myself sideways, tackling the terrified witness to the ground just as the bullet punches through the space where her head had been a split second before.
The impact drives us both into the concrete, my ribs screaming in agony as we hit.
“Stay down!” I shout, but more bullets are already incoming.
Bianca breaks from cover in a desperate sprint toward our position, her left arm hanging useless but her right hand still firing with deadly accuracy.
She drops two more shooters, but the crossfire is too intense.
A round catches her in the thigh, sending her stumbling. Another grazes her neck, painting her throat with blood.
“No!” I shout, every instinct in me screaming to go get her.
She goes down hard, grunting as she does so, but rolls behind a concrete planter that’s already being chewed apart by sustained automatic fire.
“We need to move!” she calls out, her voice weaker now but still full of fire. “The courthouse is only three blocks?—”
The explosion cuts off her words.
A grenade lands ten feet away, close enough that the blast picks me up and slams me into the building wall.
My ears ring with a sound like church bells, and everything goes fuzzy around the edges.
Through the smoke and debris, I can see Bianca trying to push herself up, blood covering half her face, her tactical gear torn and smoking.
Through blurry vision, I hear Bianca scream, the not bloodied part of her face white as she stares at something just to my right.
Why is she screaming? What even happened?
I turn my head and what I see makes my heart nearly stop.
Dr. Schuyler isn’t moving.
Her body is slumped against the wall, her glasses broken and knocked away as her head hangs forward.
“No!” Bianca screams.
More figures emerge from the smoke—at least six more shooters.
They’re wearing gear that matches ours, and for a moment I wonder if they’re backup. Then I see their faces.
