My hand closes around Arlo’s vest, yanking her behind the line of stacked crates outside the main doors. Her eyes flash with defiance, but she doesn’t argue.
Raze clips the last tripwire. “It’s a fucking party now.”
We move.
The entrance creaks open with a whine that echoes through the hall. I go first. Rifle raised, finger tight on the trigger.
Inside, the bunker is a corpse—long corridors of decay, old training signs still peeling on the walls.Condition Red. Code Black. Immediate Compliance Required.
And then—gunfire explodes from the east wing. Axe’s team.
Raze opens up first, suppressing fire down the corridor. Muzzle flashes bloom in the darkness, bodies dropping. We push forward, boots crushing shell casings and skulls, stepping over the dead.
My blood’s humming. My heart isn’t. This is what I’m made for. Not peace. Not mercy. Just this.
A slaughter.
Sterling’s men flood the hall from a side corridor, dressed in tactical black, faces hidden by night-vision goggles.
Arlo pulls the trigger first.
Her shot’s off-center, hits the shoulder. The man screams—until I finish him. A double-tap to the throat. He goes down, gurgling. Raze takes out two more, the rounds thudding wetly into their chests.
The hallway explodes with gunfire.
We push deeper into the facility. The fighting’s getting heavier. Blood slicks the floor, making every step treacherous. I take out a target at the end of the hall, a single shot to the head. Raze and I take point, the team spreading behind us.
“Move! Move! Move!”
I kick open a door, rifle up. The room’s empty, but a flicker of movement catches my eye through the window. A shadow disappearing into the woods.
“Down!” I yell.
A grenade sails through the window. I grab Arlo, throwing her to the ground, my body covering hers. The explosion rips through the room, the force of it lifting us off the floor. Debris rains down. Shrapnel sings past my head.
Smoke curls from the blown-out window. My ears ring. My pulse hammers.
I push off Arlo, dragging her to her feet by the vest. My eyes quickly scan her. “You hit?”
“No.” She shakes her head, adjusting her rifle on her shoulder.
“Stay down,” I bark at the others as I move towards the window.
I spot one of Sterling’s men reloading behind a scorched wall. I raise my rifle and put a bullet through his skull. He crumples without a sound.
Another. And another.
The woods are crawling with them. They’re flanking us. Sterling’s personal fucking hounds. They’re not trying to hold us back. They’re trying to keep us here.
“Raze! On me! We need to move!”
My boots slam through the bloody corridor, team behind me. Raze darts left, drops a man with a shot to the kneecap, then puts one in his mouth when he screams.
“Goddamn, I love this job,” he laughs, reloading.
We’re in the main operations center now. A huge room with screens that are shattered, keyboards sparking, bodies slumped over consoles. The air’s thick with the coppery stink of fresh blood and the acrid tang of fried electronics.
“We’re close.”
