Not here. Not like this.
The air is molten. My lungs burn with every breath.
“Priest!” Arlo screams, the ceiling crumbling around her.
He fumbles at his vest, hand slipping through the blood pooling across his ribs, and finds the grenade clipped to his harness.
“Raze—don’t.”
“I’ll give them hell.” He grips his rifle with his other hand, forcing a smirk. “Go get your stray, Priest. Tell Sterling I said…fuck you.”
“Raze—”
He shoves me back.
I stumble, crash into a burning wall. Heat sears my shoulder as I push off and spin, just in time to see him lift the rifle again. Gunfire rips through the corridor. He’s still fighting. Somewhere in that inferno, that goddamn bastard is still laughing.
Then—
The ceiling gives way fully.
Concrete and fire crash down in one deafening roar, the shockwave flinging me backward. The floor splits beneath my boots. When the dust clears, the spot where Raze had been isgone. Just a mangled heap of twisted steel and a hole burning through to the sublevels below.
“Raze!”
Nothing.
Just fire and the distant hiss of something detonating.
Grenade.
I don’t wait for the aftershock to hit. I grab Arlo’s arm and yank her with me.
Smoke claws at my throat. Heat peels at my armor, searing through layers of Kevlar and skin. Every breath scrapes like glass. The bunker groans behind me, surrendering to the fire one beam at a time.
Yanking a rifle off a corpse, I force my mind to snap back.
Focus. Hunt. Survive.
Movement flickers through the smoke ahead with recognizable tactical gear—Axe. His team’s pushing a group of Sterling’s men back, gunfire echoing through the collapsing corridor. He’s already got one boot on a body when he sees me—blood smeared across his skull mask.
“We’re clearing out!” he shouts over the roar. “The whole damn place is wired to blow! Where’s Raze?”
I shake my head.
Firelight flashes across his bloodied mask as he turns and bellows over his shoulder, “Move! East entrance! Go!”
The building groans again, louder this time—support beams fracturing above us, debris raining down in molten chunks.
We’re out of time.
“Itold you it wasn’t fucking worth it!” Priest roars, slamming his fist into the steel wall of the truck so hard it rattles the bolts. “That whole fucking compound was wired to blow!”
His eyes are wild. One hand is braced on the ceiling, the other shaking as he points at Arsen like he’s moments from snapping his neck. “Sterling’s building a war—and you handed him our blood on a silver fucking platter.”
The truck jolts. I stumble forward, catching myself on a bench. The inside of the armored truck is a battlefield of its own. Blood, shouting, men groaning, someone trying to shove a morphine injector into a bullet wound. The floor is slick with mud, ash, and more blood.
Bullets ping off the armored SUV, the enemy still chasing, refusing to let go.
