The tactical part of my brain is impressed even as the human part knows she can't hold out much longer. The muzzle flashes are getting closer together—they're tightening the noose.
She's still alive. Still fighting.
I leap the six-foot gap between buildings, catching the maintenance ladder on the exterior wall. The metal groans but holds.
The seventh-floor window is locked—I use my tactical pen to shatter it at the corner, the sound masked by a passing truck.
Glass falls inward, and I follow, landing in a crouch in someone's hallway. A child's drawings line the walls—crayon superheroes and monsters, a normal family sleeping through a war zone. I move past their door, silent as smoke, taking the stairwell up one floor.
The eighth-floor hallway reeks of death—that particular copper-and-cordite cocktail that means close-quarters execution. The emergency lighting paints everything hellish red, turning blood pools black and making shadows dance like demons.
I climb fast, reach the eighth floor, and jimmy the hallway window. The smell of blood is stronger here, mixed with cordite and death.
The hallway is dark, with emergency lighting casting red shadows. Three bodies in FBI tactical gear sprawled near the stairwell door. Real FBI, based on their equipment.
Brass casings on the floor, but not from the FBI weapons. These are 9mm Parabellum, subsonic rounds designed for suppressed fire. Professional killers, not random thugs.
Someone orchestrated this to look like Savannah Cross killed three federal agents, adding cop-killer to whatever frame job they're building.
Each shot execution-style, close range, suppressed weapons. They never saw it coming.
I move past them, weapon up, following the sounds of combat from apartment 817.
Shell casings, every few feet, roll under my boots with tiny metallic clinking sounds. Someone's apartment door is cracked open, an eye visible in the gap before it slams shut—civilians smart enough to hide but curious enough to watch.
The sound from 817 is chaotic—furniture breaking, glass shattering, someone grunting in pain. Then a flash of white light under the door, followed by a man's scream. Whatever Savannah Cross is doing in there, she's not going down easy.
The door's been breached, hanging off its hinges. I slice the pie, taking the corner carefully, and the scene inside stops me for a heartbeat.
The apartment looks like a war zone. Furniture overturned to create defensive positions, kitchen drawers yanked out and emptied—she's been improvising weapons. Blood spatters the walls in arterial sprays, one body already down near the kitchen, clutching his throat where a knife found its mark. A laptop taped to her torso is visible through her torn blouse—creative and desperate in equal measure.
She's turned her home into a killing field, and she's still standing.
She moves like someone with training—not military, but something. Martial arts, maybe, the way she shifts her weight, always balanced, never over-committing.
When one of the fake agents rushes her position, she doesn't retreat. She redirects his momentum, uses his weight against him, and suddenly, he's stumbling into her knife range.
Savannah Cross wields kitchen knives like she knows how to use them. Her blouse is torn, showing the computer secured to her body. Blood—not hers—spatters her face. Aluminum foil balls litter the floor. Smart chick. She's made improvised flash-bangs from match heads and kitchen supplies.
Four men in FBI gear are trying to flank her position. She throws another foil ball, and it explodes in white light and smoke. One attacker stumbles back, and she puts a knife into his throat with disturbing accuracy.
Make that three.
The knife throw isn't lucky—she's practiced this. The rotation is perfect, the force exactly what's needed to penetrate the soft tissue of the throat. The man goes down gurgling, hands trying to stem the flow, but she's already moving, not watching her handiwork.
One hostile is advancing from her left, using the overturned couch as cover. Another is circling right, trying to get an angle through the kitchen. The third—the one I'm most worried about—is hanging back, speaking into a throat mic, probably calling in reinforcements.
They're coordinating, trying to time their assault.
Savannah doesn't wait for them to get set. She grabs what looks like a can of cooking spray and a lighter from beside her defensive position.
Homemade flamethrower.
The stream of fire forces the left-side attacker back, his FBI windbreaker catching fire. He drops and rolls, screaming, out of the fight temporarily.
But it's a feint. While they're focused on the flame, she's already moving, rolling right, coming up behind the kitchen attacker. He spins, raises his weapon, but she's inside his guard. An elbow to his solar plexus, a knee to his groin, and as he doubles over, she drives her knee up into his face.
The crunch of cartilage is audible even from my position. He goes down, and she strips his weapon, but fumbles with the safety—not as familiar with firearms as she is with improvised weapons.
