Then the comms died.
The sudden absence of background static fell like a blade. Morgan tapped her earpiece. Nothing. Not even the hiss of an open channel.
“Bear, confirm.” Lincoln’s voice cut through the darkness—too loud without the comms to carry it. “Derek, respond. Callum, Theo—anyone copy?”
Silence.
“Jamming,” Lincoln said. His voice had gone flat. “What the fuck? They’re jamming our?—”
The first gunshot shattered the air before he could finish.
Muzzle flashes lit up the darkness from three directions—not one or two shooters, but many. More than they’d prepared for. More than should have been possible.
Something clattered across the concrete near her feet. Morgan had half a second to register the shape before smoke erupted from it, thick and acrid, filling her lungs and stinging her eyes. Another canister. Then another. The building disappeared into a choking gray haze.
She pressed against the wall, blind now, ears ringing from the gunfire that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Somewhere to her left, Lincoln was returning fire—she could hear his weapon, could track his position by the muzzle flash that strobed through the smoke like lightning through storm clouds. She couldn’t see Bear or Derek at all.
This wasn’t a vulnerable moment they’d caught. This was a trap they’d walked into.
“Morgan!” Lincoln’s voice burst through the chaos—closer, but she still couldn’t see him in the smoke. “The corridor! Get to the exit!”
She could only hear his voice, track the direction of his muzzle flash through the haze.
“What about?—”
“We’ll cover you! Go!”
She hesitated. Every instinct screamed against leaving him, against running while he stayed behind. But she wasn’t trained for this. She didn’t have a weapon. Staying meant being a liability—something he’d have to protect instead of fight.
“I’ll be right behind you!” His voice again, closer now but still lost in the smoke. “I promise. Nowgo!”
Morgan ran.
The hallway stretched ahead, longer than she remembered from when they’d entered. Emergency lighting cast dim pools of illumination every twenty feet, islands of sickly yellow in the darkness. Her legs pumped. Her lungs burned—still thick with smoke, every breath like swallowing glass.
Behind her, the gunfire continued. She could hear Lincoln’s weapon, distinct from the others now that she knew what to listen for. Covering her retreat. Buying her time.
She passed the first emergency light. The second. Her footsteps echoed off concrete walls, too loud, but she couldn’t make herself slow down. Third light. Fourth. The corridor seemed to narrow around her, walls pressing closer, ceiling dropping lower. Just her imagination. Just panic doing what panic did.
She could see the exit now—a metal door at the end ofthe hall, the red glow of an emergency sign above it. Fifty feet. Forty. Her hand was already reaching for it, body leaning forward, desperate for the night air on the other side.
Thirty feet. Twenty.
The gunfire behind her had changed. Less of it now. She didn’t know if that was good or bad.
Ten feet. She could see the push bar on the door, the scuff marks where countless workers had shoved through it in another life, another time when this building had been something other than a trap.
Her hand closed on the handle.
The explosion hit before she could push it.
The shock wave slammed her forward into the metal door, then threw her sideways onto the concrete. Sound became a physical thing—pressure and heat and a roar that swallowed everything. She curled instinctively, arms over her head, as debris rained down around her.
Her ears rang. Her vision swam. She lifted her head, coughing through the dust and smoke, and looked back the way she’d come.
The far end of the corridor was gone.
The path back to Lincoln was now nothing but rubble and flame. The ceiling had collapsed. Support beams jutted at broken angles. Fire licked through the gaps, casting hellish shadows on the destruction.
