“You fucking can.” Bear’s eyes held his, refusing to let him spiral. “You learned everything we learned. Hand-to-hand. Tactical movement. Combat shooting. You just never believed you’d need it because you always figured your mind would solve any problem before your body had to.”
The fire crackled. Somewhere deeper in the building, metal shrieked against metal—a sound like the structure was squealing.
“She needsyouright now,” Bear said. “Lincoln Bollinger, theman. Not your computers. Not your data.You. So stop thinking and start moving.”
Lincoln breathed.
In. Out. Forcing oxygen past the panic, past the smoke, past the voice screaming that this wasn’t how he operated.
Bear was right.
He’d trained for this. The muscle memory was there, buried under layers of intellectual superiority and stubborn conviction that his body was merely transportation for his brain.
Time to find out if any of it had stuck.
“Okay.” Lincoln’s voice was steadier now. “Okay. Based on the schematics, there’s a service corridor on the north side. If it’s still passable, it connects to the rear section of the building. They’d have to take her through there to get her out.”
Bear nodded. Then his jaw tightened, and Lincoln saw the question he was holding back.
“Derek was near the east wall,” Lincoln said. “Theo and Callum were at the north exit. I don’t know if?—”
“Then we find them on the way.” Bear’s voice wassteady, but his eyes weren’t. “We find all of them. Derek, Theo, Callum, Morgan. We get everyone out.”
Lincoln heard what Bear wasn’t saying:My brother might be dead, and I’m choosing to move forward anyway because standing still won’t save anyone.
“Lead the way,” Bear said.
They navigated by memory and desperation. The fire was spreading faster now, smoke thickening in the corridors until visibility dropped to a few feet. Lincoln’s eyes burned. Every breath felt like inhaling glass.
Around them, the building was dying by degrees—supports cracking, ceiling panels dropping, the deep bass rumble of concrete failing somewhere out of sight. Randall hadn’t cared if the whole place came down after he got what he wanted.
The service corridor was partially blocked but passable—they had to climb over debris, squeeze through gaps that scraped against Lincoln’s injured shoulder and made him bite back sounds of pain. The smoke was thinner here, but the heat was building, the fire chasing them through the building’s bones.
They found the others in a maintenance alcove near the north junction.
Theo had Callum’s arm over his shoulders, holding him upright. Callum’s face was gray, his teeth clenched, one leg soaked with blood from a wound that looked bad even through the makeshift bandage someone had tied around it. Derek leaned against the wall nearby, his breathing shallow and wrong, one arm wrapped around his ribs in a way that suggested something was broken underneath.
“Christ.” Derek’s voice came out thin. “Thought you two were dead.”
“Not yet.” Lincoln assessed them with the clinical eye he couldn’t quite turn off. Callum’s wound was arterial or closeto it—he’d lost significant blood and was losing more. Derek’s breathing pattern suggested fractured ribs, possibly a collapsed lung. Theo was the least injured, but the shake in his hands said the adrenaline was wearing off and shock was setting in.
None of them could move fast. None of them could fight.
“Randall has Morgan,” Lincoln said. “Took her during the blast. This whole thing was a setup.”
Callum’s jaw tightened. “Go.”
“You need help.”
“And she’s running out of time. If Randall successfully gets her out of here, he’ll make sure you can never find her again.” Callum met his eyes, steady despite the pain. “Take Theo and Bear with you. We’ll get out. Derek and I will lean on each other if we have to. But you need to move. Now.”
Derek pushed off the wall, swaying slightly before he caught himself. “He’s right. We’ve got each other. Go find Morgan.”
Lincoln hesitated. The variables ran through his head automatically—probability of successful extraction with injured teammates, time cost of assisted movement, likelihood of structural collapse in the next ten to fifteen minutes. The math was ugly. The math said leaving them improved everyone’s odds, including theirs.
He hated that the math was right.
“North corridor, fifty meters, then the loading dock exit,” Lincoln said. “That’s your best route out. Stay low—the smoke’s thinner near the floor.”
