"Nitro." Mira's voice from the staircase base. One word of warning.
"Moving. Promise."
Vega and Park sweep the container corridors behind us, calling clear in sequence. But the sounds from the second floor are wrong. Too many feet on metal grating, too many doors, voices shouting over each other in at least two languages.
"Upstairs is loud," I tell Mira. "More than four."
"I hear it," she says.
"Chaos, we're moving up. On me." I look across the floor to Damian. "Reaper, hold the ground floor. Nobody leaves this building."
Damian nods once from beside the south entrance.
"Vega, Park, follow us up when you're clear down here."
Xander jogs back from the containers, sweat on his forehead, gloves dark with someone else's blood. "Right behind you."
The metal staircase rings under my boots no matter how I place them. No quiet approach, nothing to be done about it. The whole frame hums with every footfall. Mira behind me, lighter on the grating but still audible. Xander brings up the rear, the structure rattling under his weight.
"Ghost, we're on the second floor. Count is wrong, more than four—"
Static, and nothing comes back.
"Ghost, copy?"
Nothing.
"Comms are dead," I say over my shoulder. "Building's eating everything. No HQ."
"Outstanding," Xander says. "Love it."
"Keep it verbal. Everything you see, you call it."
"Hai." Mira says it before I do and it almost makes me turn around. She doesn't look up.
Top of the stairs. The second floor hallway stretches ahead under industrial lights that flicker and stutter, casting everything in sick yellow one second and near-dark the next. Narrow, two people wide at best. Doors on both sides, dented and scarred like someone's been kicking them for years.
The air hits. Sweat and urine and something chemical underneath, sweet in a way that coats the back of my throat.
"That's people," Xander says behind me, low. "That smell is people."
"Stay on it."
Vega and Park come up the stairs behind us, filling in the line. Ground floor secured.
Two men at the far end of the hallway. One with a rifle, one dragging a heavy duffel toward the back exit. The one with the rifle sees us first.
He fires before I can get a clean line. Not suppressed. The report slams off metal walls and hits from every direction, deafening in the enclosed corridor. The round cracks past my head, close enough that I feel heat brush my left ear, the displaced air moving my hair.
Two inches right and Chesca wakes up without me.
One thought, and then I'm moving.
"Contact. End of hall!" I go left against the wall, Mira goes right. Xander drops to a knee behind me, weapon up, covering the doorways between us and the shooter. Muzzle flash strobing against the dented doors. I put two rounds center mass into the shooter and he folds, rifle clattering on the metal grating.
The runner drops the duffel and sprints for the back exit, cutting across the east-facing office doorways. Too many walls between us for a clean angle.
"Runner heading northwest, no shot—"
