The floodlights along the back wall swung fully toward us as Revenant’s exterior squads that had spilled around the corner made their way toward us, a cluster of armored figures in tactical gear, helmets glinting, rifles raised. They moved in formation, confident, trained, and utterly convinced they owned this strip of asphalt.
Then the first drone dropped out of the darkness above them.
It cut through the air like a blade, then hovered for a split second over the front of the formation before its payload ignited.
The explosion wasn’t enormous. That wasn’t the point. It was contained, tight, perfectly placed. Fire erupted in a blossom of orange and white, swallowing three of the guards and creating a shockwave that knocked them off their feet and sent them crashing to the ground.
The others staggered, formation broken.
“Beautiful,” Roman breathed, grinning like a lunatic, but it faltered when a cluster of armored vehicles came careening around the corner.
The second drone came in lower, skimming just above the loading dock roofline. Katya had programmed it to track the heat signatures of armed clusters outside of a fifteen-meter radius of her signal, which put the guards coming after us in a really bad situation.
It angled, corrected, and then dove.
The guards who saw it fired too late.
It slammed into the hood of one of their armored vehicles and detonated, flipping the front end into the air. The entire vehicle crashed onto its side, metal screeching as smoke poured out from the shattered engine block. Two more guards went down under the falling wreckage.
Gunfire erupted wildly from the disoriented squad.
“Take cover!” Dmitri barked.
We scattered behind crates, pillars, and an abandoned freight loader. Bullets tore through the air overhead, clipping the side of a container near Kara’s head. She ducked, cursing as she did so.
Lev leaned around his cover, exhaled once, and put a bullet directly through the visor of an advancing guard. The man dropped mid-stride.
“That’s one,” Lev said.
“Well, that’s a start,” Viktor muttered approvingly.
The third drone swung wide, circling toward the building itself. This one wasn’t for guards. It was for a distraction.
Katya’s fingers danced over the tablet. “North face, mid-section. Now this should grab their attention.”
It veered and then surged forward, rotors whining as it picked up speed. It hit the second-story windows and exploded, sending a shower of glass and concrete down onto the ground below. The inside of the building caught fire, licking upward.
The fourth and final drone hovered above us, waiting like a patient vulture.
“Hold that one,” I told her.
“I know,” she said. “I’m not wasting it.”
The guards that remained were disoriented but not entirely out of it. The front line regrouped, shielding their eyes from the smoke. Someone shouted for support.
Dmitri had already begun moving us backward toward the service road. “We can’t stay here,” he said. “We’re too exposed.”
“Limos will be here in ten seconds,” I said. “If the drivers didn’t bail.”
“They won’t,” Viktor said confidently. “I’m sure you paid them well enough.”
Dmitri snorted. “And threatened them well enough, probably.”
“There was some of that,” I admitted.
We reached the edge of the loading bay, where the asphalt dipped into a ramp leading down to a lower service road that curved behind a line of utility buildings.
Headlights cut through the darkness from the far end.
