I drag her behind a concrete barrier—part of the loading dock infrastructure, thick enough to stop small arms. My hands run over her automatically, checking for wounds. Nothing. Clean.
“The lag.” My mind is racing. “Did you see it?”
“What?”
“The targeting. It locked onto you—I saw the laser designator—but the firing solution was late. Two seconds. Maybe three.”
The drone whines overhead, repositioning. Hunting.
“Its targeting logic is lagging.” I draw my weapon and check the magazine. Full. Not that it matters—a handgun against an armed drone is a joke. “We have to keep moving. Unpredictable patterns. Don’t give it time to calculate.”
“Diego—”
“On three. Zigzag to the tree line. Don’t run straight. Ready?”
She nods. Her face is ghost-white in the darkness, but her eyes are focused. Alert. Trusting me to get her out of this.
“One. Two. Three!”
We run.
The drone screams behind us, rotors straining as it pivots to track. I push Cassie left, then right, forcing her into an erratic pattern while I cover the rear. The laser designator sweeps across the ground—searching, predicting, calculating?—
The burst comes two seconds late. Chewing dirt where we were, not where we are.
We hit the tree line.
Branches whip at my face. Roots grab at my boots. The darkness under the canopy is absolute, the drone’s thermal sensors struggling to track heat signatures through the foliage.
But we’re not alone.
Flashlights ahead. At least three, maybe more. Moving in formation. Coordinated.
Kill team.
“Contact front.” I pull Cassie down behind a fallen log. “Three hostiles. Armed.”
“What do we do?”
What do we do? Such a simple question. Such an impossible answer.
I have eleven rounds in my magazine and one spare. Three hostiles with automatic weapons and air support. No backup. Noextraction plan. A principal I can’t protect and fight at the same time.
We’re going to die here.
The thought arrives with cold clarity. Not panic—just mathematics. The odds are impossible. The variables don’t work. I’ve been in bad situations before, but bad is different from hopeless.
This is hopeless.
“Diego.” Cassie’s voice is barely audible. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” I check my weapon again. Useless habit. “We’re not dead yet.”
“But—”
“Listen to me.” I turn to face her, holding her gaze in the darkness. “When I engage, you run. North. Keep the slope on your left. Don’t stop until you hit the road.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
