"Engaging hostiles on the north side." Axel, calmer, the professional soldier showing through. "We're holding, but we need—" A burst of gunfire cut him off. When his voice came back, it was strained. "We need to move soon or we're going to be overrun."
The radio crackled again. Blade's voice this time, distant and pained, barely audible over the chaos: "We're pinned down at the front! They've got reinforcements coming from the east. We can't?—"
Static swallowed the rest. Then Hawk's voice, steady despite everything: "Blade is hit. I repeat, Blade is down. Looks like chest wound—he's still moving but he's out of the fight." A pause, the crack of his rifle audible through the transmission. "I'm laying down suppressing fire but there's too many of them. Get that shipment and get out."
Blade. Down. Maybe dying.
Tank's face went white, the blood draining from his cheeks in an instant. But his hands stayed steady on his weapon, his jaw set in a hard line. He couldn't fall apart now. None of us could.
"We need to move." He grabbed my arm, pulled me into a crouch. "The forklift's not going to hold. On three, we break for the shelving unit at two o'clock. Ready?"
I nodded, checked my rifle's magazine, and made sure the safety was off.
"One. Two. Three."
We broke from cover into a storm of bullets. The air around us came alive with death—rounds snapping past, sparking off metal, punching through crates in explosions of splinters and packing material. I ran in a crouch, firing as I moved, not aiming so much as suppressing, trying to keep heads down while we crossed the open ground. A bullet tugged at my jacket sleeve. Another cracked past my ear, close enough to feel the heat of its passage.
We reached the shelving unit with a slam against the metal frame, gasping for breath, swapping magazines with hands that shook only slightly.
"We need to find another—" Tank started.
The explosion came from nowhere.
One second Tank was beside me, solid and real, his shoulder pressed against mine. The next, a wall of force slammed into us—a secondary blast, something igniting near our position—and I was airborne, tumbling, crashing into a metal shelf that collapsed around me in a cascade of boxes and debris.
My ears rang—a high, keening whine that drowned out everything else. My vision swam, dark spots dancing at the edges. I tasted blood, copper and thick on my tongue, and when I tried to breathe, pain lanced through my ribs like a knife.
My rifle. Where was my rifle?
I groped blindly, hand scraping across concrete and debris, but the weapon was gone—buried somewhere under the collapsed shelving, or thrown clear by the blast. I had my sidearm, the Glock holstered at my hip, but against this many men?—
Move. Get up. Move.
I pushed myself up on shaking arms, ignoring the agony in my side. The world tilted and spun, smoke filling my lungs, making me cough. I couldn't see Tank. Couldn't see anyone. Just twisted metal and scattered debris and the flickering orange glow of spreading flames.
"TANK!"
No answer. Or maybe there was an answer and Icouldn't hear it over the ringing in my ears. I stumbled forward, one hand pressed to my ribs, the other drawing my pistol from its holster. The familiar weight of the Glock was reassuring, but it was a poor substitute for a rifle against the army Cross had waiting. The smoke was thicker now, making my eyes water, turning everything into gray shadows and dancing firelight.
"Tank!"
"I'm okay!" His voice came from somewhere to my left—muffled, distant, butalive. "I'm okay. Shelving collapsed between us. Find another way around!"
I tried. I moved. But something was wrong.
The guards around me—I could see them now, shadows moving through the smoke—they weren't shooting. They were advancing, yes, weapons raised, but their fingers weren't on triggers. They were forming a perimeter. Closing in. Moving with coordination that suggested communication, orders, a plan.
They were herding me. And I realized, with a sick certainty that settled into my stomach like ice, that I'd known this was coming. From the moment Cross's voice had echoed through the speakers, I'd known. This wasn't just a trap for Phoenix.
This was a trap forme. "They want me alive," I breathed, the words barely audible over the chaos. I keyed my radio with shaking fingers. "Tank, they want me alive!"
I ran. Not toward Tank—the debris blocked that path, a wall of twisted metal and burning crates—but toward an opening between shelving units, a gapin the tightening noose. My legs felt like rubber, my ribs screamed with every step, but I pushed through the pain because the alternative was worse.
A guard stepped into my path. I raised my pistol, fired twice, watched him crumple. Kept running.
Another guard. Another. I was burning through ammunition, operating on pure instinct now, some primitive part of my brain taking over while the rest of me screamed in terror. I had to find a way back to Tank. Had to regroup, had to?—
A blow caught me from behind. Something hard against my skull—a rifle butt, maybe, or a baton. Not enough to knock me out, but enough to stagger me, to send my pistol clattering from suddenly nerveless fingers. I stumbled, fell to one knee, tried to rise.
