I fire blindly toward the fatal funnel, suppressing the entry, but I'm shooting at ghosts.
"Gas. Gas. Gas."
Canisters hiss across the floor, spewing thick white smoke. CS gas. In an enclosed space without masks, incapacitation comes in seconds. My eyes stream instantly, throat closing like a fist.
We can't hold this room.
"Wren." Coughing, air turning to acid. "The hatch. Go."
I scramble backward, firing toward the door to keep heads down. A round sparks off the wood stove inches from my hip. Another tugs at my sleeve.
I hit the stairs half-blind, lungs burning. Wren is there—shotgun leveled, face wet from the gas, eyes streaming. Terrified. Immovable. She waited.
"Kade?"
"Go." I shove her toward the bedroom. "Drop the hatch. Move."
She turns and sprints.
I turn to fire one last burst to cover the retreat.
Through the swirling gas, a figure looms. Not a grunt. This one moves differently—faster, lighter, stepping over the bodies of the entry team with the deadly calm of a man who expected them to fail. His weapon comes up.
He's not aiming at me.
He's aiming past me. At the bedroom door. At Wren.
Amara.
The name surfaces in the fraction of a second before my body moves. Not her face—just the name, clean and simple, the thing I've been carrying for three years. And then it's gone, because I'm already moving.
I launch myself across the hallway, throwing my body into the line of fire as his weapon flares.
Thwip-thwip.
The first round misses. The second hits.
Fire brands my left bicep—punching through muscle, grazing bone. The impact spins me and slams me into the doorframe.
My arm goes dead. The sling catches the Glock before it hits the floor.
One knee down.
The shooter steps forward for the kill shot.
BOOM.
The doorframe beside me explodes into splinters. Wren—leaning out, shotgun shouldered, firing past me. She misses, butthe violence of a twelve-gauge at close range puts the shooter behind the couch.
"Get your ass in here." The slide racks.CLACK-CLACK.
I scramble on hands and knees, adrenaline overriding the arm. I dive through the doorway and kick the door shut. It won't hold—but it breaks their line of sight.
Wren has the rug pulled back. The trapdoor is open, the black maw of the tunnel waiting below.
"Down." She grabs my good arm. Her eyes go wide at the blood soaking my sleeve. "Kade, you're hit?—"
"Get in the hole." I shove her toward the opening.
