Mercs.
And they’re moving like the Yatori team moved—tight, disciplined, no wasted motion, no bravado.
Not Vakutan.
Not Coalition military.
Professional violence with an invoice.
I take three long strides onto the casino floor, my boots finally loud against the carpet because the room’s noise is shredded into panic. My men are already drawing weapons, but the crowd is in the way—hundreds of civilians stampeding, bodies slamming into each other, perfume and sweat and fear mixing into a nauseating cloud.
“CLEAR THE FLOOR!” I roar, voice carrying without amplification because I’ve got lungs built for war. “DOWN! GET DOWN!”
A cluster of gamblers collapses behind a baccarat table. A woman in a glittering dress trips and hits the carpet hard, her scream high and thin. A Fratvoyan bartender vaults the bar with acrobatic ease, landing in a crouch with a shotgun in his paws and eyes like a happy lunatic.
“Boss!” he yells. “You want me to?—”
“Not yet,” I snap. “Wait for my call.”
Gunfire cracks.
Not wild. Controlled bursts.
A security guard near the roulette wheel takes two rounds and drops, blood blooming dark across white shirt fabric like spilled ink. The crowd surges again. I feel my jaw tighten so hard my teeth ache.
Then a voice comes through my comm—female, sharp, pissed.
“Lonari.”
Jordan.
I whip my head toward the VIP corridor entrance where she’d been earlier. She’s not there. Of course she’s not there. She doesn’t hide when the world collapses; she tries to fix it.
“What?” I bark.
Her voice is tight but steady. “Your lighting grid—do you want it on or off?”
I blink once, processing. “What the hell are you doing out here?”
“Answer the question,” she snaps, and I can hear the metal in her tone. She’s scared, but she’s weaponizing it.
I glance up. The mercs are using the overhead glow to pick targets, cutting through chaos with thermal optics and disciplined movement. My men are trained, but not all of themare used to fighting in a civilian crowd where you can’t just open up with heavy fire.
“Off,” I say immediately. “Kill the lights.”
“You got it.”
A heartbeat later, the entire casino floor drops into darkness.
Not dim.
Not emergency red.
Black.
The kind of black that makes your stomach flip because your eyes suddenly don’t work and you remember you’re an animal pretending you’re civilized.
The crowd screams louder.
