"I don't like this," I breathe.
"Neither do I." Asher pauses at a junction, checking both directions. "Left leads to the children's wing. Right goes deeper into the facility."
"Left."
We turn left. The corridor opens into a wider hallway, doors lining both sides. Each door has a small window, reinforced glass, and through them I can see beds. Small beds, sized for children.
Empty beds.
"Jagger." My voice comes out rough. "The rooms are empty. No kids."
Static. Then: "Repeat that."
"The children's wing is empty. No occupants."
A pause. Long enough to make my skin crawl.
"West team, report."
"Same here." Marlee's voice is tight. "We've cleared six rooms. All empty. Beds made, no personal effects. Like they were never here."
"They knew we were coming." Asher's jaw is tight, his eyes scanning the corridor. "This is a trap."
The lights go out.
Not gradually, not with warning. One second the hallway is bathed in red emergency lighting, the next we're plunged into absolute darkness. Total. Complete. The kind of dark that swallows you whole.
“Put on the night vision goggles. Now.”
My night vision kicks in, pupils dilating, but before my eyes can adjust, footsteps echo through the darkness.
Footsteps. Lots of them. Coming from both ends of the corridor. The rhythmic thud of boots on tile, the click of safeties beingdisengaged, the whispered commands of men who know exactly what they're doing.
"Contact!" I bark into the comm. "Multiple hostiles, east wing."
Gunfire answers me.
Muzzle flashes strobe the darkness, turning the world into a series of frozen images. Guards in tactical gear, at least eight of them, pouring in from both directions. Not private contractors. These are trained operatives, moving in formation, laying down suppressive fire that tears chunks out of the walls, the ceiling, the floor.
Asher grabs my vest and yanks me into a doorway as bullets chew up the space where I was standing. Plaster dust fills the air. The smell burns my nostrils. We return fire, the kick of my rifle jarring against my shoulder, and two guards drop before the others find cover.
"West team, status!" Jagger's voice is sharp in my ear.
"Pinned down!" Marlee shouts over the sound of gunfire. "At least six hostiles. Thiago's hit!"
"How bad?"
"Shoulder. Through and through. He's mobile but bleeding."
"Rally at extraction point Charlie. Abort mission. I repeat, abort."
Abort. The word tastes like failure. Like ashes on my tongue. All those kids, gone. Moved before we could reach them, shipped off to some other facility, some other hell. And now we're fighting for our lives in a building that is designed to be our tomb.
"Moving." Asher pops out of cover, drops another guard with a double-tap to center mass, ducks back as return fire peppers the doorframe. "Jinx, cover me."
I lean around the doorframe and open up on the guards at the far end of the corridor. The rifle bucks in my hands, brass casings pinging off the floor, and two more go down in sprays of red. The others scatter, diving behind blockades and into rooms, giving Asher the opening he needs to advance.
We move down the hallway, trading cover fire, working together like we've done this a hundred times. In a way, we have. The pits taught us both how to fight, how to move, how to survive when the odds are stacked against us.
