Then we walked into the smoke.
LOGAN
The corridor was dark. The overhead lights had blown during the RPG blast, leaving only the emergency lighting—dim orange strips along the baseboards that cast just enough glow to see shapes but not details. The smoke from the front entrance drifted through the hallway in lazy currents, stinging my eyes and coating the back of my throat. The compound smelled like burning wood and scorched metal and the acrid chemical bite of spent explosives. Underneath it all, the smell of a place where men had lived—leather, engine oil, stale beer.
Diego moved ahead of me. The Desert Eagle in his right hand, the Ka-Bar beneath it in his left, both arms up in the two-weapon carry I'd seen him use at the cattle ranch. His steps were silent on the concrete floor. His body low, weight forward, the combat posture drilled into both of us and never forgotten.
I held the rifle against my right shoulder. The left one throbbed with every heartbeat—the graze pulling against Kai's bandage, the muscle beneath it hot and swollen. I could move the arm. Couldn't raise it above my chest without the painspiking white. The rifle stayed on the right side. I aimed where Diego didn't.
We moved through the building in unison. The training surfacing from muscle memory without conscious thought. Diego aimed left at every T-intersection. I aimed right.
"Clear."
"Clear."
We pushed deeper. Past a storage room—door open, shelves overturned, ammunition boxes scattered on the floor. Past what looked like a bunk room—mattresses, personal gear, the leftovers of men who'd lived here and left in a hurry or hadn't left at all. Past a bathroom where a pipe had burst from the blast and water pooled across the tile, our boots splashing through it.
"Clear."
"Clear."
The building groaned around us. The structural damage from the RPG was working its way through the frame—I could hear it in the walls, the settling creak of a building whose load-bearing capacity had been compromised. Small pieces of drywall and insulation drifted from the ceiling. The emergency lights flickered orange once, twice, then held.
Diego paused at a heavy wooden door at the end of the main corridor. The door was closed. No sound from the other side. He looked at me. I nodded.
He lifted his boot and kicked.
The door slammed inward. Diego swept left, I swept right. The Desert Eagle tracking one arc, the rifle tracking the other.
We had arrived at the common room.
Large. Thirty feet across, maybe more. Leather couches scattered in clusters. A bar along the wall—bottles still on the shelves, some of them cracked and leaking from the blast. A pool table in the corner, the felt dusty, the balls still in the rack. The emergency lighting cast the room in dim orange. Shadowspooled in the corners and beneath the furniture. The smoke was thinner here—enough to see across the room, not enough to see clearly.
I scanned every shadow. Behind the bar. Under the pool table. The spaces between the couches. Nothing moved.
"Clear," Diego said.
I lowered the rifle a fraction. Took a breath.
The blow came from above.
Something struck my forearms from overhead—hard, fast, the impact slamming both arms downward. The rifle flew from my grip and clattered across the concrete floor. White-hot pain detonated through my left shoulder as the force traveled through the graze and into the damaged muscle. My knees buckled. I staggered back three steps, my vision blurring, my arms hanging.
I looked up.
Spur dropped from between two ceiling beams. He'd been holding himself above us, wedged into the joists, his massive frame suspended by arm and core strength alone, waiting. He landed on his feet with a heavy thud that shook the floor—cat-like for a man his size, his legs absorbing the impact, the rifle he'd knocked from my hands already scooped up in one smooth motion.
Diego was spinning back toward me. The Desert Eagle coming around fast.
Not fast enough.
Spur swung the rifle like a bat. The stock connected with Diego's hands—both of them—with an impact I heard across the room. The Desert Eagle flew from his grip and skidded across the concrete, spinning, coming to rest twenty feet away near the pool table.
"FUCK!" Diego's voice, raw with pain. But he didn't stop. The knife was still in his left hand. He slashed in a wide arc towardSpur's midsection. Spur raised the rifle sideways to block—too slow. The blade caught his right backhand, splitting skin to the bone.
Spur roared. He swung the rifle once more and the butt hit the blade Diego held, sending the knife spinning across the common room. Spur quickly followed with a front kick that connected with Diego's chest, sending him stumbling back three feet.
Spur straightened. He was damaged—his right side scorched from the RPG blast, the leather on his shoulder melted, the skin beneath it angry and blistered. His swollen eye was nearly sealed shut, the left side of his face a mess of purple and crusted blood. His beard was singed on one side. His right hand was cut deep.
