If he was plated up, Kade wouldn’t think twice.
But the black tee shows clearly no armour underneath.There’s blood on both arms, various rivulets with no visible entry wounds.
When he’s dead centre in the room, Kade opens fire.
He trusts Gage and the others to make a fine mess of his chest and head, so Kade goes for the ankles, dropping him easily.
It’s almost disappointing.
When the last shot is fired, he’s on the floor, not moving.
Kade keeps his gun trained on him, three bullets left just in case, but he’sriddled.‘Gage,’ he calls out calmly.
Gage kicks away the MP7.They surround him.
The moon from outside shows the blood in desaturated shades of darkest crimson.The tattoos up close are aged, some blown out.Kade reads them with interest, surprised to come across a vibrant, happy little fox with a rainbow tail sitting on the outside of his wrist.
‘He dead?’someone asks.
Kade clocks that he’s still breathing, shakes his head.
Gage looks up at Kade.‘Bet you wanna questionthisone.’
Kade parts his lips to answer but he doesn’t get the chance because his leg is viciously swept out from under him and it knocks him to the floor hard, punches his breath from his lungs.Gunfire bursts like firecrackers on a bonfire and he vaguely hears one of his men let out a pained yell followed by an unexpectedly wetsquelch.
Kade kicks up, grabs his gun, but the intruder has already fled.
He left the MP7 behind.
‘All teams, all teams,’ Kade says into the earpiece.‘Un-sub is on the second floor headed up.Move into pursuit!’
Kade doesn’t wait for confirmation.
The intruder should be leaving a blood trail a blind man could follow after taking that many rounds at close range, but there’s almost nothing, no stagger pattern, no arterial spray.He must beonsomething, Kade thinks.PCP doesn’t fit, too sharp for that, and even keta-mod or military go-pills wouldn’t stop blood loss, which means something else.Something new, maybe.
On the third floor, they sweep through the living areas.
‘Where is he?’Gage asks, scanning around.His gun moves wherever his eyes do.‘Fuck, we need the lights.Can the Watch see where—?’
Something rolls into the room,threesomethings.
Kade turns away, arm thrown over his eyes just in time as he yells at the others to get down.The flashbangs go off, sending a shockwave big enough to knock Kade flat and though he covered his eyes, his ears weren’t so lucky.Freshly winded and gasping, the concussivecrackhas ruptured his hearing, leaving only a nasty high-pitchedwhinein otherwise oppressive silence.Kade can’t hear himself breathing, can’t hear anything.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
‘Gage!’he calls out but doesn’t know if Gage responds or even if it was loud enough to be heard.Kade scrambles for his gun, stunned but not blind at least.He gets hold of it and then wedges himself behind a sofa for cover.He can’theargunfire, but he can feel it puncturing the air.
Kade slows his breathing, closes his eyes, has to calm down.
Count the rings in a cut-down tree.
One.
Two.
Three.
He crouches down and peers around the arm of the sofa he used for cover.He sees his people on the ground, some of them still moving until they’re shot dead by a reckless blast of bullets.The intruder didn’t check, he just took them all out, every single one.
