Chapter 62 Beckett
Beckett
Hydra didn’t break.
For every man we dropped, two more slipped from the alleys. The street wasn’t a battlefield anymore—it was a funnel. Smoke choked the air, flames chewed the market stalls, and the noise was a wall of gunfire and shouts.
And through it all, I saw Grand’s hand. This wasn’t just an ambush. It was a net.
“Cyclone!” I snapped. “Where’s their main force?”
His voice cracked through comms, tight with strain. “South side—closing fast. And Beckett… they’re not advancing like a kill squad. They’re moving to encircle.”
My gut twisted. Encircle. Not annihilate.
“They want her,” I growled.
Elara was on my flank, pistol raised, her braid whipping as she turned with me. Her face was streaked with blood and soot, but her eyes—God, her eyes—burned with fire. She wasn’t running. Not anymore.
But Hydra wasn’t trying to kill her. They were trying to drag her back alive. And that was worse.
“River! Oliver! Collapse left!” I shouted. “Don’t let them cut us off!”
River cursed but obeyed, dragging fire down the alley. Oliver covered his flank, cutting down three men in brutal precision. Gage roared as he slammed a Hydra soldier straight into a wall, then dropped him with a bullet to the skull.
But they kept coming. Herding us tighter, closer.
A spotlight flared suddenly, flooding the street in blinding white. For a split second, I saw them—Hydra soldiers in formation, trucks braced at the far end of the street. Heavy weapons mounted. And behind them, in the half-light, a banner I hadn’t seen in years—Hydra’s emblem, bold and merciless.
Elara froze, her breath hitching sharp. Her past had just stepped out of the shadows.
“Beckett,” she whispered. “It’s him. Grand’s men.”
I shoved her behind me as the first heavy round tore into the wall, brick exploding inches from my head.
“Move!” I barked. “They’re locking the street!”
Bullets rained down from the rooftops, sparking against the pavement, forcing us toward the choke point. A truck swerved to cut our retreat, more soldiers spilling from the back, their shouts a cage tightening around us.
Cyclone’s voice shouted in my ear. “We’re surrounded!”
Not surrounded. Trapped. Exactly where Grand wanted us.
I racked another round, heat burning my hands, vision tunneled in on the only truth that mattered—
“They’ll have to kill me to take her.”
And judging by the wall of Hydra bearing down on us, they damn well intended to try.