Chapter Six
Rangi felt the moment the world gave way. It wasn’t the sound—the crack of failing concrete or the shouted voices closing in behind them.
It was the shift. The subtle, sickening drop beneath his weight. The instant his body knew before his mind caught up. Then he was falling.
Air tore past him, dust and debris raining down as the structure collapsed in a violent cascade. For a split second, there was nothing but motion—no ground, no direction, no control.
Then impact. Hard. Brutal.
Rangi hit the lower-level shoulder first, the force knocking the breath from his lungs in a sharp, silent burst. Pain flared along his ribs, his back, his arm—everywhere at once—but he rolled with it, instinct taking over before thought could catch up.
He came up on one knee, coughing, vision blurring—
“Alexios!”
Nothing.
The silence that followed hit harder than the fall.
Rangi’s head snapped up, scanning the fractured space around him.
The lower level was worse—far worse—than above.
The collapse had torn through multiple floors, leaving a jagged crater of broken concrete and twisted steel.
Dust choked the air, thick and suffocating, turning everything into shifting shadows.
No sign of him.
Rangi’s chest tightened. “Alexios!”
Still nothing. Fear hit then. Not sharp. Not panicked. But deep and it left him feeling so fucking cold. The kind that wrapped around his ribs and squeezed.
No. No! He would not accept anything less than survival.
He pushed to his feet, ignoring the way his body protested, forcing himself forward across unstable ground. Every step shifted under him, debris sliding, threatening to give way again.
He didn’t slow. Couldn’t.
“Alexios!”
A sound—faint, strained—cut through the dust.
Rangi turned toward it instantly.
There. Pinned.
Alexios was half-buried beneath a slab of concrete, one arm trapped, blood dark against the dust-coated fabric of his shirt. His head was tilted back against the rubble, jaw tight, breath uneven.
But he was alive. Thank God. Rangi closed the distance fast, dropping to his knees beside him.
“I’ve got you,” he said, already assessing, already calculating.
Alexios huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “You always do.”
Rangi didn’t answer. They didn’t have time.
He braced his hands against the slab, testing the weight.
Too heavy. Too unstable.
If he shifted it wrong—
“Don’t overthink it,” Alexios muttered, reading him like he always did. “Just do it.”
Rangi shot him a look. “You’re not helping.”
“Funnily enough, I was actually trying to help. I don’t exactly want to hang out here waiting for the next trigger hungry mother fucker to come in and shoot me.”
Even now. Even here. That was them.
Rangi adjusted his stance, planting his feet, ignoring the tremor in the ground beneath them. He took a breath—
Then pushed.
Muscles strained.
Concrete groaned.
The slab shifted—barely but not enough.
Above them, boots pounded, getting closer. Voices carried through the broken structure.
“They’re below!”
“Move!”
Rangi’s pulse kicked harder.
Time was gone. He reset his grip, teeth grinding. Again. He shoved harder this time, dragging the slab just enough—Alexios yanked his arm free with a sharp hiss of pain.
The slab dropped back into place with a heavy crack.
“Up,” Rangi snapped, already hauling him upright.
Alexios staggered once, then found his balance, leaning into Rangi just enough to stay steady.
“I’m good,” he said automatically.
“You’re not,” Rangi shot back.
“I will be.”
Gunfire erupted above them.
Concrete rained down.
“They’re coming through,” Alexios said, voice tightening now.
Rangi scanned the space.
No clear exit. No safe path. Just collapsed walls and angles and a narrowing field of options.
This was it. They had run out of moves. Rangi’s gaze flicked to Alexios—really looked at him now.
Blood. Pain. Still standing. Still fighting.
Something in Rangi’s chest cracked wide open.
He wasn’t losing him here. Not after everything. Not when they hadn’t even had the chance to—
A memory surfaced, sharp and clear.
A car.
Black.
Flames licking along the edges.
A driver no one could touch. A ghost in the circuit. Ahi.
Rangi exhaled slowly.
“We need him,” he said, voice low.
Alexios looked at him, something flickering in his expression. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “We do. For more than just to save our asses.”
The first of the enemy dropped through the broken floor above.
Then another. Weapons up. Eyes locked on target. Rangi shifted in front of Alexios without thinking.
If this was where it ended—then it ended with him between Alexios and the world.
The first shot rang out.
Not theirs.
Not the enemy’s.
Different. Sharp. Precise.
The man in front of them dropped before he could fire.
Rangi froze.
Another shot. Another body hit the ground.
Silence followed.
Then—
An engine. Low. Growing. Familiar.
Rangi’s head snapped toward the blown-out wall at the far end of the structure. Headlights cut through the dust.
Blinding.
The engine roared louder—
Then the car burst through the debris in a spray of concrete and steel.
Black.
Low.
Flames licking along the sides like something alive.
It didn’t slow, and the driver did not hesitate. It hit the remaining hostiles with controlled, devastating force, sending bodies scattering as it carved a path straight through the center of the room.
The car spun—tight, precise—coming to a stop inches from where Rangi and Alexios stood. The engine idled.
Heat rolled off it in waves.
The driver didn’t move at first.
Helmet on.
Visor down.
Unrecognizable.
But Rangi knew.
“About damn time,” he muttered.
The door opened.
And Ahi stepped out of the fire.
****
Inside the helmet, the world reduced to angles, speed, and the clean geometry of violence.
Keanu’s breath was steady in his ears, a quiet metronome beneath the engine’s low, predatory idle.
The visor filtered the dust and glare into muted bands of light and shadow, sharpening edges, flattening distraction.
Heat rolled up from the hood, bled through the chassis, settled into his bones like something remembered.
“Breaker, talk to me,” he said, voice low over comms.
A beat of static. Then Luca—dry as ever, threaded with focus. “You picked a hell of an entrance, Ahi. We’ve got three additional tangos moving in from the south stairwell, two on the mezzanine. I’m in their system—pulling everything they didn’t want found.”
Keanu’s jaw tightened beneath the helmet.
“Copy that,” he said. “Search every single one of them. Take whatever they have on them.”
“Already moving,” Luca replied. “Victor and Drew are sweeping the lower spaces. Tane’s clearing a path to your position. Kael’s coordinating exit for the rest of the team, as I am assuming you’ll exit the way you came.”
“Hell yes,” he growled.
Good. Family in motion.
He stepped forward, boots crunching over broken concrete, the car idling behind him like a loaded weapon waiting for a trigger.
Rangi stood between Alexios and the threat, body angled protectively in front of him, who was bleeding. But at least he was still upright, and no doubt still dangerous.
Keanu clocked everything in a glance.
Injury, moderate. Mobility, compromised but functional. Threat vectors, closing in around them quickly.
And something else. Something familiar. That pull that had been there six years ago.
“We have to move,” Keanu said, voice flattened by the comms distortion, unrecognizable, stripped of identity.
Rangi didn’t move. Of course he didn’t.
Keanu felt the ghost of a smile touch his mouth beneath the helmet.
“Not without him,” Rangi said, chin lifting a fraction.
Keanu’s gaze flicked to Alexios.
The Greek met it without flinching, eyes sharp despite the pain, assessing, measuring.
Good.
“Wasn’t planning on leaving him here,” Keanu replied.
Gunfire cracked from the upper level.
Concrete burst along the wall behind them.
Time up as men walked into the space they occupied.
Keanu moved.
Fast—precise—decisive.
He closed the distance to the first hostile in three steps, redirecting the rifle as it fired. The round went wide. His elbow drove into the man’s throat, collapsing the airway in a brutal, efficient strike. The follow-up was immediate—knife in, twist, out.
He didn’t break stride.
Second target—mezzanine edge—leaning too far, overcommitted.
Keanu pivoted, drew, and fired once.
The man dropped.
“North side’s clear,” Kael’s voice came over comms, calm and precise. “You’ve got five seconds before reinforcements hit from the west corridor.”
“Make it ten,” Keanu said.
“Working on it.”
A detonation thumped somewhere deeper in the structure—controlled, contained.
“Huh,” Drew said, sounding surprised. “That actually worked. They are delayed.”
Keanu turned back to Rangi and Alexios. “Get in the fucking car. Now.”
Rangi hesitated half a heartbeat.
Alexios didn’t. He shoved off the rubble, teeth gritted, and stepped forward.
Keanu moved with him, catching his weight without comment, shifting it efficiently so the man could keep his feet.
“Don’t slow down,” Keanu said quietly.
Alexios huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
Rangi fell in on the other side, close enough to touch, not touching.
Trust. Keanu felt it.
Filed it away.
They moved as one unit toward the car. Another hostile broke through the dust to their right. Keanu didn’t even turn his head. He fired blind over his shoulder. The man dropped mid-stride.
“Show-off,” Luca muttered.
“Focus Breaker,” Keanu shot back.
They reached the Hellcat.
Heat pulsed off it in waves, the engine’s growl low and eager, like it understood the moment.
Keanu wrenched the passenger door open. “In.”
Alexios slid in first, movements tight but controlled. Rangi followed without question, twisting to keep eyes on the structure, on the threat, on everything that could still go wrong.
Keanu slammed the door and rounded the front in one smooth motion, sliding into the driver’s seat.
The world narrowed again.
Hands on the wheel. Foot on the pedal.
Control.
“Status,” he snapped.
“Devices secured from those we took down,” Luca said. “Victor’s got a couple of thumb drives. I’m ghosting their system—leaving a burn in the logs to make it look like internal failure.”
“Charges set,” Tane added, voice calm as the ocean before a storm. “On your mark, Torch, I mean Ahi, fuck, whatever. You know who you are.”
Keanu looked once more at the building through the cracked windshield.
His grip tightened on the wheel.
“Burn it,” he said.
No hesitation. No doubt.
“Copy that,” Kael’s voice cut in—low, final. “All teams, extraction point alpha. We’re done here.”
Keanu shifted into gear. The Hellcat roared, and he glanced once at his passengers.
Rangi’s eyes were on him now. Searching. Alexios leaned back, breathing hard, gaze sharp despite the blood.
Neither of them spoke. Good. He didn’t want words. Not yet.
“Hold on,” Keanu said.
Then he drove.
The car surged forward, tearing through the remaining debris and out into the open night in a blast of heat and dust. Behind them, the first charges detonated.
The building shuddered.
Then began to collapse in on itself, fire blooming through its broken frame as Black Tide erased every trace of what had been hidden inside.
Keanu didn’t look back.
He pushed the Hellcat harder, faster, the engine screaming as they tore across the desert toward safety. Toward answers. Toward something none of them were ready for.
Inside the helmet, his breath stayed steady.
But something deeper had shifted.
And for the first time in a long time—Keanu felt something within him that he had struggled with for the past six years settle within him.