20. DANTE #4
"Fucking lunatic," I say. He kisses me again.
The noises grow louder. Voices in the corridor. The haze that had erased everything but Nyx falls apart, dissolving into the metallic smell of blood, gunpowder, and melted paint. Warehouse. We're still with the Malakovs.
Luca's voice cuts through whatever obfuscation is still alive.
"Sir," he calls. His voice falters with a stutter I've never heard.
I glance at him over my shoulder. Nyx is wrapped around my neck, nuzzling against me, kissing the blood on my jaw.
Only Luca sees this. Good.
"We have to go. Now," he says, urgent, with a forgotten confusion in his eyes.
He's right. The breach wasn't silent.
I push Nyx away. I need to distance myself from what he does to me to be efficient. I don't know how long we spent here— too long . The silence we entered into is violated by a chaotic confusion of voices and doors.
We need to get out before they corner us in this dead-end hall.
"Get up," I order Nyx. I retrieve my knife, forgotten on the floor, and sheathe it. "Can you walk?"
He nods. He pushes himself up against the arm of the chair. He's weak. But he's walking. It's enough.
"With me," I say, and he obeys with a clouded gaze. Even more than I remember, he doesn't hide it now. He looks at me as one would look at a god.
The silence is already broken. I pull a pistol from its holster.
I tap my earpiece. "Dmitry. The route through the back is compromised. Give me the alternative."
My brother's voice answers instantly, calm. " North sector. Loading Dock 3. It leads to a maneuvering yard. The containment team is already moving there. It's your only way out. "
I turn to my men, who are already positioning themselves at the broken door.
"Yury, Abram," I call out. "Sal is your shield.
" I ignore Sal's low cry. Abram presses his arm firmly to keep him still.
I look at Luca. "The boy. You've got him.
" I grab Nyx's arm, who is still staring at me with those feverish eyes, and push him towards Luca.
"Don't let anything get near him. And keep him on his feet. "
Luca nods, immediately placing himself between Nyx and the door.
"I'll clear the way," I say. "Hold formation. Move!"
We don't take three steps out of the room before the first Malakov guards appear at the end of the hall, shouting orders.
There's no time for careful aim. It's suppressive fire. The sound of my shots and my men's echoes off the concrete, deafening. Splinters of the wall fly past my face. I duck behind a metal pillar, reloading.
"Cover!" I yell, as Luca pulls Nyx behind a container.
I see more men arriving from the east junction. We're outnumbered, cornered at the back of their territory. Exactly where I didn't want to be.
But now, with Nyx behind me, the fury is fuel.
"Luca, on my signal, suppressive fire on the east junction," I say over the gunfire, through the comm. "I'm advancing on the left."
He responds with a burst of shots. It's my signal.
I break from cover, running low. Every meter towards the north dock is bought with bullets and blood.
One of Malakov's men, who was rising to shoot, falls with two holes in his chest from my bullets. But there are too many of them. They keep coming, using the mess of machinery and containers like a maze.
I dive behind a rusty forklift. Enemy bullets chip away at the metal near my head. Luca crawls to the cover beside me, pulling Nyx with him. Across the hall, I see Yury and Abram exchanging fire, using a terrified Sal as a quivering human shield.
We're pinned down. Cornered. For every man we take down, two more seem to emerge from the shadows.
"Dmitry," I call into the comm. "I need suppression on the central sector. Use the snipers."
Dmitry's response is immediate. " Understood ."
A dry crack comes from outside, from above.
It tears through the air. One of the skylight glass panels in the warehouse ceiling explodes in a shower of shards.
The Malakov guard who was on the catwalk, pinning us down with heavy fire, disappears in a red mist, falling like a doll to the floor below.
The Malakov men stop shooting for a second, confused, looking up at the ceiling, trying to understand where that shot came from.
Three more cracks from outside. Cries of pain. The west cargo door goes silent.
It's the window we needed. A moment of hesitation from the enemy.
"Now!" I roar to my team. "Move!"
I break from cover first, shooting at anything that moves. Luca follows me with a firm hand on Nyx's back, pushing him forward while firing with the other. Yury and Abram provide cover, dragging Sal with them.
We run through the open area. Bullets buzz from all sides, but the enemy fire is sporadic, disorganized. They're afraid of the ghost on the roof.
We reach a new line of cover, behind a stack of wooden pallets. The corrugated door of Loading Dock 3 is just twenty meters away. So close.
Alexei Malakov's remaining men start to regroup. They're furious.
"Suppressive fire!" I exclaim, firing short bursts in their direction, forcing them to duck, but it's a stalemate. For every second we shoot, they answer with twice the fire. We're wasting ammo we don't have.
"Sir, we don't have a clean route!" Luca says beside me, tense. He keeps a protective arm in front of Nyx.
I look at the distance. Twenty meters. We could try a desperate run, but it would be suicide. We'd lose at least one man. Maybe more. Maybe the boy. I can't risk that. I need a plan, but there's no clear path that isn't pinned down, raining bullets.
I see something move. Peripheral vision. A low, fast blur.
Nyx.
He slides away from Luca's protection, crawling low and fast towards a dusty logistics terminal propped against the wall. The computer screen is dark.
"Nyx!" Luca hisses at him. "Get the fuck back here!"
He doesn't obey. His bruised hands fly over the keyboard as he peeks over his shoulder once. Luca covers his back, and the screen flickers, coming to life. Lines of code appear and disappear faster than I can read.
I move to cover him. I can't lose him here.
"Nyx!" I yell, hoping that if he won't obey Luca, he'll obey me , but my voice is muffled by the Malakovs' gunfire.
Suddenly, a metallic grinding noise. It comes from above. An industrial crane, a monster of steel that had been dormant above our heads. It starts to move. A hook the size of a car descends. It moves sideways, dragging a multi-ton shipping container.
The shooting stops. The Malakovs look up, at the source of the noise, and the container sways.
It drops.
The container sweeps through the exact area where most of the guards were taking cover.
The sound is bony, syrupy, and it echoes. Wine-red blood spreads from under the dust. The remaining guards scatter, shooting at the ceiling. Their line of defense has been obliterated.
The path to the loading dock is clear.
I look from the chaos of the swinging container to the terminal. Nyx is looking at me. There's a small, triumphant smile on his bloodied lips.
Of course.
It's Nyx.
I had forgotten, for a moment. Seeing him so vulnerable messed with what I already knew about him. I tried to keep him hidden to protect him, but he saw the tactical problem, found a solution I would have never conceived, and executed it in under thirty seconds.
I had forgotten. Nyx is the fucking deadliest weapon I have.
"Now!" I order my team. "To the dock!"
I run to Nyx myself, grab him by the arm, pulling him from the terminal.
We leave behind a trail of crushed bodies and a blood-stained container.
The alarm sound echoes throughout the warehouse, a piercing siren that mixes with the sporadic shots from the Malakovs.
Loading Dock 3 is ahead of us—a large, corrugated metal door. Luca doesn't wait for my order. He raises the breaching shotgun and fires twice at the lock, blowing the mechanism apart.
With a kick, I open the door. A black armored SUV skids in front of us, kicking up a cloud of dust. The containment team. Perfect timing.
"Get in!" I order, pushing Nyx towards the open vehicle door. Luca helps him up. Yury and Abram arrive right behind, throwing a terrified Sal onto the car floor like a sack of trash.
I'm the last one in. Luca slams the armored door shut.
Inside the SUV, there is silence. The blood still covers my hands, my face, my clothes. The car accelerates. It skids down the street at top speed.
Luca checks Nyx's injuries.
But Nyx's eyes are fixed on me.
Even in the dark, even bruised and covered in dust, there's a feverish glint in them. The same look of reverence as before, but now mixed with something else. Triumph.
The blood on his mouth, on his fingers, is the same that covers me.