Chapter 26 #2
“Then we find them on the way.” Bear’s voice was steady, but his eyes weren’t. “We find all of them. Derek, Theo, Callum, Morgan. We get everyone out.”
Lincoln heard what Bear wasn’t saying: My brother might be dead, and I’m choosing to move forward anyway because standing still won’t save anyone.
“Lead the way,” Bear said.
They navigated by memory and desperation. The fire was spreading faster now, smoke thickening in the corridors until visibility dropped to a few feet. Lincoln’s eyes burned. Every breath felt like inhaling glass.
Around them, the building was dying by degrees—supports cracking, ceiling panels dropping, the deep bass rumble of concrete failing somewhere out of sight. Randall hadn’t cared if the whole place came down after he got what he wanted.
The service corridor was partially blocked but passable—they had to climb over debris, squeeze through gaps that scraped against Lincoln’s injured shoulder and made him bite back sounds of pain.
The smoke was thinner here, but the heat was building, the fire chasing them through the building’s bones.
They found the others in a maintenance alcove near the north junction.
Theo had Callum’s arm over his shoulders, holding him upright.
Callum’s face was gray, his teeth clenched, one leg soaked with blood from a wound that looked bad even through the makeshift bandage someone had tied around it.
Derek leaned against the wall nearby, his breathing shallow and wrong, one arm wrapped around his ribs in a way that suggested something was broken underneath.
“Christ.” Derek’s voice came out thin. “Thought you two were dead.”
“Not yet.” Lincoln assessed them with the clinical eye he couldn’t quite turn off.
Callum’s wound was arterial or close to it—he’d lost significant blood and was losing more.
Derek’s breathing pattern suggested fractured ribs, possibly a collapsed lung.
Theo was the least injured, but the shake in his hands said the adrenaline was wearing off and shock was setting in.
None of them could move fast. None of them could fight.
“Randall has Morgan,” Lincoln said. “Took her during the blast. This whole thing was a setup.”
Callum’s jaw tightened. “Go.”
“You need help.”
“And she’s running out of time. If Randall successfully gets her out of here, he’ll make sure you can never find her again.” Callum met his eyes, steady despite the pain. “Take Theo and Bear with you. We’ll get out. Derek and I will lean on each other if we have to. But you need to move. Now.”
Derek pushed off the wall, swaying slightly before he caught himself. “He’s right. We’ve got each other. Go find Morgan.”
Lincoln hesitated. The variables ran through his head automatically—probability of successful extraction with injured teammates, time cost of assisted movement, likelihood of structural collapse in the next ten to fifteen minutes.
The math was ugly. The math said leaving them improved everyone’s odds, including theirs.
He hated that the math was right.
“North corridor, fifty meters, then the loading dock exit,” Lincoln said. “That’s your best route out. Stay low—the smoke’s thinner near the floor.”
Derek nodded, already reaching for Callum’s other arm. “We know the drill. Go.”
He turned to Theo and Bear, about to tell them to go with Callum and Derek.
Theo stepped forward. “Don’t even say it. I’m coming with you. They’ll make it.”
“Me too.” Bear was already moving, his wounded arm hanging useless but his eyes sharp.
They left Derek and Callum behind. Lincoln forced himself not to look back, not to run the calculations on their survival odds, not to think about what it would mean if they didn’t make it out. There was only forward. Only Morgan.
The three of them pushed deeper into the building.
Lincoln tracked signs of recent passage—scuffed dust, fresh boot prints in the debris, a door left ajar that should have been sealed.
His body led while his mind struggled to accept its diminished role, still reaching for data that wasn’t there, still trying to model and predict and calculate when all he had were eyes and ears and instinct.
Instinct is just pattern recognition the conscious mind hasn’t caught up to yet.
He’d told Mercury that, eighteen months ago. Meant it as dismissal. Now he was betting Morgan’s life on it.
The corridor narrowed ahead—old machinery creating a bottleneck, shadows pooling where the emergency lights didn’t reach. Lincoln’s instincts screamed before his conscious mind caught up.
Ambush point.
He threw himself sideways as the first shot cracked past his head.
Three of Randall’s men were positioned in the choke point—professional spacing, overlapping fields of fire, exactly where Lincoln would have placed them if he’d been defending this approach.
The firefight erupted in the confined space, muzzle flashes strobing through the smoke, the sound deafening off the concrete walls.
Bear and Theo engaged, using the machinery for cover, returning fire in controlled bursts. One of Randall’s men went down. Then another. But the third had good position, and every second they spent here was a second Morgan didn’t have.
“Go!” Bear shouted between shots. “Straight through, then left—I saw the schematics too. We’ve got this one!”
Lincoln didn’t argue. He moved.
Low and fast through the choke point while Bear and Theo kept the remaining shooter pinned. A bullet sparked off metal inches from his head. Then he was through, into the corridor beyond, alone.
Behind him, the gunfire continued for three more seconds. Four. Then silence.
He didn’t know what that meant. Couldn’t go back to find out. Had to trust that Bear and Theo were the ones still standing, that the silence meant victory and not loss.
Had to trust.
The industrial section opened before him. High ceilings lost in smoke and shadow. Metal shelving against the walls. Battery-powered lights casting harsh pools of illumination through the haze. And there, in the center of the space—
Lincoln’s heart stopped.
Randall had Morgan by her hair, dragging her across the room. She was fighting—twisting, pulling against his grip—but she was exhausted, outmatched, her struggles weakening with every step toward that metal fucking box.
Two guards flanked them. Weapons ready. Attention on their prize.
No one had seen Lincoln yet. He didn’t announce himself. Didn’t hesitate.
Didn’t think. Just allowed himself to go on instinct.
Three rounds into the nearest guard’s back. The man dropped before anyone registered Lincoln was there.
The second guard spun, weapon coming up. Lincoln was already moving, already firing—two shots center mass that punched the man backward into a shelf of old equipment.
But Randall was fast. Professional despite the chaos. He yanked Morgan in front of him before Lincoln could line up the shot, one arm locked around her throat, using her body as a shield.
Standoff.
The fire was roaring now, getting closer. Smoke seeped through gaps in the walls, through cracks in the ceiling, filling the space with a haze that made Lincoln’s eyes water.
“You should be dead.” Randall’s voice was calm. Irritated, like Lincoln was an inconvenient variable in an otherwise solid equation.
“Disappointed?”
“Annoyed.” His arm tightened on Morgan’s throat. “But this still ends the same way. I walk out of here with her. You don’t walk out at all.”
Lincoln kept his weapon trained on the only parts of Randall he could see—a slice of shoulder, a fragment of head, nothing that wouldn’t risk hitting Morgan. She was looking at him, her eyes bright with terror and exhaustion and something else.
Something that looked like a decision being made.
He saw the shift in her expression. Saw her shoulders drop slightly, her body settling into what looked like surrender. Like she was giving up.
Then she went limp.
Complete dead weight, no warning, every muscle releasing at once. Her body dropped straight down, and Randall stumbled, his grip shifting to compensate for the sudden drag, his balance compromised for one critical second—
Morgan stomped down on his instep. Hard.
Randall’s arm loosened reflexively as he let out a yell, and Morgan drove her elbow back into his ribs with everything she had. The blow wasn’t clean—she didn’t have the angle, didn’t have the training—but she had desperation and fury compressed into one violent moment.
Randall’s hold broke.
Morgan dropped and rolled, clearing the line of fire, and Lincoln watched her do it with something swelling in his chest that he couldn’t name. She wasn’t waiting to be rescued. She was fighting. Creating her own opening with nothing but her body and her will.
That’s my Mercury.
He fired the moment she was clear.
The shot took Randall in the shoulder—exactly where Lincoln aimed, avoiding center mass where a through-and-through might still reach Morgan. The impact spun him sideways, blood spraying across his expensive suit, and he staggered but didn’t fall.
Lincoln crossed the distance in seconds, catching Morgan with his free hand, pulling her behind him, keeping his weapon trained on Randall.
She was shaking. Whole-body tremors that he could feel through his palm where he gripped her arm. But they were both alive and both here. That was all that mattered.
“I’ve got you.” His voice was rough, reduced to a rasp by smoke and fear. “I’ve got you.”
Randall was down on one knee, wounded shoulder hanging, blood soaking through his jacket. But his eyes were clear. Full of calculating rage as he pushed himself back up. Staring only at Morgan.
Lincoln pulled the trigger—easiest decision he’d ever made.
Click. Empty.
He’d lost count of his shots in the chaos—the guards, the choke point, the desperate run through the building. Rookie mistake. The kind of mistake that got people killed.