3. Knox #2
I don’t hesitate. I grab his wrist and twist until something tears. He screams. I slam his head back against the concrete once, twice, and he goes still.
Breathing. Unconscious.
Alive, technically.
I shove to my feet and grab my weapon.
The hallway.
Damn it.
I move fast, boots pounding against the concrete, rounding the stack of crates and cutting into the narrow passage the target ran down. It smells damp back here. Mold and old wood. The lights are weaker. One bulb flickers overhead.
I hear them before I see them. Grunting. Impact. Something heavy hitting drywall.
I turn the corner.
Havoc has the target by the collar, driving him backward into a half-finished office space. The drywall caves inward when they hit it, dust exploding into the air.
“Alive!” I shout.
The target swings wildly, catching Havoc across the cheek with the butt of a pistol he must have grabbed on the way down the hall. Blood splatters the side of Havoc’s face.
Havoc laughs. Actually laughs.
“You should’ve stayed still,” he says, and drives his knee into the man’s abdomen hard enough to lift him off his feet.
The target gasps, folding forward. Havoc grabs him by the back of the neck and slams his head into the metal frame of a desk.
“Alive!” I bark again, closer now.
The man is bleeding heavily from a split scalp, but he’s still conscious. Still fighting. He claws at Havoc’s arms, desperate and animal.
“Please—” the target chokes.
Havoc freezes for one second.
Then something changes in his expression. It isn’t anger. It’s decision.
The target reaches again for the pistol trapped between their bodies.
I see it. “Havoc, don’t?—”
The shot is deafening in the confined space. For a split second, I think the target fired.
Then I see the hole in the center of his chest.
Havoc lowers his gun slowly as the man’s body slackens and slides down the front of him, leaving a smear of blood across his shirt.
The room goes quiet except for the ringing in my ears, and the target collapses fully to the floor. Dead.
Very dead.
I step forward, fury rising fast and sharp. “What did I say?” I demand.
Havoc doesn’t look at me right away. He stares down at the body like he’s assessing something. “He was reaching,” he says evenly.
“We needed him breathing.”
“He was going to shoot.”
“We could have disarmed him.”
Havoc finally looks at me. His cheek is split open. Blood runs in a thin line along his jaw. His chest rises and falls hard. “He made his choice,” he says.
“That wasn’t your call.”
“The gun was.”
For a moment, the space between us tightens. Vale appears in the doorway behind me, silent, eyes flicking from the corpse to Havoc to me.
The job just shifted.
Information gone. Names gone. Leads gone.
All that’s left is cleanup.
I step past Havoc and crouch briefly beside the body, checking out of habit I don’t need.
No pulse. No breath.
I rise slowly and turn back to him. “You don’t get to decide when we lose an asset,” I say, voice low and controlled. “Not when I’ve made it clear what the objective is.”
Havoc’s jaw tightens. “He was pulling the trigger.”
“And now he’s useless.”
The silence stretches. Vale closes the door behind him softly.
Havoc wipes at the blood on his cheek with the back of his hand, eyes never leaving mine. “You want to write the report?” he asks flatly. “Go ahead.”
It’s not sarcasm. It’s defiance.
I take a slow breath, forcing the anger down where it belongs. “This isn’t over,” I tell him.
“No,” Havoc says quietly. “It isn’t.” He steps over the body like it’s nothing more than debris and starts toward the hallway again, shoulders loose, gun hanging easy at his side.
“You don’t get to rewrite the objective because you feel like it,” I snap, following him. I’m still angry enough that my vision feels narrowed.
We needed that man alive. Needed him breathing. Talking. Giving us something to work with besides another mess.
“You don’t get to freelance in the middle of an objective,” I say. “You don’t get to decide that because you’re irritated.”
He doesn’t look back. “He was pulling the trigger.”
“And you didn’t even try?—”
Movement.
A shadow detaches itself from the far end of the hallway. One of the men we thought was down must have dragged himself up, must have stayed quiet long enough for us to shift focus. He’s bleeding badly, but he’s upright, gun shaking in his hand as he lifts it toward Havoc’s back.
I don’t see it fast enough.
There’s a whisper of air beside my ear. Not a gunshot. A soft, cutting sound.
The man jerks, and the gun discharges into the ceiling, a wild, useless shot. Then he stumbles backward, eyes wide, as if confused by what’s just happened to him.
A knife hilt protrudes from the center of his throat.
He makes a wet, choking sound and crashes through the weak railing behind him. The old wood splinters, giving way. His body tumbles down the stairwell, hitting once, twice, then landing hard at the bottom with a sickening crack.
The hallway falls silent.
Havoc slowly turns.
I do too.
Vale stands at the far end of the corridor, arm still extended from the throw, fingers flexing once as if measuring the air where the blade had been.
He doesn’t look proud. He doesn’t look shocked. He just lowers his hand and breathes out through his nose.
“That,” Havoc says quietly, almost reverently, “was brilliant.”
Vale says nothing. He simply steps forward, already moving toward the staircase. His stride is careful, precise. When he reaches the broken railing, he pauses to examine the splintered wood, as if cataloging the break, then starts down.
Havoc glances at me, a crooked grin tugging at his mouth. “You didn’t even see him.”
“I saw him,” I say, though we both know that isn’t entirely true.
Vale reaches the bottom of the stairs and crouches beside the fallen man. He grips the knife’s handle and studies it for a brief second before pulling it free in one smooth motion. Blood follows, dark and thick. He wipes the blade carefully on the dead man’s jacket.
Havoc leans over the broken railing. “Aw,” he calls down lightly, “is that your favorite one?”
Vale doesn’t look up. He inspects the edge instead, thumb hovering just shy of the blade, checking for nicks or dulling. Satisfied, he slides it back into the sheath strapped inside his jacket. Then he finally lifts his gaze toward us. Expression calm. Waiting.
We descend the stairs together. The man’s body lies twisted at the bottom, neck bent at an impossible angle, head turned too far to one side. His eyes are still open, staring at nothing.
I step around him without slowing. “Havoc,” I say, voice controlled but still tight, “this is exactly what I’m talking about. You escalate, you shift focus, and then—” I stop.
Not because of the body. Not because of the blood pooled beneath it.
Because beyond the dead man, half-hidden in the dim spill of light from a flickering bulb, there’s another room. And inside it?—
A chair. Metal. Bolted to the concrete floor.
A figure tied to it.
For half a second, my brain refuses to register what I’m seeing. Then it does.
A woman. Wrists bound to the arms of the chair. Ankles secured. Head tilted forward like she’s asleep, dark hair falling across her face. There’s dried blood on the floor not far from her, though none I can see on her skin.
She’s breathing. Slow. Shallow.
Alive.
The air in my lungs stalls. This wasn’t in the briefing. There was no mention of a civilian. No intel suggesting a hostage. The Brotherhood doesn’t tolerate loose variables.
I step forward without thinking, every instinct shifting.
The dead target upstairs no longer matters. The report doesn’t matter. The Apostles don’t matter. All I see is the woman in the chair, and the way her fingers twitch weakly against the rope.