26. Flynn
CHAPTER 26
FLYNN
“Lyric, move!” I shouted, already diving to my right as the first drone fired.
A neurodart embedded itself in the stone where Lyric had stood a heartbeat earlier. She’d launched herself in the opposite direction, rolling behind a massive stone planter as two more darts peppered the ground around her. For a split second, our eyes met across the courtyard—a lifetime of tactical training condensed into a single glance.
The crowd erupted in excitement, their previously hushed whispers transforming into enthusiastic cheers as the “entertainment” began. From his platform, Moreau watched with the smug satisfaction of a man who’d orchestrated the perfect spectacle. I wanted nothing more than to drive my knife between his ribs, but the immediate threat of the drones demanded my full attention.
I scrambled behind a decorative column as another dart whizzed past my ear, close enough that I felt the disturbed air against my skin.
Then Sentinel broke into two pieces.
Then three.
Then four.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
Swarm mode. The single unit had split into a quartet of smaller, faster drones, each independently targeting and tracking. I’d read about this in the intel briefing, but seeing it in action was another level of terrifying.
“They’re using thermal tracking!” I yelled to Lyric, who was pinned behind her planter, eyes calculating her next move. “And movement prediction!”
The knife and gun Moreau had tossed me both felt pathetically inadequate against the hovering death machines. I clutched them anyway, my only weapons against technology explicitly designed to kill people like us.
Two drones peeled off toward Lyric while the other pair circled my position. I needed to draw at least one away from her.
“Hey!” I shouted, darting from behind my cover and sprinting toward a decorative fountain. “Over here, you piece of shit!”
The gambit worked. Three drones immediately pivoted, sensors locking onto my movement. Neurodarts peppered the ground at my heels as I zigzagged across the courtyard, diving behind the fountain just as a dart grazed my shoulder.
Fuck. Even that slight contact sent numbness spreading down my arm. Partial dose. Not enough to paralyze me, but my left arm hung uselessly at my side, fingers tingling with pins and needles.
So Moreau was using the non-lethal options first.
He was toying with us, but he’d lose patience soon enough and unleash the real payload.
Explosive microblades that could peel skin off bone. A neural disruptor that scrambled your brain until you forgot your own name.
Hell, maybe even the toxic fog—silent, invisible, fatal in under a minute.
And if that didn’t break us, Sentinel could always scream. That low subsonic pitch that turned your guts to water and made even seasoned ops piss themselves.
This wasn’t just a drone.
It was an executioner driven by a man with a god complex.
“Flynn!” Lyric’s voice cut through the crowd’s excited murmurs. She’d made it to a cluster of potted trees, using the dense foliage as cover. The single drone tracking her hovered nearby, its sensors struggling to get a clean lock through the leaves.
“I’m good!” I called back, though we both knew that was a lie. “Keep moving!”
I ducked under another cluster of trees and, using the reflective surface of the knife blade, mapped the drones’ positions. They hovered at different heights, creating overlapping fields of fire that would make any direct movement suicidal. But they weren’t the only things I was tracking.
Across the courtyard, Lyric crouched under her sad bit of cover, pistol held ready. I raised my hand in a quick series of gestures.
Cover fire. Moving to flank. On three.
She nodded once, then mouthed: One. Two. Three.
Lyric broke cover first, firing two perfectly placed shots that caught one drone mid-sensor. It didn’t destroy the thing—these were built too well for that—but now that it was smaller than the first time she shot it, the bullet’s impact sent it spinning, temporarily disrupting its targeting system.
The distraction was all I needed.
I sprinted from my cover, keeping low, zigzagging between patches of cover. The remaining drones adjusted with frightening speed, their algorithms predicting my path with uncanny accuracy. A dart skimmed my shoulder, the fabric of my shirt tearing as it passed. Too close.
I dove behind a large stone urn, my shoulder slamming into the ornate base hard enough to send pain shooting down my arm. It fucking hurt, but it was better than taking a dart.
I signaled to Lyric again: Your turn. I’ll cover.
She was farther from my position than I’d like, but we needed to keep moving. The longer we stayed in one place, the more time the drones had to calculate optimal firing solutions. I broke cover, knife in hand, and hurled it at the nearest drone. A desperate move, but, holy fuck, it actually worked. The blade embedded itself in the drone’s propulsion system, sending it careening into a nearby column with a satisfying crunch of metal and electronics.
Three left.
Lyric used the distraction to sprint toward a grouping of stone benches closer to my position. The audience tracked her movement, gasping as she narrowly avoided another barrage of darts. I could see them placing bets, pointing excitedly as if we were racehorses rather than human beings fighting for our lives. The sight stoked the fury in my chest to new heights.
A flash of movement caught my eye—one of the drones had repositioned itself, hovering just above a decorative frieze to my left. I ducked as it fired, but I wasn’t the target. The dart was aimed at where Lyric would be in three seconds if she maintained her current trajectory.
“Nine o’clock high!” I shouted.
Lyric changed direction instantly, dropping into a roll that carried her behind a decorative statue instead of the bench she’d been aiming for. The dart missed her by inches, shattering against stone.
But the drones were learning, adapting to our communication patterns. While we’d been focused on the obvious threat, the third drone had circled wide, approaching from an angle I couldn’t see from my position. I heard the soft whir of its propulsion system too late.
Pain exploded in my thigh as a neurodart struck home, the needle penetrating deep muscle before deploying its payload. The effect was immediate—waves of paralyzing numbness spreading from the impact site, my leg buckling beneath me as the neural pathways misfired. I pitched forward into the open courtyard, suddenly exposed on three sides.
The crowd’s excitement surged to new heights. First blood drawn. The odds just shifted dramatically against us.
“Flynn!”
I tried to drag myself back behind cover, but my leg refused to respond, a dead weight trailing behind me. The numbness was spreading fast, already creeping up toward my hip. If it reached my torso, I’d be helpless.
The drones converged on my position, sensors glowing brighter as they prepared to finish me off. From his platform, Moreau smiled indulgently, as if watching a child struggle with a particularly challenging puzzle.
A crack split the air as Lyric’s Glock fired once, twice, three times in rapid succession. Perfect shots, each one catching a drone at the precise junction of its sensor array and propulsion system. The machines faltered, their flight paths disrupted as their systems attempted to compensate for the damage.
It bought her just enough time. She broke cover and sprinted toward me. Reckless. Courageous.
My Siren coming to my rescue.
The crowd gasped as she abandoned safety and threw herself into the line of fire. I wanted to shout at her to get back, to save herself, but there wasn’t time.
She reached me as the drones regained stability, grabbing the back of my shirt and dragging me behind a massive stone urn. A volley of darts peppered the ground where we’d been seconds earlier.
“Can you move?” she demanded and checked the wound on my thigh.
I gritted my teeth. “I’m going to kill that French bastard.”
“That didn’t answer the question.”
Yeah, she would catch that. “I don’t know. The numbness is spreading.”
Her eyes met mine, and, for a heartbeat, the warrior’s mask fell, showing the terrified woman beneath. “We need to extract the dart.”
Without waiting for a response, she gripped the dart and pulled it free in one swift movement. Fresh pain lanced through my leg, but the cold burn of the neural agent was already fading. Whatever was in those darts, it required continuous delivery to be fully effective.
“Two rounds left,” she said, checking her pistol. “They’re adapting faster than I expected.”
“Moreau wasn’t exaggerating about the AI,” I agreed, testing my leg. The numbness was receding, but slowly. I’d be at half-capacity at best for the next few minutes.
Above us, a sharp whistle cut through the air. We both looked up to see a familiar face on the terrace above—Trent, his expression grim as he surveyed our situation. He made a quick throwing motion, and two small objects sailed through the air, landing just behind our cover. Earpieces. Then he vanished as quickly as he’d appeared.
I snatched one up and fitted it into my ear. Lyric did the same with the other. There was only static.
“Outlaw, Siren.” Oz’s voice was tight with urgency. “I’m attempting to hack Sentinel’s control systems, but this thing has quantum encryption and adaptive AI. Every time I find a vulnerability, it self-patches.”
“Can you at least jam its targeting?” Lyric asked, ducking as the drone fired through the foliage, missing her by inches.
“Negative. It’s using a closed-circuit system. No external inputs except for initial targeting parameters.” Frustration laced Oz’s voice. “Wait—I’ve got something. The drones are networked to a central hub somewhere in the estate. If I can locate it?—”
His voice cut out abruptly, replaced by static.
“Oz?” I called. Nothing.
The crowd was getting restless, some of them laughing at our desperate scramble for cover. I heard someone place a bet on how long we’d last.
One of the drones hovering near me suddenly shot upward, its sensors scanning the area. It had lost visual contact. I pressed myself flat against the fountain’s base, using the shadows to my advantage.
The ground trembled beneath us as a section of the courtyard’s stone floor slid open. A sleek, midnight-black shape rose from the hidden compartment, twice the size of the drones we’d been fighting. Its surface was featureless except for a ring of pulsing red sensors that rotated slowly, scanning the entire arena.
“What the fuck is that?” I hissed.
Lyric’s face went pale. “The command unit.”
Moreau’s voice carried across the courtyard, dripping with satisfaction. “Ah, you’ve met the mother. Isn’t she beautiful?”
The massive drone hovered silently for three heartbeats before it shuddered and began to separate. Not into four pieces like before—into dozens. Each segment peeled away from the central core, becoming its own autonomous killing machine, until the air above us swarmed with miniature drones no larger than hummingbirds.
“Jesus Christ,” Lyric breathed.
The crowd erupted in applause as the swarm formed intricate patterns overhead, a deadly ballet of technology that made our previous opponents look like children’s toys.
“Microdrones,” Oz’s voice crackled back through our comms. “They’re—fuck—they’re networked with a hive mind. One gets a visual, they all know where you are.”
The swarm suddenly froze, then converged into a tight formation that looked disturbingly like an arrow, pointed directly at our position.
“Move!” I shouted, shoving Lyric toward a narrow gap between two planters as the swarm descended.
We scrambled in opposite directions as the microdrones hit our previous position with frightening precision. Instead of darts, they released a fine mist that sizzled when it contacted stone.
Chemical agents.
The swarm split again, half pursuing Lyric while the rest regrouped to track me. My partially paralyzed leg dragged as I lurched toward a decorative fountain, the water our only hope against chemical weapons.
“Nolan’s on approach,” Trent’s voice came through suddenly. “Two minutes out. We need to get you to the helipad on the east side.”
“Little busy at the moment,” I grunted, diving behind a column as three microdrones zipped past.
The swarm hunting Lyric had her pinned behind a stone bench, the tiny machines creating a perimeter that tightened with each passing second. She fired her last round, taking out one drone, but the others immediately adjusted their formation to close the gap.
“Flynn!” Her voice held no panic, just tactical assessment. “I’m surrounded. East corner, no clear exit.”
I scanned the courtyard frantically. Twenty yards separated us, with open ground and at least thirty microdrones between. My leg was regaining sensation, but still unreliable. The pistol I’d been given was empty, and I… didn’t know what to do.
We were fucked.
Then, Nolan’s voice crackled through the earpiece, loud and clear over the sound of approaching rotors. “Cavalry’s here. And I brought the boom.”
His Irish brogue was the best thing I’d ever heard in my life, and I couldn’t stop the grin. If there was one thing Nolan Riley loved more than sex and whiskey, it was making one hell of an entrance.
“About damn time!” I shouted. “What’s your position?”
“Making the rich and criminal very unhappy,” Nolan replied cheerfully as the helicopter swooped low over the courtyard, strafing the crowd with gunfire.
The drones swarmed toward the helo, and Nolan whooped as he led them away from the courtyard, giving us a much-needed breather. But it wouldn’t be long before they remembered their mission and circled back to find us.
“Flynn!” Lyric raced to my side and pointed toward the raised platform where Moreau had been moments ago. The arms dealer was no longer grandstanding. Instead, he was slipping away through a side exit, surrounded by three guards in tactical gear, clutching what looked like a reinforced metal case to his chest.
“The control system for Sentinel,” I said grimly.
“Get out of there!” Nolan shouted. “I can’t hold them off much longer. These fuckers are mean!”
“We need to move,” Lyric said, her eyes tracking the nearest drone as it paused mid-air and seemed to recalibrate. “Use the confusion to find Moreau and get that control module. If Oz can’t hack them, then that module’s our next best option.”
I nodded. “On three. One. Two…” I grabbed her and gave her a hard kiss that left her blinking. “Three.”
We charged across the courtyard as Nolan’s helicopter banked hard, drawing most of the drone swarm in pursuit. The wealthy spectators scrambled for safety, their earlier bloodlust replaced by terror as bullets chewed up marble and shattered champagne flutes. Through the chaos, I spotted a service door where Moreau had disappeared—our ticket out of this hellish arena.
“There!” I pointed, half-dragging my still-partially-paralyzed leg as we sprinted toward the exit.
A guard appeared in the doorway, rifle raised. Lyric didn’t hesitate—she launched herself into a slide, sweeping his legs out from under him before he could fire. I followed through with a savage kick to his temple that left him motionless on the polished floor.
“Grab his weapon,” Lyric ordered, already relieving him of his sidearm and spare magazines.
The narrow corridor beyond was dimly lit and sloped downward—some kind of maintenance passage that would lead us deeper into Moreau’s compound. The walls vibrated with the distant thump of helicopter rotors and the sound of gunfire.
“Oz,” I called into my comm as we moved forward, “any sign of Moreau?”
“Thermal imaging shows a group moving toward the docks. Moreau’s got a boat waiting. You’ve got maybe five minutes before he’s in international waters.”
“Copy that,” I said, checking the rifle’s magazine. “We’re in pursuit.”
The passage opened into a steep, natural canyon that cut through the island’s limestone core. Carved steps descended through the ravine toward the distant glimmer of water. Moreau and his guards were already halfway down, moving with purpose toward his yacht, visible at the private dock below.
“There he is,” Lyric hissed, raising her weapon.
“Wait,” I caught her arm. “Too far for a clean shot. We need to get closer.”
We started down the steps, using the canyon walls for cover. My leg was finally regaining sensation, pins and needles replacing the deadening numbness. We’d closed half the distance to Moreau when a familiar mechanical whir echoed off the canyon walls.
“Incoming!” I shouted, pulling Lyric behind a rocky outcropping as three drones shot into the ravine behind us.
The sleek machines paused at the canyon entrance, sensors rotating as they scanned for targets. Unlike the arena drones, these were equipped with what appeared to be actual firearms—compact, high-velocity weapons designed for maximum lethality.
“Moreau’s done playing games,” Lyric muttered, peering around our cover.
The drones split formation, one hovering directly above while the others flanked us from both sides. No more neurodarts or chemical agents. These were programmed to kill.
“We’re pinned,” I growled, frustration building as I watched Moreau continue his descent toward freedom.
“Oz,” Lyric said into her comm, “we’re pinned down in the canyon. Any luck tapping into the drone controls?”
Ozzy’s voice came through, oddly distorted by what sounded like rapid typing in the background. “Working on it. Their encryption is not exactly something I can crack while eating a sandwich.”
“Work faster,” I suggested, earning a growl from the other end of the line.
“Brilliant advice, Shepherd. I’ll get right on that.”
I risked a quick look around our cover, tracking the drones’ positions. They’d spread out in a semicircle, covering all possible exit routes from our position. Smart. Whatever AI was controlling them had adapted to the chaotic environment without missing a beat.
The first drone opened fire without warning, a burst of high-velocity rounds chewing into the rock inches from my head. Stone fragments peppered my face as I ducked lower.
“Down!” I shouted, pulling Lyric tighter against me as a second drone strafed our position from the opposite angle.
Lyric returned fire, her stolen sidearm barking three times before the slide locked back empty. One round glanced off the nearest drone’s housing, barely scratching its matte surface.
“Bullets aren’t penetrating their armor,” she hissed, ejecting the spent magazine and slapping in her last one.
I leaned out and squeezed off a controlled burst from the guard’s rifle. The rounds sparked harmlessly against the drone’s exterior, confirming what we already knew—conventional ammunition wasn’t going to cut it.
“We need to move,” I said, scanning the ravine for any possible escape route. “On my mark, break for that outcropping ten yards down.”
Lyric nodded, tensing beside me like a coiled spring. I counted down silently, my fingers ticking against the rifle stock.
Three. Two. One.
“Now!”
We bolted from cover simultaneously, zigzagging across the exposed ground as all three drones opened fire. The air filled with the whine of bullets and the sharp crack of stone as rounds impacted all around us. I felt something tug at my sleeve—a near miss that sent adrenaline surging through my system.
Lyric reached the outcropping first, diving behind it and immediately returning fire to cover me. I was three strides away when my leg, still not fully recovered from the neurodart, betrayed me. My knee buckled, sending me sprawling across the rocky ground.
Exposed. Vulnerable.
One of the drones locked onto me instantly, its weapon swiveling with mechanical precision. I rolled desperately, seeking any cover, but there was nothing between me and certain death.
“Flynn!” Lyric’s scream tore through the canyon as she broke cover, firing her last rounds at the drone targeting me.
The bullets still didn’t penetrate, but her desperate attack distracted it just long enough for me to scramble the final distance to safety, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“Jesus,” I gasped, back pressed against the rock. “Thanks for that.”
She nodded, her face pale but determined as she checked her empty weapon. “We’re out of ammo. And Moreau’s almost at the dock.”
I glanced at my rifle. Maybe five rounds left. Not enough to fight our way through three armored drones. And we’d be completely fucked if the rest of the swam stopped chasing Nolan and came for us.
“Oz,” I barked into my comm. “We need some fucking options here!”
“I’m working on it!” His voice was strained, the sound of furious typing audible in the background. “Their shielding uses a quantum matrix that—you know what, never mind the tech talk. I’m close to cracking it. Just stay alive a few minutes longer.”
“Easy for him to say,” Lyric muttered and swore as bullets peppered the ridge above us, raining rock fragments down on our heads.
“I’ve got it!” Oz shouted. “Frequency match on their quantum shielding—firing solution uploaded to your weapons systems!”
A sharp electronic ping sounded from both our weapons, and the targeting displays flickered with new data.
“What the hell?” I stared at the rifle’s suddenly illuminated scope.
“Edge Ops special,” Oz explained, breathless with excitement. “Your ammo is now calibrated to the exact frequency needed to penetrate their shields. You’re welcome, by the way.”
I didn’t waste time asking questions. I leaned out from cover, sighted the nearest drone, and squeezed the trigger. The round punched through its armor like it was tissue paper, tearing into the delicate electronics beneath. The machine jerked, sparked, and spiraled into the canyon wall in a fiery burst.
“Holy shit,” Lyric breathed, her eyes wide. “It worked.”
“Of course it worked.” Oz sniffed. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
I tossed Lyric the rifle. “Two rounds left. Make them count.”
She caught it smoothly, already lining up her shot as the remaining drones adjusted their attack pattern. Her first round caught the second drone dead center, the bullet tearing through its core processor. It dropped like a stone.
“One left,” I said, eyeing the final drone as it hovered just out of our line of sight.
“And a lot more drones,” Lyric replied grimly as the swarm filled the sky over our heads.
“Nolan,” I called into my comm. “We need an air strike on my position, now!”
“About bloody time!” Nolan’s voice came back just as cheerful as before. “Been waitin’ for the invitation. Inbound hot, thirty seconds. Papa’s bringing the rain!”