Chapter 21 #3
I didn’t think. I didn’t decide. The machine took over.
My body dropped into a crouch, presenting a smaller target. The weapon in my hand stabilized, the tremor vanishing the moment the recoil started.
Double tap. Adjust. Double tap.
Two guards at the end of the hall dropped. One crumpled silently; the other spun, his weapon clattering across the marble floor.
“Move!”
We sprinted. Not toward the main elevators, but back toward the service access we’d come from. The alarm was deafening now, a pulsing red light washing the corridor in the color of blood.
My legs pumped, driving me forward. More guards poured from the stairwell door ahead. Three of them. Armored. Visored.
They were between us and the exit.
I didn’t slow down. I accelerated.
The lead guard raised his rifle. I was faster. I slid on the slick carpet, coming in low under his barrel. My boot connected with his knee. Snap. He screamed.
I rose in a fluid motion, using his falling body as a shield. My hand grabbed the barrel of his rifle, twisting it out of his grip. I slammed the butt of my MP5 into his helmet and shoved him into the second guard.
The third guard hesitated. That was his mistake.
I shot him. Two rounds to the chest plate, one to the throat.
He went down.
“Clear!”
Hellhound and Havoc rushed past me, their weapons scanning the angles.
I looked down at the men I had broken. It had taken less than five seconds. I hadn’t felt fear. I hadn’t felt hesitation.
I know how to do this. I’m helpless with a door lock, but I’m a god at this.
The file in my jacket felt heavy, a lead weight.
Clare.
If she saw me now, would she see the man she claimed to love? Or would she see the monster Dresner built?
Don’t think about it. Survive first. Apologize later.
“Stairs are burned. They’re flanking from the lower levels!”
“Service corridor. Cut through laundry. Access the freight lift from the north side.”
We banked hard left, crashing through a set of swinging doors into the white, sterile bowels of the service level. Laundry carts lined the walls. Steam pipes hissed overhead.
We ran.
And then the world ended.
It didn’t go black. It went white.
One second I was sprinting, scanning the corners for threats. The next, a flashbulb exploded inside my skull.
My vision vanished. Just pure, agonizing static. No shapes. No light. Nothing.
I slammed into the wall, my shoulder taking the impact because I couldn’t put my hands out in time. I slid down, gasping, pressing my back against the cold tile.
Blind. I was blind.
“Xavier?”
I couldn’t answer. Terror, primal and suffocating, wrapped around my throat. I couldn’t see the exit. I couldn’t see the enemy. I was a sitting duck in a kill box.
8 seconds.
My heart hammered so hard I thought it would burst.
9 seconds.
“Xavier!” A hand grabbed my vest, shaking me.
10 seconds.
The white began to dissolve. It broke apart like heavy fog, revealing gray shapes. A face.
Hellhound. He was inches from me, his hazel eyes wide and furious.
“Are you back?”
I blinked, the world swimming into focus. The edges were still fuzzy, shimmering with afterimages, but I could see him.
“Yeah. I’m back.”
“That’s twice.” He hauled me to my feet.
“I know.” I checked my weapon. The magazine was seated. The chamber was full. My systems were coming back online, but the crash had been brutal.
I’m not going to make it back to Lyon. I’m going to die in this hallway.
The thought was terrifying, but it wasn’t fear for myself. It was fear for Clare. Who would protect her if I didn’t come back? Who would stand between her and the monsters if I failed?
Get up. Move. You die when the job is done, not before.
“Service elevator!” Havoc was smashing a call button twenty yards down the hall. “Coming up from the basement!”
We sprinted toward him. Behind us, the heavy boots of the pursuit team echoed on the tiles. They were close. Thirty seconds, maybe less.
“When the doors open, we go. No stopping.”
The elevator light pinged. A cheerful, mundane sound in the middle of a war zone.
The heavy steel doors slid open.
Empty.
“In!”
We piled into the cavernous freight elevator. It smelled of grease and industrial solvent. Havoc slammed his fist against the button for the underground garage.
“Come on, come on.”
The doors hesitated, then began to slide shut.
Gunfire erupted from the hallway.
Bullets sparked against the metal door frame. Ping-ping-SPANG.
“Down!”
I returned fire through the narrowing gap. The recoil jarred my shoulder, comforting and familiar.
Then, a sudden, searing heat across my upper arm. Like a hot poker laid against the skin.
I grunted, twisting away. A bullet had grazed me. Ripped through the tactical jacket and furrowed the flesh of my deltoid.
The doors slammed shut with a final, metallic thud.
The elevator lurched. We began to descend.
Silence fell, heavy and suffocating, broken only by our ragged breathing and the hum of the hydraulics.
I looked at my arm. Blood was already soaking the fabric, dark and wet. The pain was distant, muffled by adrenaline.
“You hit?”
“Graze. I’m fine.”
I looked up at the floor indicator descending. 11... 10... 9...
A cold feeling washed over me. Not the white-out this time. A memory. A protocol.
I stared at the indicator. The garage was B2.
“Stop the car.”
Hellhound looked at me. “What?”
“Stop the damn elevator! It’s a trap.”
“We need the garage. The extraction vehicle is...”
“Standard lockdown protocol. In the event of a breach on the executive levels, all elevators are rerouted. They don’t go to the garage.”
Hellhound went still. “Where do they go?”
I met his eyes. “Containment. B4. The incinerator level. There’s a squad waiting for these doors to open, and they won’t be looking to arrest us.”
8... 7... 6...
“Emergency stop!” Hellhound lunged for the red button. He slammed it.
The elevator groaned, shuddering to a halt between the 6th and 5th floors. The sudden stop threw us all off balance.
“Great. Now we’re trapped in a metal box.”
“Hatch. We go up.”
“Up? The car is going down.”
“If we override the stop, it continues to B4. We need to get out of the car before they start it again.”
I didn’t wait for a debate. I slung my weapon and jumped, grabbing the edges of the maintenance hatch. With a grunt of effort, I shoved the panel aside and hauled myself up to the roof of the elevator cab.
Darkness greeted me. The shaft smelled of oil and cold air. Cables stretched up into the abyss.
“Move.”
Hellhound boosted Havoc up. The tech specialist scrambled onto egg-crate metal next to me, breathing hard. Hellhound followed, pulling himself up with a grunt.
“Okay. We’re on top of the elevator. Now what?”
“Reset the car. Send it down empty. Let them ambush a ghost.”
“And us?”
I pointed to the wall of the shaft. About six feet away, a service ladder ran parallel to the rails. But between us and the ladder was open space. A six-foot void with a twelve-story drop.
“We climb.”
Hellhound looked at the jump, then at me. “With a tremor? And a shoulder wound?”
“You have a better idea?”
Hellhound reached back down through the hatch and hit the release on the emergency stop.
The elevator shuddered. The heavy cables groaned.
It started to move. Down.
“Jump!”
I didn’t hesitate. I launched myself across the void.
For a split second, I was weightless. The darkness swallowed me. The air rushed past.
THUD.
I slammed into the ladder. My good hand gripped a greasy rung. My bad arm scrabbled for purchase.
I roared, a guttural sound of pure defiance, and slammed my shaking hand back onto the rung, fingers locking around the cold steel. I hung there, swinging over the abyss, gasping for air.
“Gotcha!”
Havoc landed below me, his boots clanging on the metal. Hellhound hit the ladder above me a second later.
Below us, the elevator car descended rapidly, its light shrinking into a square of yellow in the dark.
We clung to the wall like insects.
“Service panel. Level 9. It connects to the ventilation exchange.”
“How do you know this?”
“Don’t ask.”
We climbed.
Hand over hand. My limbs burned. The tremor in my left hand was violent now, a constant shuddering that made every grip a gamble. I wrapped my arm through the rungs when I could, leveraging bone instead of muscle.
I reached the panel. It was secured with bolts.
“Havoc. Tool.”
Havoc scrambled up beside me, clinging to the ladder with one arm. He produced a multi-tool.
“This is insane. I want it noted on my tombstone.”
The panel popped free. It clang-clang-clanged down the shaft, a echoing announcement of our location.
“Quiet.”
“Sorry.”
A dark, rectangular hole opened in the concrete. Cool air rushed out.
I squeezed through first. It was tight, a crawlspace meant for cables and rats, not men in tactical gear. I dragged myself forward on my elbows, the concrete scraping my chest.
“Clear.”
Havoc followed, then Hellhound. We lay in the cramped dark, the only light coming from the service LEDs on our vests.
Below us, far down in the shaft, we heard the elevator reach the bottom.
Ding.
Then, the roar of gunfire. Hundreds of rounds pouring into the empty metal box.
I closed my eyes, resting my forehead against the cold concrete floor. If we had stayed in that car, we would be hamburger meat right now.
“Good call. Okay. Good call.”
“We need to keep moving. The vents connect to the north stairwell. Twenty yards.”
The metal of the ventilation shaft was freezing against my stomach, sucking the heat from my core as I dragged myself forward. The space was tight, a claustrophobic square of galvanized steel that forced us to crawl single-file. Dust and grit coated my tongue with every breath.
Ahead, the darkness was broken by a filtering of gray light. A grate.
“Exit.”
I reached the opening. Through the slats, I saw the industrial railing and concrete steps of the north stairwell. I braced my boot against the metal mesh.