Chapter 36
Rav
“Noah’s tied up,” hissed Scarlett. If she was backstage in her disguise, surrounded by Fenix operatives, she wouldn’t be able to provide enough intel. “He’s in the middle of the stage. There’s a masked man at the microphone making the announcements.”
The maintenance shed was thirty feet ahead, but my knees were screaming from how many times I’d had to crouch-run through the low passages or drop to my knees. Every third step, our captive stumbled or swore or just tried to slow us down, and I had to shove him forward.
Choking him out is an option. But that was a risk, and you might need him alive.
The rough stone had torn through my pants at some point, and I could feel blood seeping into the fabric. So much for the integrity of my incursion suit.
“Keep moving,” I yelled.
I turned on both listening channels on my earpiece, not wanting to miss a moment of either operation unfolding. On Pendragon’s channel, Bobcat’s voice stayed level while coordinating the lab breach.
On the Reynolds frequency, Scarlett and Malcolm’s backstage narration mixed with Drew’s position reports.
Brie and Will maintained a steady stream of updates from our drone coverage above.
Apparently, a hole had opened in the stage floor, and a golden phoenix statue had arisen atop a ten-foot-high pedestal.
And next to the phoenix was Noah.
The concert’s music started again.
“Two external guards,” came a voice I didn’t recognize—one of Bobcat’s team. “Both armed.”
A thud. Someone grunted. Metal scraped concrete.
“Outer guard’s down.” Bobcat’s tone didn’t change. “Pushing interior.”
I glanced over my shoulder to check on Brooke. She’d found her rhythm—three strides to my two, her breathing controlled despite our pace. She’d lost her incursion suit’s hood when she ripped off her mask, and her hair flew loose around her face.
My mask was safely stowed, so if she needed one, at least we’d have it.
“Contact interior. One runner.” Footsteps pounded through the Pendragon comm channel. Something crashed. Something that sounded like lab equipment hitting the floor. “Runner secured. Two lab techs detained.”
The ladder appeared in my headlamp beam. I pushed past our captive and grabbed the first rung left-handed, right hand already reaching higher, hauling myself up. Our captive grunted behind me as Brooke prodded him with her baton.
“Fuck you both!” he spat.
I dropped to the floor next to him, smashing an elbow into his face as I did. With a jut of my chin, I signaled for Brooke to go up first, then growled at him, “Get up those fucking stairs, asshole! And if you run or touch her when you get up top, it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
Convinced, he struggled up the ladder, then waited at the top.
“They’ve got bleach bottles everywhere,” Percival’s voice cut through the chaos over my earpiece. “They’re mid-scrub. I’m not seeing any equipment. No paperwork either.”
Fresh air hit my face as I shouldered through the shed door, Fenix operative back in hand.
The amphitheater sat less than two hundred feet away, lasers and lights spewing into the night. Music pounded from inside—some Italian pop song I didn’t recognize.
“External stairs.” I pointed to the stone steps cut into the amphitheater’s outer wall. “Go.”
A security guard stepped toward us, hand raised, mouth opening to challenge us.
I turned sideways, using momentum rather than confrontation to slip past. But I let go of the Fenix garbage as I ran, yelling to the guard, “We’re extra security.
Caught him setting explosives underground! Call the police!”
The guard shouted at me in Italian.
I halted halfway up the steps and yelled louder, more clearly, pointing at the man with the zip-tied hands: “Explosives!”
It was practically the same word in English and French, so hopefully it was close in Italian. The guard grabbed the man, so it likely worked.
Brooke pulled ahead while I was trying to explain the situation to the guard, so I started taking the steps two at a time. When I reached the upper ring, she’d already dropped to her knees beside the first fireworks display, cracking open another test kit and swiping the mortar tubes.
“Nothing.” She scrambled to the next position. “Still nothing.”
“I tested six displays over here,” said Drew, from the opposite end of the amphitheater’s top edge. “All negative.”
From the lab, more Pendragon updates filtered through: “Checking drain traps now. Got a presumptive positive from the test kit. Confirmed Greek Fire was definitely here. HVAC pre-filters are lighting up too.”
“Fuck!” screamed Brooke, smashing a palm against one of the fireworks tubes.
My position on the rim gave me a clear view of the stage below us. It was at our end of the amphitheater, but the original seating down this side was covered in grass and moss. Running down would be like running down a hill, rather than a proper set of ringed stairs.
The crowd filled every available space, phones raised toward whatever was happening. Center stage, the phoenix statue caught the spotlights—wings spread wide, head tilted toward the sky.
And Noah, slack in a chair on a platform beside the statue, head lolling forward.
“Scarlett, report.”
“I’m stage left, in the wings. Malcolm’s with me.
Jayce is near the soundboard.” Her voice carried that forced calm she used when things were about to go to shit.
“Noah doesn’t look conscious. Drugged, maybe.
Beyond Pavel, Isaac, and Thomas, we’d estimate at least six Fenix operatives, probably more. ”
I studied the setup. Why gather us here? Why the elaborate misdirection with the drainage system, the fake deployment hardware, the empty trucks?
The lights spinning from the top row all pointed inward, as though replicating the canvas tarp that would have hung over top of the amphitheater.
A figure in an ornate golden mask stepped up to the microphone at the front of the stage, his arms raised like a priest at an altar.
The music dimmed again. “Tonight, you witness the marriage of ancient wisdom and modern science.” His voice boomed through the sound system.
He’d been the one talking earlier. “Prepare to witness the phoenix’s rise! ”
White mist erupted from nozzles around the golden statue. The crowd cheered, thinking it was part of the show.
“No!” Brooke’s scream hit me in the chest. Terror. Utter terror.
The memory slammed into me so hard I nearly doubled over. She’d seen the gunman that day. Heard the bullets fly. She’d screamed the second I’d made contact with her, knowing I was risking my life for her.
That was the scream that had lived in my nightmares for six years.
But my body was already moving. The concertgoers below. Scarlett on that stage. Malcolm. Jayce.
Brooke.
Their faces pushed my memories aside. People I’d kill for. People I’d die for.
And Brooke was finally back on that list.
Not just on it. At the top of my list.
I dropped from the rim to the grassed berm, boots sliding on the slope. The white mist expanded outward from the phoenix.
Could be aerosolized Greek Fire. Could be nothing.
Didn’t fucking matter.
Behind me, Brooke’s voice cracked with desperation. “Rav, don’t! Don’t get burned!”
My shoulder ached where the bullets had gone in. A year of surgeries. Many more in physiotherapy. I could smell that lab in Afghanistan.
Geraniums.
It had smelled like flowers while I lay on the ground dying, and my woman screamed in pain.
But my legs kept pumping. The occasional step blurred beneath my boots, and whatever gash I had on my thigh threatened to force me to stop. Some part of my brain noted the crowd parting—annoyed faces, worried faces, phones swinging toward me instead of the stage.
The mist kept expanding, beautiful and terrible in the stage lights.
Through my earpiece, cutting through everything else, Percival’s voice: “Lab’s been sanitized, but we’ve got intel. One of the detainees is talking. He says—” Static cut him off for a few beats. “—gone to the egg.”
The egg?
What the fuck was the egg?
My mind tried to process this new information while my body continued its trajectory toward the stage. I had to stop this before anyone died. I was almost at the barrier when the mist drifted over the first rows of the audience.
I grabbed my facemask from where I’d hooked it on my belt and slid it over my head. It wasn’t sealed, but it was enough to keep me moving long enough to save everyone.