Chapter Twelve #2
The cell block doors are heavy steel with reinforced glass panels. Through the windows, there are rows of cells stretching into darkness. Somewhere in there, Montana’s mother is waiting for a rescue she doesn’t know is coming.
“Movement,” South hisses, pointing down the corridor.
Three figures in corrections uniforms walk in our direction, moving with purpose rather than routine patrol patterns. They’re carrying more than standard gear—rifles, tactical vests, the kind of equipment you don’t need for prison maintenance.
“That’s not normal guard rotation,” Dutch observes.
“No,” I agree. “They’re Cartel.”
The pieces click into place in my mind. Valerie is not just a prisoner anymore. She’s a loose end that needs tying up. These aren’t guards coming to transfer her to solitary, they’re coming to eliminate her before our riot gives her a chance to escape.
“Montana,” I whisper urgently.
But I turn to see him take off, the emotional dam finally bursting. He breaks from our formation and sprints toward the cell block doors, abandoning stealth for speed. The Cartel guards notice immediately, weapons swinging in his direction.
“Shit! Go, go, GO!” I bark into my mic.
Something always goes wrong.
The corridor erupts in controlled chaos.
Dutch and South move to flank the guards while I pursue Montana, trying to keep him from getting himself killed in his desperation to reach his mother.
Gunfire echoes through the space, gun flashes strobing against institutional walls.
The women prisoners are yelling, thrashing, and screaming against their cages to let them out as I run past them to get to Montana.
“Alpha, we’ve got company in the tunnels,” Phoenix’s voice crackles through static and violence. “Multiple contacts, armed and moving fast.”
The trap is closing.
We’re not just rescuing Valerie, we’re fighting for our own survival.
Montana reaches the cell block first, somehow avoiding the gunfire through pure adrenaline and goddamn luck.
The women are like caged animals behind bars, fighting to be free while he’s working on the electronic lock.
I run hard as bullets spark off the steel frame around him.
The kid is completely exposed, completely vulnerable, and entirely focused on getting to his mother.
“Cover him,” I shout at Dutch and South.
They lay down suppressing fire while I sprint the last twenty yards, diving into cover beside Montana just as return fire chews chunks out of the concrete where I was standing.
“Almost got it,” Montana pants out the words, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cool air.
“Faster would be fucking good,” I reply, watching gunfire advance down the corridor.
The lock clicks open as an explosion shudders through the floor beneath our boots. The shockwave travels up my legs like a threat. Either the riot has kicked off early, or Phoenix and Rip just ran headfirst into a fucking warzone in the tunnels beneath us.
“We’re in,” Montana grits out, shouldering the reinforced door open with a slam that echoes through the block like a starter’s pistol.
We step inside, then freeze.
At the far end of the corridor, lit in stuttering bursts from failing fluorescents and the throbbing orange wash of emergency beacons, three Cartel operatives in prison uniforms drag a woman across the concrete.
Her legs kick and scrape, bare feet leaving faint smears on the floor, every flail desperate and defiant.
Even cloaked in shadows, even with blood matting her hair, I know that profile.
Valerie.
“Mom!” Montana’s roar tears down the hallway, jagged and raw, cutting through the gunfire and chaos like a blade.
Tactical discipline? Gone.
He charges like a human battering ram, weapon up, the tendons in his neck standing out like steel cables, every stride fueled by rage and terror.
I know that kind of fury. The kind that burns through training, the kind that makes you faster and sloppier in the same heartbeat.
The kind that either saves someone’s life…
… or gets you killed.
“Noah, n-no,” Valerie’s voice cracks, high and panicked.
The soldiers react instantly. No hesitation. No confusion. Trained killers.
One keeps hauling Valerie, his arm locked around her throat, while the other two pivot in unison and open fire.
The hallway explodes into a storm of lead.
Each gunshot detonates like thunder trapped in a steel drum, the sound ricocheting off concrete until it feels like the whole corridor is vibrating.
Chunks of wall burst apart, spraying grit into my eyes.
The stench of burned powder floods my lungs, making it harder to breathe.
I dive hard right, slamming shoulder-first into a rust-streaked wall. Plaster dust sifts down in lazy flakes. Bullets hiss past, so close I can feel the air shift against my cheek.
Montana doesn’t drop. Doesn’t even duck. He fires back with surgical precision, his gun popping in rapid bursts, every shot tearing the air between them, but the rage in his eyes blazes hotter than the muzzle fire.
Dutch and South push forward to cover him, but a fresh wave of Cartel soldiers floods in from an adjoining block.
Guards who have picked their side, Cartel loyalists in correctional gear with their pistols already raised.
They cut loose immediately, the sound a hammering wall that forces Dutch and South into cover behind a row of overturned cots and busted steel sinks.
Sparks jump as rounds chew through metal.
“We’re separating,” I yell into my comms, but all I get is static. Sharp, high-pitched, and unbroken. Either the jammers just came online, or the tunnel team took out the main grid.
Then the world goes white.
A flashbang has ignited somewhere behind me, the shockwave punching through my chest, rattling my molars.
My vision sears, then snaps back into place in choppy frames.
My ears ring so hard it feels like someone is pressing glass to my skull.
Smoke begins curling down from the vents overhead, pale threads at first, then heavier, swelling into clouds that thicken the air until every breath feels like I am pulling knives into my lungs.
The fire alarms howl, urgent and useless.
No sprinklers. Just another safeguard gutted long before we ever got here.
Then, without warning, an explosion rolls through the floor beneath us, the vibration rattling up my legs and into my spine. Somewhere deeper in the prison, something collapses, the echo carrying through the bones of the place. Dust rains from the ceiling, the prison groaning out a breath.
Gunfire cracks again. Voices shouting in Spanish, sharp and clipped. Boots hammer concrete in a rhythm that suggests reinforcements.
More bodies.
More guns.
More bad news.
In five seconds flat, everything fractures. Our breach, our plan. It all splinters like glass under a boot. Montana is exposed and charging blind. Dutch and South are pinned hard, and I’m standing in a kill box with no clear exit.
I risk a glance back down the hall.
Valerie is still fighting. One of the bastards holding her swings hard, his backhand snapping her head sideways with enough force to make my stomach clench.
She staggers but doesn’t fold. She kicks, twists, and drives an elbow into his gut.
There’s fury in her eyes, the kind of fire only a mother refusing to die for her child can summon.
Goddamn, she’s still in there.
Montana is close enough now that I see the sweat streaking down his temple, the way his teeth are bared like an animal ready to attack.
Suddenly, a stray bullet catches him high in the shoulder, the impact spinning him into the wall, his boots scraping for purchase.
I go to grab him, but he pushes off, charging again, sheer will shoving him forward.
If we don’t reach him now, this is going to end in blood.
“Nighthawk!” I bark into my mic, voice raw. “I need that riot now!”
“Already started. Every block’s blowing,” her voice cuts into static as another explosion rips the air apart. This one’s closer, sharper, shoving heat down the corridor in a wave that sears my skin.
The air feels heavier as the roar of angry, fierce women, who have finally been let free of their cages, screams in the distance.
Montana disappears around a corner, chasing the operatives who have his mother. I try to follow, but more guards pour into the cell block from the administrative wing. They’ve got tactical gear, night vision, and the home-field advantage.
“Ink, Strings, what’s your status?” I call, but nothing other than static buzzes down the line. “Phoenix, Rip, come in?”
More static.
We’re cut off, communications failing, separated from each other in a hostile facility that’s designed to contain and control. Everything that could go wrong is going wrong, exactly like I feared. But gunfire still blasts from the direction Montana went.
Which means he’s alive, he’s fighting, and he needs backup as I run after him.
I key my mic one more time, hoping someone can hear me through the interference. “All teams, Montana’s separated and pursuing Valerie. I’m going after him. Hold positions and watch for—”
Suddenly, the lights overhead flicker, die, and I skid to a stop.
It’s complete darkness engulfing everything.
I can’t see shit. My heart races frantically, my breath coming harshly through my nose as a foreboding silence falls over the facility.
I jerk my head around, trying to see something, anything, as emergency power kicks in a second later, bathing everything in deep red.
The color shifts every smear of blood into something black and bottomless, but in that moment of absolute darkness, I hear something that chills my blood.
Not gunfire.
Not explosions.
And then I hear it, again, a deep, throaty scream.
It’s Montana.
I abandon caution and sprint toward the sound, the chaos and commotion of the women starting up again as they begin to chant and bang as they run riot. I bring my gun up, knowing I’m probably running straight into an ambush but unable to stop myself.
Because that’s what brotherhood means.
You don’t leave family behind, even when staying means dying.
Especially when staying means dying.
The corridor ahead curves left toward what Garver’s intelligence indicated was the punishment wing. As I round the corner, I see them—Montana on the ground, blood pooling beneath him, while two Cartel operatives stand over Valerie with a knife at her throat.
And in that moment, staring at the scene before me, I realize this was never about rescue.
This was about Javier making us watch our family die.