Chapter Two #2
Through the haze, Gage forced his body upright, gun raised, even though he could barely see. Shapes were moving at the far end of the hangar, silhouettes against the afterimage still burning in his retinas.
Beside him, Rena went down on one knee, her breath sharp and ragged. He saw her hand tremble but her Glock never left her grip. She was shaking. Maybe from a migraine or flashback. Maybe both. But she hadn’t dropped her weapon.
The ringing in his ears dulled to a low roar. Then came the next sound. Boots. Heavy. Multiple. Advancing through the smoke.
Whoever was coming through that door sure as hell wasn’t here for birthday cake.
The hangar doors groaned wider, metal shrieking against metal. Smoke from the flashbang still hung thick in the air, turning everything into a haze of shifting shadows and flickering light. Through it, Gage saw movement.
Dark shapes flooding in fast, low, and coordinated.
Armed men. At least a dozen. Full combat gear. Helmets, body armor, suppressed rifles, night vision goggles glowing faintly green through the smoke. The precision in their movements made his gut twist.
He blinked hard, trying to clear the last of the blinding white from his vision. For a second, he thought, hoped, this might still be some kind of twisted exercise, a staged drill gone too far. But the way they moved said otherwise. Too tight. Too lethal.
Rena crouched beside him, her breathing steadying, Glock up and ready. Owen was behind a support beam, covering the right flank. Noah stood in the open, leveling his weapon with the kind of defiance that came from a man who’d led soldiers through worse.
The lead intruder pivoted toward him, his rifle raised.
Gage didn’t think. He fired.
The shot cracked through the chaos, a sharp echo swallowed by the vastness of the hangar. The man dropped hard, weapon clattering across the floor.
And that’s when it happened.
All hell broke loose.
Gunfire erupted from the doorway, muzzle flashes strobing through the smoke.
The air filled with the whip of bullets and the sharp smell of cordite.
Kids screamed, ducking behind crates and barriers.
The high-pitched whine of ricochets filled the air, cutting through the ringing still lodged in Gage’s ears.
He moved on instinct. Down, cover, return fire. The Glock barked twice more, the recoil biting into his bad shoulder. Pain shot down his arm, but he ignored it. There was no time for pain. Only targets, movement, survival.
Beside him, Rena fired toward the advancing figures, her aim steady even from her crouching position. Noah belted an order that was swallowed by the chaos.
The intruders kept coming.
Gage hit the ground hard, grabbing Rena’s arm as a burst of gunfire shredded the air above them. “Move!” he shouted, his voice lost in the thunder of shots.
They dove for cover, sliding behind another of the concrete culverts used for low-crawl drills. Rounds smacked into the metal supports nearby, sharp cracks echoing like hail on a tin roof. The air burned with the smell of powder and smoke.
Gage shoved Rena ahead of him toward the open end of the culvert, both of them scrambling inside. The interior was cold and gritty, the rough concrete pressing against his palms as he pulled himself in beside her.
“Stay low,” he rasped.
He could barely hear himself over the ringing in his ears. The flashbang had wrecked his balance, every sound muffled and distorted. His shoulder screamed with each movement, but adrenaline kept him going.
Outside the culvert, the hangar was chaos. Kids were screaming, crying, their voices cutting through the din like sirens. The staccato rhythm of gunfire kept pounding, echoing off the walls, bouncing around in the cavernous space until it was impossible to tell where it came from.
Still in front of him, Rena kept moving with her Glock braced in her right hand, her eyes scanning the opening at the end of the culvert. The flickering light from the still-burning birthday candles cast faint glimmers through the smoke, painting everything in flashes of pink and gold.
The sounds outside shifted. Shouted commands, boots pounding concrete, the metallic clatter of someone reloading.
Gage swallowed hard, heart hammering against his ribs. The mission didn’t matter. Training didn’t matter. There was only survival now… his, Rena’s, and every terrified kid trapped in the dark.
“There’s another culvert near the end of this one,” Gage managed to say. “Might lead to the back of the hangar.”
Rena nodded, no hesitation. They kept crawling, elbows scraping over grit and old concrete. The air inside the tube was close and hot, thick with the metallic tang of dust and gunfire drifting in from outside.
Every movement sent a jolt through Gage’s bad shoulder, but he pushed it down. If they could make it to the rear of the hangar, maybe they could flank whoever had stormed in. Maybe find one of the locked storage crates where real weapons were kept.
Outside the culvert, chaos still reigned. The crack of gunfire, shouts, the echo of something heavy being knocked over. Kids crying. Someone yelling a name. The kind of noise that said the world was unraveling fast.
They crawled faster, the beam curving slightly downward until they reached a junction where a second culvert split off. Gage checked the next opening, the faint draft of cooler air brushing his face.
“That way,” he said.
Rena gave a quick nod, her breathing rough but steady. Together, they pulled through the narrow gap into the adjoining tube, the concrete vibrating faintly under their hands from the chaos outside.
Then, just as they were about to crawl forward again, everything stopped. No more gunfire. No shouting. No movement. Silence dropped hard and absolute, so sudden it made Gage’s ears ring even louder. He froze, listening, pulse hammering.
Rena met his gaze through the dark. Neither of them spoke. Something about that silence felt worse than the shooting.
They held still until silence settled like a weight, pressing in from all sides. Gage’s ears ached from the flashbang. Even the blood in his temples sounded loud. He let his breath out slowly, counting the seconds until the thump in his chest eased enough that he could think again.
The culvert smelled like old concrete and smoke. Dust settled on his tongue when he exhaled. Somewhere above them the laser-tag gear chimed idiotically, then died. And for an instant there was nothing but the soft scrape of fabric as Rena shifted.
He kept his gun up, muzzle pointed into the dark. Every muscle in his body hummed with tension, ready to spring, to move, to die. The idea of stepping into open hangar space with whatever had just gone silent out there made his gut tighten. Still, they had to know. They had to—
A noise cut through the quiet then. A bootstep soft on concrete.
Gage froze, every hair on his arms lifting. Footsteps multiplied, boots moving with a purpose that set his teeth on edge. Voices answered in low, clipped tones, and the sound of Velcro and clipped gear as men spread out.
Rena’s hand tightened on his sleeve. He felt it more than saw it, the small, fierce grip that meant stay. Wait. Watch.
The voice came next, clear and cold, carrying down the culvert like a blade. He didn’t know the man, but the intent needed no translation.
“Find them all,” the man said. “And kill them.”