Chapter Three
Find them all and kill them.
The words looped through Rena’s skull, vibrating with the ache at the base of her skull.
Each syllable hooked into the migraine’s slow crawl and made it flare, a hot pinprick that spread behind her eyes. She breathed through it the way she always did—slow, counted—but the pain rode the breath anyway, a stubborn passenger she couldn’t shake.
She kept moving, elbows scraping concrete, the culvert close and confining around her. The dark tightened to a narrow tunnel, and the noise above became a distant ocean.
Boots, shouted commands, the occasional metallic clang.
With grit in her teeth and dust coating her, she started running through what they had and what they could turn into something useful if they couldn’t get to the armory. Mental inventory, the way pilots ran checklists, because panicking wasn’t an option.
She thought of the training dummies. Maybe the ones near the obstacle course had knives in their kits for realism, but her gut told her those would be locked up with the rest of the live props.
The laser-tag racks were useless for stopping a man in armor, but vests and flashing gear could make decoys.
Then there were the tool chests from the maintenance bay.
They’d be heavy, awkward but useful as a barricade.
An overturned toolbox could buy seconds, and a crate could be a temporary shield.
None of it was elegant.
None of it was ideal.
But it was real, and in her head, realism beat heroics every time.
She pictured the armory at the far back of the hangar. A reinforced door, a keypad. Of course it would be locked.
That was supposed to be the point.
But she let herself imagine the possibility of getting there, breaking the seal, finding something that actually stopped someone in full body armor. It felt ridiculous and necessary all at once, like planning to land a jet with a seized engine.
A tremor of sound ran through the concrete. Hushed voices, boots close enough that she could hear the soles slap on the floor. Her hand tightened on her Glock, and she felt the ache in her temples deepen into a fine, humming pain.
If the migraine spiked, the room would tilt and the world would narrow to memory and noise. If it didn’t, she might get them to the armory. Either way, she had to keep moving.
She pushed forward, counting breaths and steps, mapping exits in her head as she went. She told herself, they’d figure something out.
They had to.
Slow footsteps continued to echo through the hangar, deliberate and unhurried.
Whoever was out there was hunting. Each sound bounced through the cavernous space, finding its way into the concrete culverts where Rena and Gage crawled.
They moved quietly, elbows and knees scraping against grit, breath shallow in the close, stale air.
When they finally reached the end of the tunnel, Rena peered through the narrow gap. About ten feet away, another culvert opened, and she spotted Noah and Lily crouched inside.
Thank God. They were both alive.
Noah had positioned himself near the edge, weapon drawn, body tense and ready. His expression was grim but steady, every inch the leader, even in this chaos.
Lily was beside him, her arm pressed against the side of the culvert, her hands gripping one of the laser-tag guns. She’d rigged it with a splintered piece of wood, tied on with what looked like a strip of party ribbon. It was crude, improvised, but a makeshift bayonet in a teenager’s hands.
The girl was shaking, her eyes wide and glinting in the dim light. But she wasn’t panicking. She was breathing slowly, focused. Terrified, yes, but holding it together in a way most adults couldn’t.
Gage eased forward beside Rena, their shoulders brushing in the tight space. Across the short gap, Noah gave them a small nod, his mouth set in a hard line. Lily noticed, too. Her chin lifted a fraction, a tiny, defiant gesture that said she was ready for whatever came next.
Rena and Gage crawled toward Noah and Lily. Every few seconds, one of the boots scraped the floor, the sound reverberating through the concrete like a threat that wouldn’t end.
When she reached the edge of their culvert, Noah mouthed. “The lock on the armory’s jammed.”
He glanced toward Lily, then motioned deeper into the tube. He was going to move farther back with the girl, keep her hidden, protect her the only way he could, by shooting anyone who came close.
Rena nodded, understanding. She mouthed, “Where’s Owen?”
Noah’s reply came in a quick tilt of his head and a whisper. “Far side. With the kids.”
She wanted to ask more. She wanted to know who these SOBs were who came here to kill them. But she didn’t dare. One sound too many could give away their position.
Whoever these men were, they had planned it. A strike against Crossfire Ops itself. That kind of hate didn’t come from nowhere. With everything the organization did, all the missions, the enemies they made, it wasn’t hard to imagine someone wanting payback.
What was hard to imagine was how they’d pulled it off. Breaching this facility should have been impossible. Layers of security, surveillance, countermeasures. But tonight, at a birthday party, the protocols had been stripped down to nothing.
They’d made themselves a target. And now, in the dark belly of the hangar, surrounded by killers, they were paying the price.
Rena’s gaze drifted upward, past the haze and broken shadows, to the disco ball hanging from the rafters.
It turned slowly, glinting weakly in the low light from the still-burning candles.
The sight was absurdly out of place, like a relic from another world, one where the biggest worry had been whether the frosting color matched the theme.
Gage followed her line of sight. “Let’s go for it,” he whispered. “Better angle from up there.”
Her pulse kicked hard. It wasn’t a bad idea. Height meant visibility, and visibility meant they might actually have a chance. Still, it was a hell of a climb for two people with injuries and a swarm of armed men prowling the floor. But she didn’t argue. There wasn’t time.
They slid away from the culvert, bodies low, pressing to the floor as they moved. Smoke still lingered thick in the air, the aftermath of the flashbang turning everything gray and grainy. The battery lights and candles cast just enough glow to make out shapes but not much more.
That was both a blessing and a curse.
The attackers couldn’t see them clearly, but that also meant Rena couldn’t see them. Every sound—the clatter of a rifle stock, a boot scuffing the floor, the faint static hiss of someone’s radio—made her spine go rigid.
She kept one hand on her Glock, the other tracing the wall as they worked their way along the edge of the hangar toward the back. Somewhere behind them, one of the laser vests flickered, a dying pulse of red that made her heart leap before she realized it was only a game light.
“Almost there,” Gage murmured, his voice a low rasp she barely heard.
She nodded, eyes straining through the haze. The rafters loomed above, the disco ball catching a glint of light, just enough to mark their destination. If they could make it up there, they’d have the high ground. Maybe a chance to see who was leading this nightmare.
Maybe even a chance to fight back.
They reached the back wall, her lungs burning, her clothes streaked with dust and sweat. The sounds in the hangar had thinned to a dangerous quiet. Occasional movement, the whisper of boots sweeping the open floor. Rena pressed her back to the cold metal paneling and scanned upward.
A set of climbing ropes hung loose from an overhead rig, left from a training obstacle. Perfect. Or close enough.
Gage caught her eye, gave a short nod, and grabbed the nearest rope. It swayed under his weight as he hauled himself up, his movements steady despite the injury that had cost him half his strength. Rena watched his silhouette rise through the drifting smoke until he reached the first beam.
Then it was her turn.
Her fingers burned as she pulled herself up, every muscle in her shoulders and back screaming. The rope bit through her palms, and the lingering haze from the flashbang made her depth perception swim. But she climbed anyway. Slow, controlled, silent.
She’d trained for worse, she reminded herself. But training didn’t come with the metallic taste of fear in your mouth or the knowledge that kids were hiding somewhere below.
When she reached the rafters, Gage was already moving forward, keeping low, the beam beneath him creaking faintly. He extended a hand to steady her as she shifted from the rope to the narrow metal bar.
She crouched behind him, eyes sweeping the dark space below.
The hangar stretched out in gray layers of smoke and shadow, broken by the faint gleam of the birthday candles near the collapsed cake table.
Movement flickered here and there. Shapes shifting, men sweeping the area, their voices murmuring low and deliberate.
Gage motioned for her to follow, then started crawling along the beam. Rena stayed close, every nerve raw with tension. The beam was slick, and each inch forward was a balance between silence and survival.
From this height, the world felt fragile. One wrong move, one misplaced breath, and the whole hangar would know exactly where they were.
Rena’s pulse thudded in her throat, the only sound she could really hear over the dull roar in her ears.
She was just behind Gage, every muscle locked tight as they crawled along the beam.
The air was thick with dust and smoke, the flicker of candlelight barely enough to define the darkness beneath them.
Then, out of nowhere, a scream split the silence.
High, sharp, terrified. A girl’s voice. God. It was one of the kids.
Rena froze. The sound hit like a gunshot itself, slicing through the dark. Across the hangar, a shadow shifted. One of the men below jerked his head up, scanning. His night vision gear glinted faint green as he turned toward the sound.
Toward them.
“Shit,” Gage hissed, barely audible.
Rena saw the moment it happened. The man pivoted, rifle swinging in their direction, boots crunching on shards of glass scattered from the skylight above.
Her stomach knotted. She reached for Gage, her hand gripping his calf hard enough that she felt the tremor in his muscles.
She whispered his name, but the word was lost in the sharp, percussive crack of gunfire.
The suppressor muffled the shots, but not the impact. Bullets tore into the partition below them, sparks spraying from the metal as chunks of debris flew. Someone screamed. A kid again. Another voice answered, higher, raw with fear.
And just like that, everything broke.
Muzzle flashes strobed the darkness, the air erupting with the sound of gunfire. Two more figures stormed in from the loading bay, rifles already blazing. The noise was deafening, a wall of sound that turned the hangar into an echoing nightmare.
Below, one of the kids bolted from hiding. Just a blur of motion, running for the side exit. A burst of gunfire tracked him across the floor. He went down hard, sliding into a tool cart that toppled over with a crash. Rena wasn’t sure if he’d been hit or just fallen.
She prayed it was the latter, that he hadn’t been hurt.
The vibration traveled up the walls and into the rafters. The beam beneath Rena shook. Gage lost his grip, just a slip, but enough. He dropped several inches, catching himself with his good arm, boots scrambling against the slick metal.
His Glock slipped from his waistband. Rena watched helplessly as it spun end over end, a flash of matte black tumbling through the air, before it hit the concrete below with a sharp clatter.
The gunman turned toward the sound.
Then he looked up.
For one suspended second, Rena saw their eyes meet—Gage and the man below, predator and target, thirty feet of cold air between them.
The rifle barrel rose.
Rena didn’t think. Training and instinct blurred together as the rifle below swung toward Gage.
Her pulse slammed once, and then she fired.
The Glock kicked in her hands, the recoil biting into her wrists. The shot cracked through the hangar, sharp and echoing, the sound swallowed by the chaos below. The gunman jerked, body twisting mid-turn, then dropped like a sack of gear, rifle clattering across the floor.
For half a breath, everything froze. Smoke drifted around the body, the metallic scent of gunfire heavy in the air. Rena’s hands shook. Her vision tunneled, the migraine’s pulse fighting the adrenaline, but she kept the Glock up, scanning.
Gage turned toward her, eyes wide in the dim light. He didn’t say a word, just gave her a quick nod. Gratitude maybe. But then his gaze snapped past her shoulder.
“Down!” he hissed.
Rena barely hit the beam before the next volley started. Gunfire erupted from below, rounds tearing through the rafters, sparks raining down. The metal beam quivered under them, every vibration like a warning.
They were pinned, exposed, thirty feet above the floor with nothing but shadows and adrenaline between them and the bullets screaming upward.