Chapter 10 #2
Kane stands at the chamber's edge, flashlight illuminating a narrow stone path that follows the stream toward what might be daylight in the distance.
"Five hundred meters," he reports. "Comes out behind the treeline where Tommy arranged backup vehicles."
"They're behind us." Stryker is breathing hard, favoring his wounded leg. "Three minutes, maybe less."
Kane's eyes find mine. He sees the injury. Sees the way I'm holding my side. His expression doesn't change, but something shifts in his posture. Acknowledgment that we might not all make it out of this tunnel.
"Then we move fast." He turns to Reagan. "Stay between Dylan and Khalid. Don't stop for anything."
We run.
The stone path is slick with moisture, treacherous in the dim beam of our flashlights.
Reagan stumbles twice, and both times Khalid catches her with reflexes that shouldn't belong to a fifteen-year-old boy.
Behind us, echoes of pursuit bounce off the tunnel walls, footsteps and shouting and the occasional crack of gunfire that goes wide.
The wound is slowing me down. My vision narrows at the edges, and every step sends fire through my side that threatens to drop me where I stand. Lisa's face flashes through my mind, then Maya's, smiling at me from that photograph I keep on every nightstand.
Not yet. Not like this.
"Stay awake." Reagan's voice cuts through the fog threatening to swallow me. "We're almost there."
Daylight appears ahead, a pale slice of gray cutting through the tunnel. Kane increases his pace, and somehow my legs keep moving, carrying me toward that light.
We burst out of the tunnel into a clearing surrounded by pine trees. An SUV waits on a dirt road thirty feet away, engine already running. Tommy coordinated this from Echo Base. The kid thinks of everything.
"Go!" Kane barks the order while Stryker covers our rear. "Dylan, Reagan, Khalid. Move!"
Reagan's hand finds mine. She pulls me toward the SUV, stronger than she looks, refusing to let me fall. Khalid is already in the back seat, his knife disappearing back into wherever he keeps it.
The door closes behind me. The engine roars. We're moving.
Through the rear window, I watch the tunnel entrance.
Three figures emerge, weapons raised, but we're already out of effective range.
One of them fires anyway, and the round punches through the rear glass, missing Reagan's head by inches.
She doesn't flinch. Just reaches over and presses her hand against my side, applying pressure to the wound.
"Stay with me." Her voice carries command rather than request. "Dylan, stay with me."
"Kane." I force the words out. "Safe house status?"
"Gone." Kane's voice from the front seat is flat. Professional. "They'll burn it. Standard Committee protocol. No evidence left behind."
Gone. Everything we built there. The command center, the secure communications, the maps and planning documents. All of it reduced to ash.
But the exposé still exists. We didn't get to send it, but we didn't lose it either.
"Secondary location?" I ask.
"Hunting lodge. Forty miles north. Off-grid, no paper trail connecting it to any of us.
" Kane checks his mirror, watching for pursuit.
"Tommy dispatched Willa from Echo Base the second our perimeter alarms tripped.
She's got a twenty-minute head start on a direct route while we were fighting our way out. "
Reagan leans closer, her hand still pressed against my wound. The pressure is helping, slowing the flow. She looks at me with eyes that hold exhaustion and fear and a stubborn refusal to quit.
"We didn't send it," she whispers. "Dylan, we were so close. My finger was on the button."
"I know."
"All that work. Everything we need to expose them. And now—"
"Now we find another way." I force my eyes to focus on her face. On the woman who refused to run when running would have been smarter. "The files still exist. The journalists are still waiting. We regroup, find secure communications, and we try again."
"What if they find us first?"
"They won't."
"You don't know that."
"No." The word scrapes out, rough against my throat. "But I know Kane. I know this team. And I know that flash drive in your pocket is the most valuable thing the Committee has ever failed to destroy."
The SUV bounces over rough terrain, heading toward a secondary location that the Committee doesn't know about. Behind us, smoke will soon rise from what used to be our safe house. Committee operators will sift through the ashes looking for bodies, for evidence, for any sign of where we've gone.
They won't find anything useful. Kane's too careful for that.
"Echo Base?" I ask.
"Secure." Kane meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. "Tommy confirmed no indication they know the real location."
"Mercer and Stryker?"
"Extracted clean. Five minutes behind us." Kane's voice carries a thread of relief beneath the professional calm. "Everyone's accounted for."
Echo Base remains hidden. The team remains operational. We've lost a position, not the war.
The hunting lodge appears through the trees, a structure that looks abandoned but isn't. Willa's already at the door, medical kit in hand, her expression shifting from worried to focused as she sees Reagan's hands covered in my blood.
The SUV stops. Doors open. Hands reach for me, pulling me toward safety and surgery and whatever comes next.
The Committee will figure it out soon enough—if they haven't already. The assault destroyed the safe house but failed to kill us. They'll know we escaped with the evidence. And knowing Webb, he's already calculating his next move, deploying assets, tightening the net.
We just have to live long enough to use what we have.
Reagan's face hovers above mine as they lift me from the vehicle.
She's saying something, her lips moving, but the words scatter before I can catch them.
Khalid appears at her shoulder, jaw set the way it gets when he's trying not to show fear.
Kane is barking orders somewhere nearby, his voice cutting through the chaos the way it always does.
Willa's hands replace Reagan's on my wound, professional and efficient. Someone is cutting away my tactical vest. Someone else is starting an IV line.
"Shrapnel," Willa announces. "Missed the major organs. He'll be fine once I get him cleaned up."
Reagan's fingers close around my wrist. Squeeze hard.
"The drive," I mumble. "Don't let anyone—"
"I've got it." Her voice is close to my ear. "I've got it, Dylan. Rest."
I try to say something else. Something about Webb; about what comes next, about how we need to find secure communications and try again. The words won't form. Reagan grabs my hand, holds tight, and the gray at the edges of my vision floods inward.
The last thing I hear is Willa giving orders and Reagan refusing to leave the room. For a moment, the voices blur into something older—Lisa telling Maya to stay close, to hold on, that everything would be fine.
The gray swallows it all.