Chapter 33
Griff did the calculation automatically.
Tactical assessment: Seven contractors visible, more in the corridor. Single entry point—advantage them. Narrow doorway—advantage him. They'd have to funnel through, couldn't use their numbers effectively.
Weapons: They had rifles, sidearms, probably tasers. He had fifteen rounds, one magazine, and whatever he could take from them.
Time needed: Sarah said forty seconds for the auto-trigger.
Probability of success: Zero.
Probability of buying her those forty seconds: Maybe thirty percent.
Good enough.
The words came without thought, stripped down to essentials: God, let me be enough. Let me buy her the time.
Not Tank's flowing prayers or Sarah's quiet faith. Just a soldier asking for forty seconds.
The first contractor through the door was young, confident, and completely unprepared for Griff's elbow to his throat. He dropped, gasping, weapon clattering across the floor.
The second and third came together, weapons raised. Griff used the first man as a shield, driving forward into them. Close quarters—where rifles became liabilities and training mattered more than firepower.
Behind him, Sarah hammered the keyboard. "Server panel Alpha-7... where is it?"
"Left wall, blue housing," Finn said through comms. "You need to physically disconnect it while entering the override code."
More contractors poured through the door. Four. Five. Six.
The narrow doorway was working—they couldn't all engage at once. Griff dropped the human shield, rolled left, came up with a fallen rifle. Three-round burst took one contractor in the vest—nonlethal but it put him down. Another burst forced two more into cover.
A contractor flanked left. Griff caught the movement, pivoted, but another came from the right. The rifle stock caught his ribs, driving air from his lungs. He went with the momentum, turning it into a roll, came up swinging.
His fist connected with someone's jaw. A knee caught him in the back. He stumbled but stayed upright, muscle memory keeping him moving. Strike, block, redirect. Every second bought with blood and bruises.
"Hostile is putting up a fight," someone said. "Get a taser."
That would end it. Griff pressed forward, trying to create chaos, make them bunch up in the doorway. The graze on his shoulder screamed with each movement.
Sarah was at the panel now, laptop balanced on one arm while she typed with her free hand. "Manual override initiated. Twenty seconds."
A contractor got behind him, ready to choke him out. Griff dropped his weight, threw the man over his shoulder. But two more were already on him.
"Fifteen seconds," Sarah called.
A fist caught his temple. The room tilted. Another blow to his ribs. He was going down, but he twisted as he fell, taking one contractor with him, buying precious seconds.
"Ten seconds."
Through blurred vision, he saw a contractor raising a rifle butt toward his head. No way to block it.
The prayer had been answered. Not the way he'd wanted, but forty seconds was almost up.
"Five... four..."
The rifle came down. Pain exploded through his skull.
The last thing Griff saw before darkness claimed him was Sarah's face, triumphant for an instant before the contractors grabbed her.
They'd done it. Both systems down.
Worth the price.
The rest was silence.