CHAPTER NINE #2
“No. It doesn’t.” My grip tightens around my weapon as I listen past the crash of the waves.
I strain to hear anything that doesn’t belong here.
Footsteps, voices, but there’s no sound but the water, the wind and the creak of the cranes above us like rusted skeletons waiting to collapse.
The feeling crawling up my spine only gets worse with every passing second.
Then, a faint noise carries over the winter wind.
I’m not entirely sure where it came from at this distance, but I hear it.
Metal shifting against metal. Quick and sharp.
“You hear that?” Danny appears on my opposite side, his voice barely audible.
I nod once, all three of us going rigid as we stay buried within the shadows.
Billy slowly raises his rifle, eyes narrowing toward the slim cargo lane stretching ahead of us while Danny reaches behind his back and pulls the knife from its sheath in one smooth movement.
My gaze flicks to him briefly. A few months ago, the idea of Danny anywhere near my sister would’ve earned him a bullet.
Katia deserved better. Better than a man who carries death with him everywhere he goes.
Then again, I could say the same thing about myself.
The truth is, Katia isn’t some naive little girl waiting to be protected.
This world got its claws into her the same way it got into the rest of us.
She understands the violence. The blood.
The sacrifices that come with surviving it.
I hadn’t liked it when I first found out they’d been seeing each other.
Hell, I damn near put Danny through a wall over it.
But somewhere along the way I’d noticed the little things.
The way he watched her when he thought nobody was paying attention.
The way he puts himself between her and danger without a second thought.
And Katia… Katia smiles around him. Not the guarded ones she’d learned to wear growing up.
It makes me sick, but I also remember a time when she didn’t smile at all.
Growing up the way we did, happiness was an unaffordable luxury.
We spent our childhood trying to survive it, let alone enjoy it.
If there was one thing I trusted more than Danny’s ability to protect her, it was my sister’s ability to make her own choices.
She’s smart. Not just because she’s a doctor.
She’s survived things that would’ve broken most people.
She knows what she’s doing. I just have to accept it.
Still doesn’t mean I won’t bury the asshole myself if he ever hurts her.
Danny catches me looking and arches a brow.
“What?”
“Just be careful tonight, alright? Katia will kill me if anything happens to you.” A grin tugs at the corner of his mouth.
“Good to know where I rank.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
I look back over my shoulder into the darkness behind us before raising two fingers toward the men waiting further down the cargo lane.
I barely make the signal before they spread out, slipping from cover in complete silence this time, weapons drawn and ready as they take their positions along the containers that surround us.
Billy moves from my left to cover the wider opening, while Danny stays close to my right as we slowly creep through the dark, and closer to the far side of the dock.
The noise comes again, dragging upward from somewhere beneath the docks before a deep vibration rolls through the concrete, hard enough that I feel it travel beneath my boots a second later.
Billy reacts instantly, rifle snapping toward the darkness ahead while Danny slows beside me.
I flick my gaze toward him, catching his expression the second it sharpens, his attention dropping to the ground where we stand as another faint tremor passes through the loading lane.
“Tell me you feel that too.” Danny murmurs, the words barely leaving his mouth before Billy’s hand slices through the dark from across the yard.
My pulse slows as instinct takes over, another tremor rolling beneath the dock, much slower than before.
Hidden under layers of concrete and rust where nobody walking these docks would ever think to look twice.
That’s where they are. I lift my gaze ahead, eyes sweeping across the flurries of snow falling through the darkness, placing each of our men, blending within the shadows as they take cover against the containers.
Danny peels away from our position first, keeping low as he crosses the dock to where Billy is situated.
I cover his flank, preparing for literally anything and every nerve in my body hums violently beneath my skin from adrenaline.
“Ready. Got you covered,” Danny’s voice crackles through my earpiece, and I waste no time, closing the distance and flattening myself against the steel the second I make it across.
Within a heartbeat, we’re stepping into an open container.
We’re definitely not alone here. We switch on our headgear lights, the beams sweeping across the rusted walls and empty space, before the light catches on something concealed beneath us. Concrete.
“What the fuck is that?” Billy mutters. The entire center of the container floor has been gutted, revealing a massive concrete bunker hidden beneath the steel shell hovering like an awning above it.
A thick reinforced hatch sits open within the floor itself, its heavy metal door wedged back by an industrial anchor bolted against the steel wall beside it.
The staircase descending below looks endless, disappearing straight into darkness beneath what I assume is the harbor.
A fucking tunnel. An underground rat hole hidden in plain sight.
The acrid smell hits first.
Bleach.
Chemicals.
It rises from the darkness below in a revolting wave, causing my fucking eyes to water from the sting and its sheer potency.
The smell of death desperately trying to disguise itself beneath antiseptic and salt, though it’s nowhere near enough to deter me, so I take a step closer.
If anything, it only confirms what kind of monsters are hiding here.
Billy and Danny remain quiet at my side as I relay our findings back to Ezekiel through the comms, both men staring down into the abyss, their weapons raised.
My every instinct pulls me forward to whatever exists beneath this bunker.
Danny feels it too because he’s right up my ass, following me as I step forward, before the three of us are moving deeper into what is probably the devil’s fucking lair.
The staircase seems to go on forever, each step dragging us further beneath the harbor until the air starts feeling noticeably heavier around us.
Warmer and suffocating. Every breath starts to burn with the overpowering sting of alcohol, while somewhere deeper underground, a rhythmic beeping echoes faintly through the tunnel ahead.
“It sounds like a fucking hospital down here,” Danny whispers, but I don’t respond.
Over the years, we’ve seen our fair share of underground facilities.
Medical wings. Hidden offices. Illegal sites they tried desperately to keep hidden, but failed because we found them.
It was no surprise, though. That’s how the world really operates.
Everything above ground is only surface level bullshit.
Clean suits. Politics. Smiling faces pretending the world isn’t rotting from the inside out.
The real shit, the truth, happens beneath our noses, buried underneath cities where nobody can hear the screaming.
Billy sweeps his flashlight across the corridor ahead while the steady beeping continues through the bunker, bouncing off the concrete around us in an endless loop.
The deeper we move into the facility, the more it starts resembling some kind of underground trauma ward.
Fluorescent lights flicker violently ahead, throwing strobes across the exposed concrete walls dripping with saltwater leaking through cracks in the foundation.
Rusted wire mesh protrudes through sections where the cement has chipped away completely, the steel skeleton underneath exposed like open wounds running through the bunker.
The lights flicker out completely, the sound of old pipes groaning somewhere behind these walls follows us with every step, and Danny takes this moment to move ahead, brushing past me to check if the coast is clear while Billy covers the darkness we just crawled out of.