26. Clay
Clay
The word tunnel hits the room like a last prayer.
And I don’t like last prayers.
I like plans.
Weapons.
Exits.
Bodies between Hannah and anything trying to take her.
But right now, all we have is smoke, gunfire, screaming civilians, and Gabriel pointing toward the far end of the warehouse like he hasn’t been keeping secrets since the second he walked into this nightmare.
Russ moves first.
“Lucas, Miles—civilians with us. Tight formation. No gaps.”
“Copy,” Lucas snaps.
Miles is already hauling the little girl into his arms, pressing her face against his shoulder so she won’t see the body that just dropped ten feet away from us.
Another sniper round punches through the haze.
Concrete explodes inches from Hannah’s head.
I drag her down against me.
Her body slams into my chest, her breath ripping out in a broken gasp.
For one second—one impossible second—I feel her heartbeat against mine.
Fast.
Terrified.
Alive.
Mine.
“Clay—”
“I’ve got you.”
My voice comes out too rough. Too raw.
I don’t care.
Sentinel can hear it.
Gabriel can hear it.
Hell, Russ can hear it.
I’m done pretending she’s just part of the mission.
She hasn’t been just part of the mission since the moment I found her with blood on her hands and fear in her eyes and still trying to save everyone but herself.
Gabriel ducks beside us, weapon raised toward the north entrance.
“Tunnel access is behind the old boiler room.”
Russ shoots him a hard look. “And you were going to mention that when?”
“When we lived long enough for it to matter.”
I move before Gabriel finishes talking.
My hand locks around Hannah’s.
Not her wrist.
Not her arm.
Her hand.
Because I need her to know I’m not dragging an asset.
I’m holding on to a woman.
My woman.
We run.
Bullets chew through the warehouse behind us.
Metal shrieks.
Glass rains down from shattered windows above.
The air turns thick with smoke and cordite, every breath scraping down my throat like sandpaper.
Hannah stumbles once.
I catch her before she hits the ground.
She doesn’t cry out.
Doesn’t panic.
Doesn’t freeze.
She just shoves herself upright and keeps moving.
God.
This woman.
She’s terrified, and she’s still fighting.
Still standing.
Still trusting me.
That trust does something dangerous inside my chest.
It carves out space where fear used to be and fills it with something worse.
Something permanent.
Russ takes point with Gabriel.
I don’t like Gabriel in front of us.
I don’t like him behind us either.
Mostly, I don’t like him breathing anywhere near Hannah.
But right now, he knows the way.
So I let him live.
For now.
We reach the boiler room door as another volley opens behind us.
Lucas returns fire while backing through the smoke.
“Move, move, move!”
Miles ducks inside with the little girl and two civilians. Hannah starts to follow, but a woman screams behind us.
A civilian.
Middle-aged.
Pinned near a loading crate, one hand clamped around her bleeding arm.
Hannah hears it.
Her head snaps toward the sound.
“No,” I bark.
She looks at me.
Just one look.
And I already know I’ve lost.
“She’ll die.”
“Hannah—”
“She’ll die, Clay.”
Another round cracks overhead.
Russ curses. “We don’t have time!”
Hannah yanks her hand free.
The empty space burns.
Then she runs straight back into the smoke.
My heart stops.
“HANNAH!”
I go after her without thinking.
Because thinking is done.
Thinking belongs to men who still have choices.
I don’t.
Not with her.
Never with her.
I catch up as she drops beside the wounded woman, already pressing both hands over the bleeding.
“Can you walk?” Hannah asks.
The woman sobs. “I don’t—I don’t know—”
“You can,” Hannah says, voice shaking but firm. “Because I need you to. Right now.”
A red laser slices through the smoke.
Across the floor.
Up the crate.
Toward Hannah.
Everything inside me turns cold.
I fire once.
The sniper position above the loading dock sparks, a shadow jerking backward into darkness.
“Now,” I growl.
Hannah hooks the woman’s good arm over her shoulder.
I grab the woman’s other side, hauling them both up.
We stagger back toward the boiler room.
Bullets follow us.
One hits close enough that heat kisses the side of my neck.
Hannah flinches.
I shove her behind me and return fire blind into the haze.
“Clay!” Russ roars from the doorway.
“We’re coming!”
The woman nearly collapses.
Hannah tightens her grip. “Stay with me. Please. Just a little farther.”
Please.
That word.
After everything this night has taken from her, she still has softness left.
Sentinel wants to turn her into data.
A program.
A thing.
They have no idea what they’re trying to steal.
We reach the boiler room.
Russ grabs the woman and pulls her inside.
I shove Hannah through next.
Then something slams into my back.
Not a bullet.
A body.
Hard.
Fast.
I hit the floor with a grunt, rolling before the blade can drive into my ribs.
Sentinel operative.
Black mask.
Silent as death.
He comes at me again.
No hesitation.
No wasted movement.
I block his wrist, twist, slam my elbow into his throat.
He barely reacts.
Not human enough.
Not anymore.
Hannah screams my name.
That sound tears through me.
The operative’s knife flashes again.
I catch his arm, but the blade slices across my forearm, hot and deep.
Pain bites.
I ignore it.
He drives a knee toward my ribs.
I absorb it and slam my forehead into his mask.
Crack.
Not enough.
He reaches for something at his belt.
Small.
Metal.
Needle injector.
And his mask turns—not toward me.
Toward Hannah.
No.
Rage takes over.
I drive him backward into the boiler room wall, once, twice, three times, until pipes rattle and steam hisses from somewhere overhead.
“Clay!” Russ snaps. “End it!”
Gladly.
The operative lifts the injector again.
I catch his wrist and force it back.
Into the seam beneath his own armor.
His body jerks.
Once.
Hard.
The mask tilts toward me.
For the first time, he makes a sound.
Not pain.
Shock.
Then he drops.
I stand over him, chest heaving, blood dripping from my arm onto the concrete.
Hannah rushes toward me.
I stop her with one look.
“Don’t touch him.”
She freezes, eyes wide and glassy.
Not because she’s afraid of me.
Because she’s afraid for me.
That almost takes my knees out.
Russ slams the boiler room door shut while Lucas wedges an iron bar through the handle.
It won’t hold long.
Nothing holds long against men like this.
Gabriel is already across the room, crouched near a rusted floor grate half-hidden beneath old machinery.
“That’s the access.”
Miles looks down at it. “That’s not a tunnel. That’s a grave with stairs.”
Gabriel yanks the grate open.
Cold air breathes up from below.
Wet concrete.
Rot.
Darkness.
Hannah steps beside me, close enough that her shoulder brushes mine.
Her eyes drop to the blood on my arm.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’ve bled before.”
Her mouth trembles like she wants to argue, but the door behind us shakes violently.
One hit.
Then another.
Sentinel’s men are coming.
Hannah grabs my wounded arm anyway.
Her fingers are gentle.
Too gentle for a room falling apart around us.
“You don’t get to die for me,” she whispers.
The words slip under my ribs and wrap around something I didn’t know was still breakable.
I lean closer.
So close her breath catches.
“I’m not dying.”
The door slams again.
The iron bar bends.
I look straight into her eyes.
“I haven’t told you yet.”
Her lips part.
“Told me what?”
Everything.
That’s the word that almost leaves my mouth.
Everything.
That I’m in love with her.
That I don’t know when it happened.
That somewhere between blood and fear and her stubborn, beautiful heart, she became the one person I would tear the world apart to keep breathing.
But the door explodes inward before I can say it.
Russ fires first.
“GO!”
Gabriel drops into the tunnel.
Miles passes the little girl down.
Lucas follows with the wounded woman.
Russ turns to Hannah.
“Move!”
Hannah looks at me.
I nod once.
She climbs down.
The second her head disappears beneath the floor, the room loses light.
I back toward the opening, firing as Sentinel pours through the broken door.
Black armor.
Red lasers.
No voices.
No mercy.
Russ drops down after Hannah.
“Clay!” he shouts from below.
I fire again.
Again.
Again.
Then my rifle clicks empty.
A Sentinel operative steps through the smoke.
Weapon rising.
Too close.
I reach for my sidearm.
Too slow.
The shot cracks.
But it doesn’t hit me.
Gabriel is halfway up the ladder beneath me, arm extended, pistol smoking.
The Sentinel operative falls backward.
Gabriel looks at me.
“Don’t make me regret saving you.”
I bare my teeth. “Get in line.”
Then I drop into the dark.
The tunnel swallows me whole.
Cold water splashes around my boots when I land.
Hannah is there instantly.
Hands on my chest.
My face.
My arm.
Checking me like she has the right.
She does.
God help me, she does.
Above us, the boiler room erupts with footsteps.
Russ points down the tunnel. “Move!”
We run into the dark.
No light except Gabriel’s small red flashlight cutting across slick concrete walls.
The air is colder down here.
Older.
Like this tunnel has been waiting years for secrets to crawl through it.
Hannah stays beside me, one hand gripping the back of my vest so tight her knuckles brush my spine.
I should tell her to loosen her grip.
I don’t.
I need to feel her there.
Need to know every second that she’s still with me.
Behind us, metal crashes.
Sentinel found the grate.
“Faster,” Lucas snaps.
The tunnel curves sharply left.
Then drops.
Water rises to our ankles.
The little girl whimpers in Miles’s arms.
Hannah reaches out and touches her cheek as we move.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she whispers. “We’re getting out.”
The girl nods against Miles’s shoulder, trusting Hannah’s words completely.
Of course she does.
Everyone does.
Because Hannah Bowers is the kind of woman who makes people believe survival is possible even when death is breathing down their necks.
Gabriel suddenly stops.
Russ nearly slams into him.
“What?”
Gabriel lifts one fist.
Silence.
Then I hear it.
Voices ahead.
Not behind us.
Ahead.
My blood goes ice cold.
A faint red glow pulses around the bend.
Gabriel’s jaw tightens.
Russ raises his weapon.
Hannah’s hand tightens on my vest.
I ease her behind me.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Then a voice comes through the tunnel speakers.
Smooth.
Male.
Amused.
“Dr. Bowers.”
Hannah goes still.
The tunnel seems to stop breathing.
The voice continues.
“We were wondering when you would remember the way home.”
Hannah’s fingers dig into my back.
Hard enough to hurt.
Good.
Pain means she’s here.
Pain means she’s real.
I turn my head just enough to see her face.
All the color has drained from it.
Her lips part, but no sound comes out.
Russ whispers, “Hannah?”
She shakes her head once.
Tiny.
Terrified.
“I know that voice.”
My stomach drops.
Ahead, the red glow brightens.
The voice returns, softer now.
Almost fond.
“Hello, Hannah. Let’s not make this harder than it has to be.”
My grip tightens around my weapon.
Every instinct inside me rises.
Protect.
Destroy.
Survive.
Then the voice says the words that turn Hannah’s terror into something far worse.
“After all… you belonged to us long before you ever belonged to him.”