Previous Chapter (9) - Paolo | First Chapter - Camila
Jack Derringer’s office was no longer his own.
The familiar stench of stale cigarette smoke and cheap bourbon was still there, a foundational layer of despair caked into the walls. But now, it was overlaid with new, sharper smells: the metallic tang of gun oil, the faint ozone hum of high-end electronics, and the clean, focused scent of professional violence.
The corkboard of misery was still on the wall, Elena's portrait at its heart, but it was no longer a shrine to failure. It was now a target analysis board. Freshly printed architectural schematics of the Old Print Works were tacked over old case files. Satellite maps of the West District, marked with red and blue grease pencil, were spread across the floor and his cluttered desk. The office had been transformed from a tomb into a war room.
And at its center stood the wolves.
Four men, a pack of ghosts Mr. Kowalski's money had summoned from the shadows. They moved with a quiet, lethal economy in the cramped space, their presence turning the small office into a pressure cooker.
Leaning against the wall, meticulously cleaning the lens of a massive telescopic sight, was a lean, hawk-faced man with the pale complexion of someone who spent more time lurking in shadow than out in the sun. This was Garry 'Longshot' Whitcombe, ex-SAS, the sniper.
Sitting on a rickety chair, a block of scarred muscle and stoic silence, was a man field-stripping a specialized tranquilizer pistol with a brutal, practiced efficiency that was mesmerizing to watch. Mikhail 'Wardog' Vostrikov, Ex-Spetsnaz, the close-quarters combat specialist.
Kneeling on the floor, his intense, dark eyes focused on the delicate wiring of a small block of C4, was Nadav 'Backblast' Ben-Ari. Ex-Mossad, the man who made doors where there were none.
And standing over the maps on the desk, the calm, unmoving center of the storm, was their leader. He wasn't the biggest or the most outwardly threatening, but he radiated an aura of absolute, unshakable authority. Connor 'Keystone' Hale.
He tapped a gloved finger on a map of the West District, to a building overlooking The Old Print Works.
"Longshot, your perch is here," Keystone said, his voice a low, calm baritone that cut through the quiet tension in the room. "The old water tower on the adjacent block. It gives you a clear line of sight to three of the four egress points, and line of sight to the command post." He gestured to a piece of tech on the desk—a small, dark drone. "The drone gives you thermal. You are our eyes. I want a call-out for every signature that moves, breathes, or farts."
"Aye," Longshot replied without looking up, his voice a clipped Scottish accent. "Can count the fillings in their teeth from there."
Keystone's finger moved to the schematics of the ground floor. "Ingress is here," he said, circling a section marked 'North-East Loading Docks - Collapsed 1998'. "It's a structural weakness. Backblast, you get us through the debris, quietly. Wardog and I go in. Absolute silence from that point on unless compromised."
He looked up, his gaze sweeping over each man. "The order is silence. Our primary weapons are these." He tapped the tranquilizer pistol Wardog was now reassembling. "High-potency carfentanil darts. They're subsonic. The targets will be asleep before they hit the floor. The client wants his daughter back, not a pile of bodies. This is a rescue, not an assassination."
He paused, letting the order sink in.
"Primary objective: locate and extract the asset, Elena Kowalski. Secondary objective: extract any and all other captives. We leave no one behind. Any questions?"
There were none. The plan was set. The wolves were ready.
Keystone looked at the photo of Elena on the wall. "Alright," he said, his voice dropping, the briefing over. "Gear up. We move in twenty."
---
The Old Print Works was a black hole in the city's skyline, a monolithic tomb that swallowed light and sound. The rain had finally stopped, leaving the night air heavy and cold. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.
Until it did.
From the deepest shadows of a collapsed loading dock, a section of rubble shifted with a silence that was supernatural. A hydraulic wedge, no bigger than a man’s forearm, expanded with a soft hiss, displacing a half-ton of concrete and rusted rebar. Nadav 'Backblast' Ben-Ari slithered through the newly created gap, a ghost in the darkness, before giving a single, sharp hand signal.
Connor 'Keystone' Hale followed, moving with an impossible fluidity, his feet making no sound on the debris-strewn floor. Behind him came the hulking, silent form of Mikhail 'Wardog' Vostrikov, a bear treading on silent paws. They were inside.
Keystone tapped the small Comms unit on his throat.
A calm, Scottish voice, laced with the faintest whisper of static, materialized in his head. It was Longshot, a block away in his water tower perch.
"Solid entry. You're in a clean corridor. No signatures on your level."
Keystone didn't reply. They moved by hand signals, a silent language of lethal intent. They flowed through the maze of dead machinery, shadows detaching and reattaching to other shadows. The air was thick with the smell of wet rot and decay. The only sounds were the drip of water from a leaking pipe and the distant skittering of rats.
"Two signatures, stationary, second-floor gantry," Longshot's voice murmured. "East side. Look like watchers… They're smokin'. No discipline. Amateurs. Hold your position."
Keystone and Wardog froze behind a massive, rusted printing press. High above them, they could see the two pinprick embers of cigarettes glowing in the darkness. They waited, motionless, for a full minute as the guards finished their break, oblivious to the wolves that had just entered their den.
"They're movin' off. Good. Ground floor is clear. I have your target area… picking up a heat cluster, south-west corner of the main floor. Six life signs. Looks like five prisoners inside and a guard at their post. Very low body temp… likely sleepin'. That's your holdin' area, Keystone."
Keystone gave a hand signal. Forward.
They moved toward the south-west corner, guided by Longshot's precise directions. They found it behind a wall of stacked, rotting newsprint bales: a heavy, reinforced steel door with a modern electronic keypad.
Keystone looked over to the small guard desk and saw a young man lying back in his chair, a line of drool dripping down his chin.
One guard. Sloppy. Very sloppy
Keystone then examined the door. He found a pressure sensor. He knelt, examining the lock. Below the keypad was a simple, old-fashioned deadbolt. He pulled a small, specialized tool from his vest—a hydraulic pin-puller. He fit the device over the lock, the metal arms gripping the cylinder. He squeezed the handle. There was no loud bang, no crash. Just a single, soft, metallic snap that was swallowed by the gloom. The lock was broken.
He gave a quick glance at the guard. Unmoving.
He gave the door a gentle push. It swung inward on silent, well-oiled hinges, opening into a corridor bathed in a dim, sickly orange light.
The cellblock.
He gave Wardog a signal to hold the position and cover the entrance. Then, taking a breath, Keystone slipped inside.
Keystone moved down the central corridor of the cellblock. The air was thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and despair. He could hear the soft, rhythmic breathing of sleepers. The cages, lined up on either side, were pits of shadow.
He needed to confirm the primary target before taking out the guard. He moved to the nearest occupied cell on his left. Inside, a young woman with blonde hair was curled on a thin cot, twitching in the throes of a nightmare. He knew her face from Derringer's files. Not the target.
He needed to be quiet. He needed one of them to identify Elena for him. He knelt by the mesh, his movements completely silent, and gently rocked the wire door.
"Hey," he whispered, his voice a low, urgent rasp, barely loud enough to carry through the mesh. "Wake up. We're getting you out of here. Which one of you is Elena?"
The blonde woman's eyes snapped open.
They weren't the eyes of someone waking from a bad dream. They were the eyes of someone who had been living in a nightmare for so long they no longer knew the difference. Panic, pure and absolute, seized her.
"NO!"
The shriek tore from her throat, raw and terrified. She scrambled backward on the cot, crab-walking until her back slammed against the concrete wall. She pointed a trembling finger at Keystone.
"You won't trick me again!" she screamed, her voice echoing in the confined space. "I ain't goin' back to the Quiet Room! I ain't! I'll be good!"
Keystone stiffened, a cold knot of dread tightening in his gut. "Quiet!" he hissed, his whisper now a command. "Keep your voice down!"
But it was too late. The damage was done. At the far end of the corridor, a light flicked on in the guard station. A chair scraped against the concrete.
"Hey!" a young, arrogant voice yelled. It was the young guard. "Shut your goddamn hole, or I'll come in there and—"
Pip emerged from the guard station, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, his hand reaching for his nightstick. He took two steps into the corridor, then froze.
His eyes widened as they registered the black-clad, heavily armed figure kneeling by the frantic woman's cell. He opened his mouth, drawing in a huge breath to sound the alarm.
"WE GO—!"
Thwip.
The sound was no louder than a dart hitting a corkboard. It was the sound of the tranquilizer pistol from the doorway, where Wardog stood, a silent monolith.
A small, feathered dart bloomed on the side of Pip's neck. His shout died in his throat, a pathetic, gurgling sound. His eyes rolled back into his head, the whites gleaming in the orange light. He swayed for a moment, then collapsed in a boneless heap on the floor.
Mission compromised.
The sight of the guard dropping like a puppet with its strings cut was a lit match in a gas-filled room.
The commotion, the blonde woman's screams followed by the solid thud of the guards’s body hitting the concrete, had roused the other women. They had been watching from the shadows of their cells, frozen with a familiar, paralyzing fear. But this… this was new. A man in black. A guard going down without a fight.
A single, fragile seed of hope, long thought dead and buried, suddenly, violently, sprouted.
Keystone quickly looked at the faces of the women who got to their feet, hoping to identify Elena.
"Hey! Over here!" a voice cried out from one of the cells. It was a dark haired woman with olive skin. She scrambled to the front of her mesh, her hands gripping the wire. "Get us out!"
Maybe?
In the next cell, an Asian, dark haired woman was on her feet, her eyes wide and focused, no longer vacant. She was shaking her cell door, the rattling sound echoing down the corridor.
No
Hope was contagious. Across the way, an Indian lady with black hair, sobbing, begging in a mixture of Hindi and broken English. "Please! Take me! Please, take me with you!"
No
In the cell in the corner, a caucasian lady with strawberry-blonde hair was slapping the mesh, making a racket "PLEASE! get us out!"
No. Where is she?
The cellblock erupted into a cacophony of desperate, pleading noise. The rattling of mesh doors, the crying, the begging—it was deafening. It was the sound of caged animals who suddenly realized the door might be open.
And it was the sound of their own doom.
A high-pitched, electronic shriek cut through the human noise. A sensor—an acoustic alarm triggered by sustained noise above a certain decibel— had been tripped.
WAAAAAH-OOP! WAAAAAH-OOP!
Strobing red klaxons flooded the cellblock, bathing the scene in a pulsating, hellish light.
"Keystone, you're compromised!" Longshot’s voice snapped in his ear, all calm professionalism gone, replaced by urgent command. "The whole building's lit up like a fuckin' Christmas tree! I've got multiple hostiles, armed, converging on your position from the main floor! ETA thirty seconds!"
Stealth was no longer an option. The mission had just gone from a surgical extraction to a full-blown smash and grab.
Keystone was already moving. He Holstered the tranquilizer gun and drew his suppressed Glock 9mm, the weapon a sleek, black extension of his hand.
He didn't waste time with keys or tools.
He aimed at the heavy padlock on the olive-skinned woman's cell.
BLAM!
The suppressed shot was still a deafening crack in the confined space. The lock shattered, sparking as the bullet tore through it.
He moved to the next cell. BLAM! the asian lady's lock disintegrated.
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
The three other locks disintegrated, the prisoners pushing open their cells.
"EVERYONE OUT!" he roared, his voice a thunderous command that cut through the alarm and the crying. "WITH ME! IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, YOU MOVE! GO! GO! GO!"
The cell doors screeched open as the terrified women poured out into the strobing red chaos of the corridor. They were a disoriented, panicked herd, some stumbling, some sobbing, all blinking in the harsh, pulsating light.
Wardog and Backblast materialized at the entrance to the cellblock, their tranquilizer pistols already spitting silent, feathered death at the first figures appearing at the far end of the factory floor. Two goons in black t-shirts went down without a sound, crumpling behind a stack of pallets.
"Go! Move!" Keystone yelled, shoving two of the women forward, pushing them toward Wardog. "Wardog, get them moving! Backblast, you have our six!"
And then the real monsters appeared.
Emerging from the stairwell leading to the executive offices were Knuckles, Slick, and Nails. Each of them held a semi-automatic pistol, and they started firing wildly the moment they saw the escaping women.
The air filled with the deafening roar of unsuppressed gunfire. Bullets sparked off the concrete walls and ricocheted off the rusted machinery with high-pitched whines.
It was a chaotic, terrifying ballet of violence.
Slick, crouched behind a pillar, tried to line up a shot on one of the fleeing girls. Before he could squeeze the trigger, a tranquilizer dart from Backblast’s pistol hit him squarely in the chest. He let out a surprised grunt, his pistol clattering to the floor as his legs gave out and he collapsed.
Wardog, a human shield, grabbed the Indian lady by the arm and shoved her behind a massive printing press, his own body absorbing a ricochet that tore through his tactical vest with a dull thud. He grunted, spun, and fired three shots in quick succession, forcing Nails to dive for cover.
Knuckles, roaring like an enraged bear, emptied his entire clip in a spray of suppressive fire, the bullets chewing up the concrete around Keystone’s position. Nails did the same. The air was thick with the smell of cordite. Then, a click. And another.
They were out of ammo.
That was the opening.
"Keystone, GO!" Wardog bellowed, leaving the safety of his cover to physically shove the first blonde woman and the Asian woman towards the exit where Backblast was laying down covering fire. "Get them out! I'll deal with these slimy fucks!"
Keystone didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the last girl—the terrified, olive-skinned dark-haired woman he hoped was Elena—and pushed her forward. "Move!"
As he sprinted for the exit, a sickening, wet CRUNCH! echoed behind him, impossibly loud even over the blaring alarm. It was followed by a high-pitched, agonized scream that could only have come from the man with very long, very delicate fingers.
Keystone glanced back for a split second. He saw Wardog holding Nails by the wrist, the smaller man’s arm bent at an obscene, unnatural angle.
A savage grin flashed across Keystone’s face. Wardog was at work.
He turned and followed the last of the girls through the breach Backblast had made, plunging back out into the cool, clean air of the night.
Outside the Print Works, the night air was a shock to the system—cool, clean, and tasting of freedom. Keystone and Backblast herded the five terrified, barefoot women into the shadows of a neighboring alley, their ragged breathing a stark contrast to the blaring alarms still echoing from the factory behind them.
"Move! This way!" Keystone commanded, pointing them down the dark alley that led back towards Derringer's office, the designated primary extraction point.
"All assets are out," Keystone reported into his throat mic, his voice a low, controlled pant. "Five captives secured. We are RTB. Longshot, what's Wardog's status?"
Longshot's voice came back, tight and strained with tension. "Hold on… The scrawny fuck is down, looks like Wardog broke his arm, good… Wardog is squaring off with the big one, the heavy… they're circling… like two fuckin' bulls…"
There was a pause, filled only by the sound of Longshot’s own ragged breathing. Then, a sudden, horrified cry.
"WARDOG! YOUR SIX! THE SCRAWNY ONE—HE'S UP! FUUUUUUCKIN' ****! WARDOG IS DOWN! REPEAT, WARDOG IS DOWN!"
A cold spike of dread shot through Keystone. He stopped in the alley, grabbing the dark-haired woman's arm to halt the group. "Status, Longshot! What happened?!"
"The wee one… he got back up," Longshot’s voice was a frantic, panicked report. "He had somethin' in his other hand… looked like a syringe. He… he just jammed it into Wardog's neck. Wardog… he just… he just dropped. Like a ton o' fuckin' bricks, man. He's not movin'." Another pause. "The big one's on him now. Orders, Keystone?!"
Keystone closed his eyes for a single, agonizing second. He pictured Wardog, the silent, immovable Russian, a man he'd pulled out of half a dozen hellholes. He pictured the big man, Knuckles, standing over him. He pictured the syringe.
He opened his eyes. The mission parameters were clear. The choice was brutal, but it was the only one.
"Mission accomplished, Longshot," Keystone said, his voice cold and pragmatic, betraying none of the fury raging in his chest. "Wardog knew the risks. We don't trade the package for an operator. We'll come back for him. Right now, we secure the assets."
He keyed his mic again, the command sharp and final.
"All stations, fall back to base. Longshot, you are RTB. Now."
"Copy, Keystone," Longshot replied, his voice laced with a bitter resignation. "Fallin' back."
Keystone turned to the five women huddled in the darkness, their faces a mixture of terror and confusion. He looked at the dark-haired woman he had pulled from the final cell, the one he hoped was Elena Kowalski.
"We have to go," he said, his voice hard. "Now."
He took point, leading them out of the alley and into the labyrinth of dark, silent city streets, leaving one of their own behind in the belly of the beast.
Next Chapter (11) - Chloe
Jack Derringer’s office was no longer his own.
The familiar stench of stale cigarette smoke and cheap bourbon was still there, a foundational layer of despair caked into the walls. But now, it was overlaid with new, sharper smells: the metallic tang of gun oil, the faint ozone hum of high-end electronics, and the clean, focused scent of professional violence.
The corkboard of misery was still on the wall, Elena's portrait at its heart, but it was no longer a shrine to failure. It was now a target analysis board. Freshly printed architectural schematics of the Old Print Works were tacked over old case files. Satellite maps of the West District, marked with red and blue grease pencil, were spread across the floor and his cluttered desk. The office had been transformed from a tomb into a war room.
And at its center stood the wolves.
Four men, a pack of ghosts Mr. Kowalski's money had summoned from the shadows. They moved with a quiet, lethal economy in the cramped space, their presence turning the small office into a pressure cooker.
Leaning against the wall, meticulously cleaning the lens of a massive telescopic sight, was a lean, hawk-faced man with the pale complexion of someone who spent more time lurking in shadow than out in the sun. This was Garry 'Longshot' Whitcombe, ex-SAS, the sniper.
Sitting on a rickety chair, a block of scarred muscle and stoic silence, was a man field-stripping a specialized tranquilizer pistol with a brutal, practiced efficiency that was mesmerizing to watch. Mikhail 'Wardog' Vostrikov, Ex-Spetsnaz, the close-quarters combat specialist.
Kneeling on the floor, his intense, dark eyes focused on the delicate wiring of a small block of C4, was Nadav 'Backblast' Ben-Ari. Ex-Mossad, the man who made doors where there were none.
And standing over the maps on the desk, the calm, unmoving center of the storm, was their leader. He wasn't the biggest or the most outwardly threatening, but he radiated an aura of absolute, unshakable authority. Connor 'Keystone' Hale.
He tapped a gloved finger on a map of the West District, to a building overlooking The Old Print Works.
"Longshot, your perch is here," Keystone said, his voice a low, calm baritone that cut through the quiet tension in the room. "The old water tower on the adjacent block. It gives you a clear line of sight to three of the four egress points, and line of sight to the command post." He gestured to a piece of tech on the desk—a small, dark drone. "The drone gives you thermal. You are our eyes. I want a call-out for every signature that moves, breathes, or farts."
"Aye," Longshot replied without looking up, his voice a clipped Scottish accent. "Can count the fillings in their teeth from there."
Keystone's finger moved to the schematics of the ground floor. "Ingress is here," he said, circling a section marked 'North-East Loading Docks - Collapsed 1998'. "It's a structural weakness. Backblast, you get us through the debris, quietly. Wardog and I go in. Absolute silence from that point on unless compromised."
He looked up, his gaze sweeping over each man. "The order is silence. Our primary weapons are these." He tapped the tranquilizer pistol Wardog was now reassembling. "High-potency carfentanil darts. They're subsonic. The targets will be asleep before they hit the floor. The client wants his daughter back, not a pile of bodies. This is a rescue, not an assassination."
He paused, letting the order sink in.
"Primary objective: locate and extract the asset, Elena Kowalski. Secondary objective: extract any and all other captives. We leave no one behind. Any questions?"
There were none. The plan was set. The wolves were ready.
Keystone looked at the photo of Elena on the wall. "Alright," he said, his voice dropping, the briefing over. "Gear up. We move in twenty."
---
The Old Print Works was a black hole in the city's skyline, a monolithic tomb that swallowed light and sound. The rain had finally stopped, leaving the night air heavy and cold. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.
Until it did.
From the deepest shadows of a collapsed loading dock, a section of rubble shifted with a silence that was supernatural. A hydraulic wedge, no bigger than a man’s forearm, expanded with a soft hiss, displacing a half-ton of concrete and rusted rebar. Nadav 'Backblast' Ben-Ari slithered through the newly created gap, a ghost in the darkness, before giving a single, sharp hand signal.
Connor 'Keystone' Hale followed, moving with an impossible fluidity, his feet making no sound on the debris-strewn floor. Behind him came the hulking, silent form of Mikhail 'Wardog' Vostrikov, a bear treading on silent paws. They were inside.
Keystone tapped the small Comms unit on his throat.
A calm, Scottish voice, laced with the faintest whisper of static, materialized in his head. It was Longshot, a block away in his water tower perch.
"Solid entry. You're in a clean corridor. No signatures on your level."
Keystone didn't reply. They moved by hand signals, a silent language of lethal intent. They flowed through the maze of dead machinery, shadows detaching and reattaching to other shadows. The air was thick with the smell of wet rot and decay. The only sounds were the drip of water from a leaking pipe and the distant skittering of rats.
"Two signatures, stationary, second-floor gantry," Longshot's voice murmured. "East side. Look like watchers… They're smokin'. No discipline. Amateurs. Hold your position."
Keystone and Wardog froze behind a massive, rusted printing press. High above them, they could see the two pinprick embers of cigarettes glowing in the darkness. They waited, motionless, for a full minute as the guards finished their break, oblivious to the wolves that had just entered their den.
"They're movin' off. Good. Ground floor is clear. I have your target area… picking up a heat cluster, south-west corner of the main floor. Six life signs. Looks like five prisoners inside and a guard at their post. Very low body temp… likely sleepin'. That's your holdin' area, Keystone."
Keystone gave a hand signal. Forward.
They moved toward the south-west corner, guided by Longshot's precise directions. They found it behind a wall of stacked, rotting newsprint bales: a heavy, reinforced steel door with a modern electronic keypad.
Keystone looked over to the small guard desk and saw a young man lying back in his chair, a line of drool dripping down his chin.
One guard. Sloppy. Very sloppy
Keystone then examined the door. He found a pressure sensor. He knelt, examining the lock. Below the keypad was a simple, old-fashioned deadbolt. He pulled a small, specialized tool from his vest—a hydraulic pin-puller. He fit the device over the lock, the metal arms gripping the cylinder. He squeezed the handle. There was no loud bang, no crash. Just a single, soft, metallic snap that was swallowed by the gloom. The lock was broken.
He gave a quick glance at the guard. Unmoving.
He gave the door a gentle push. It swung inward on silent, well-oiled hinges, opening into a corridor bathed in a dim, sickly orange light.
The cellblock.
He gave Wardog a signal to hold the position and cover the entrance. Then, taking a breath, Keystone slipped inside.
Keystone moved down the central corridor of the cellblock. The air was thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and despair. He could hear the soft, rhythmic breathing of sleepers. The cages, lined up on either side, were pits of shadow.
He needed to confirm the primary target before taking out the guard. He moved to the nearest occupied cell on his left. Inside, a young woman with blonde hair was curled on a thin cot, twitching in the throes of a nightmare. He knew her face from Derringer's files. Not the target.
He needed to be quiet. He needed one of them to identify Elena for him. He knelt by the mesh, his movements completely silent, and gently rocked the wire door.
"Hey," he whispered, his voice a low, urgent rasp, barely loud enough to carry through the mesh. "Wake up. We're getting you out of here. Which one of you is Elena?"
The blonde woman's eyes snapped open.
They weren't the eyes of someone waking from a bad dream. They were the eyes of someone who had been living in a nightmare for so long they no longer knew the difference. Panic, pure and absolute, seized her.
"NO!"
The shriek tore from her throat, raw and terrified. She scrambled backward on the cot, crab-walking until her back slammed against the concrete wall. She pointed a trembling finger at Keystone.
"You won't trick me again!" she screamed, her voice echoing in the confined space. "I ain't goin' back to the Quiet Room! I ain't! I'll be good!"
Keystone stiffened, a cold knot of dread tightening in his gut. "Quiet!" he hissed, his whisper now a command. "Keep your voice down!"
But it was too late. The damage was done. At the far end of the corridor, a light flicked on in the guard station. A chair scraped against the concrete.
"Hey!" a young, arrogant voice yelled. It was the young guard. "Shut your goddamn hole, or I'll come in there and—"
Pip emerged from the guard station, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, his hand reaching for his nightstick. He took two steps into the corridor, then froze.
His eyes widened as they registered the black-clad, heavily armed figure kneeling by the frantic woman's cell. He opened his mouth, drawing in a huge breath to sound the alarm.
"WE GO—!"
Thwip.
The sound was no louder than a dart hitting a corkboard. It was the sound of the tranquilizer pistol from the doorway, where Wardog stood, a silent monolith.
A small, feathered dart bloomed on the side of Pip's neck. His shout died in his throat, a pathetic, gurgling sound. His eyes rolled back into his head, the whites gleaming in the orange light. He swayed for a moment, then collapsed in a boneless heap on the floor.
Mission compromised.
The sight of the guard dropping like a puppet with its strings cut was a lit match in a gas-filled room.
The commotion, the blonde woman's screams followed by the solid thud of the guards’s body hitting the concrete, had roused the other women. They had been watching from the shadows of their cells, frozen with a familiar, paralyzing fear. But this… this was new. A man in black. A guard going down without a fight.
A single, fragile seed of hope, long thought dead and buried, suddenly, violently, sprouted.
Keystone quickly looked at the faces of the women who got to their feet, hoping to identify Elena.
"Hey! Over here!" a voice cried out from one of the cells. It was a dark haired woman with olive skin. She scrambled to the front of her mesh, her hands gripping the wire. "Get us out!"
Maybe?
In the next cell, an Asian, dark haired woman was on her feet, her eyes wide and focused, no longer vacant. She was shaking her cell door, the rattling sound echoing down the corridor.
No
Hope was contagious. Across the way, an Indian lady with black hair, sobbing, begging in a mixture of Hindi and broken English. "Please! Take me! Please, take me with you!"
No
In the cell in the corner, a caucasian lady with strawberry-blonde hair was slapping the mesh, making a racket "PLEASE! get us out!"
No. Where is she?
The cellblock erupted into a cacophony of desperate, pleading noise. The rattling of mesh doors, the crying, the begging—it was deafening. It was the sound of caged animals who suddenly realized the door might be open.
And it was the sound of their own doom.
A high-pitched, electronic shriek cut through the human noise. A sensor—an acoustic alarm triggered by sustained noise above a certain decibel— had been tripped.
WAAAAAH-OOP! WAAAAAH-OOP!
Strobing red klaxons flooded the cellblock, bathing the scene in a pulsating, hellish light.
"Keystone, you're compromised!" Longshot’s voice snapped in his ear, all calm professionalism gone, replaced by urgent command. "The whole building's lit up like a fuckin' Christmas tree! I've got multiple hostiles, armed, converging on your position from the main floor! ETA thirty seconds!"
Stealth was no longer an option. The mission had just gone from a surgical extraction to a full-blown smash and grab.
Keystone was already moving. He Holstered the tranquilizer gun and drew his suppressed Glock 9mm, the weapon a sleek, black extension of his hand.
He didn't waste time with keys or tools.
He aimed at the heavy padlock on the olive-skinned woman's cell.
BLAM!
The suppressed shot was still a deafening crack in the confined space. The lock shattered, sparking as the bullet tore through it.
He moved to the next cell. BLAM! the asian lady's lock disintegrated.
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
The three other locks disintegrated, the prisoners pushing open their cells.
"EVERYONE OUT!" he roared, his voice a thunderous command that cut through the alarm and the crying. "WITH ME! IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, YOU MOVE! GO! GO! GO!"
The cell doors screeched open as the terrified women poured out into the strobing red chaos of the corridor. They were a disoriented, panicked herd, some stumbling, some sobbing, all blinking in the harsh, pulsating light.
Wardog and Backblast materialized at the entrance to the cellblock, their tranquilizer pistols already spitting silent, feathered death at the first figures appearing at the far end of the factory floor. Two goons in black t-shirts went down without a sound, crumpling behind a stack of pallets.
"Go! Move!" Keystone yelled, shoving two of the women forward, pushing them toward Wardog. "Wardog, get them moving! Backblast, you have our six!"
And then the real monsters appeared.
Emerging from the stairwell leading to the executive offices were Knuckles, Slick, and Nails. Each of them held a semi-automatic pistol, and they started firing wildly the moment they saw the escaping women.
The air filled with the deafening roar of unsuppressed gunfire. Bullets sparked off the concrete walls and ricocheted off the rusted machinery with high-pitched whines.
It was a chaotic, terrifying ballet of violence.
Slick, crouched behind a pillar, tried to line up a shot on one of the fleeing girls. Before he could squeeze the trigger, a tranquilizer dart from Backblast’s pistol hit him squarely in the chest. He let out a surprised grunt, his pistol clattering to the floor as his legs gave out and he collapsed.
Wardog, a human shield, grabbed the Indian lady by the arm and shoved her behind a massive printing press, his own body absorbing a ricochet that tore through his tactical vest with a dull thud. He grunted, spun, and fired three shots in quick succession, forcing Nails to dive for cover.
Knuckles, roaring like an enraged bear, emptied his entire clip in a spray of suppressive fire, the bullets chewing up the concrete around Keystone’s position. Nails did the same. The air was thick with the smell of cordite. Then, a click. And another.
They were out of ammo.
That was the opening.
"Keystone, GO!" Wardog bellowed, leaving the safety of his cover to physically shove the first blonde woman and the Asian woman towards the exit where Backblast was laying down covering fire. "Get them out! I'll deal with these slimy fucks!"
Keystone didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the last girl—the terrified, olive-skinned dark-haired woman he hoped was Elena—and pushed her forward. "Move!"
As he sprinted for the exit, a sickening, wet CRUNCH! echoed behind him, impossibly loud even over the blaring alarm. It was followed by a high-pitched, agonized scream that could only have come from the man with very long, very delicate fingers.
Keystone glanced back for a split second. He saw Wardog holding Nails by the wrist, the smaller man’s arm bent at an obscene, unnatural angle.
A savage grin flashed across Keystone’s face. Wardog was at work.
He turned and followed the last of the girls through the breach Backblast had made, plunging back out into the cool, clean air of the night.
Outside the Print Works, the night air was a shock to the system—cool, clean, and tasting of freedom. Keystone and Backblast herded the five terrified, barefoot women into the shadows of a neighboring alley, their ragged breathing a stark contrast to the blaring alarms still echoing from the factory behind them.
"Move! This way!" Keystone commanded, pointing them down the dark alley that led back towards Derringer's office, the designated primary extraction point.
"All assets are out," Keystone reported into his throat mic, his voice a low, controlled pant. "Five captives secured. We are RTB. Longshot, what's Wardog's status?"
Longshot's voice came back, tight and strained with tension. "Hold on… The scrawny fuck is down, looks like Wardog broke his arm, good… Wardog is squaring off with the big one, the heavy… they're circling… like two fuckin' bulls…"
There was a pause, filled only by the sound of Longshot’s own ragged breathing. Then, a sudden, horrified cry.
"WARDOG! YOUR SIX! THE SCRAWNY ONE—HE'S UP! FUUUUUUCKIN' ****! WARDOG IS DOWN! REPEAT, WARDOG IS DOWN!"
A cold spike of dread shot through Keystone. He stopped in the alley, grabbing the dark-haired woman's arm to halt the group. "Status, Longshot! What happened?!"
"The wee one… he got back up," Longshot’s voice was a frantic, panicked report. "He had somethin' in his other hand… looked like a syringe. He… he just jammed it into Wardog's neck. Wardog… he just… he just dropped. Like a ton o' fuckin' bricks, man. He's not movin'." Another pause. "The big one's on him now. Orders, Keystone?!"
Keystone closed his eyes for a single, agonizing second. He pictured Wardog, the silent, immovable Russian, a man he'd pulled out of half a dozen hellholes. He pictured the big man, Knuckles, standing over him. He pictured the syringe.
He opened his eyes. The mission parameters were clear. The choice was brutal, but it was the only one.
"Mission accomplished, Longshot," Keystone said, his voice cold and pragmatic, betraying none of the fury raging in his chest. "Wardog knew the risks. We don't trade the package for an operator. We'll come back for him. Right now, we secure the assets."
He keyed his mic again, the command sharp and final.
"All stations, fall back to base. Longshot, you are RTB. Now."
"Copy, Keystone," Longshot replied, his voice laced with a bitter resignation. "Fallin' back."
Keystone turned to the five women huddled in the darkness, their faces a mixture of terror and confusion. He looked at the dark-haired woman he had pulled from the final cell, the one he hoped was Elena Kowalski.
"We have to go," he said, his voice hard. "Now."
He took point, leading them out of the alley and into the labyrinth of dark, silent city streets, leaving one of their own behind in the belly of the beast.
Next Chapter (11) - Chloe
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