Last Chapter (15) - Jessica | First Chapter - Camila
The world exploded in a shower of splintered wood and concrete dust.
Backblast was the tip of the spear, hitting the ruined doorway a split second after the breach. But he wasn’t flying blind.
"Clear right, three targets static behind the tech desk. One heavy signature—that’s Knuckles—near the center pillar," Longshot’s voice came through the comms, cold and steady. "You're clear to engage."
Backblast and Keystone moved in a synchronized dance of lead. The cameramen and Scout were neutralized before they could process the breach. Backblast shifted his reticle toward the massive form of Knuckles, but three goons scrambled into his line of fire. He stitched them across their chests, the 5.56 rounds ending their lives in a heartbeat.
As the factory erupted in return fire from above, Longshot’s voice cut through the roar of the HK416s.
"Eyes up. You’ve got a swarm," Longshot reported. "Nine signatures on the steel. Four on the East gantry, three in the North rafters, two flankin' West on the mezzanine. They’re convergin' on your position."
"Copy. I'll, take the rafters! Backblast, you get the floor!" Keystone barked.
"Backblast, Knuckles is moving to your left flank," Longshot warned, his thermal view tracking the giant through a stack of shipping crates. "He's pulling out a rifle. Five meters to your contact."
Backblast dove behind a cast-iron lathe just as a storm of 5.56 chewed the air where he’d been standing. "Keystone, I'm pinned. Clear my overhead so I can move!"
"On it," Keystone replied. Guided by Longshot’s threat assessments, Keystone didn't have to search for targets. He pivoted, firing blindly through a plume of steam from a ruptured pipe.
"Good hits, Keystone. One down on the North rail, one more tucking behind the HVAC unit," Longshot fed him.
Keystone adjusted his aim by two inches and fired. A body tumbled from the rafters, crashing into a conveyor belt.
"Floor is clear for the 40mm, Backblast," Longshot called. "Knuckles is hunkered behind the pillar. He's reloading. Do it now."
Backblast didn't hesitate. He leaned out and popped the underslung launcher. The grenade struck the concrete at the base of the pillar. The crack of the explosion was followed by a roar of pain as the massive Knuckles was blown into the open, his AR-18 skidding away.
"Two more trying to slip down the West stairs to get behind you, Keystone," Longshot whispered. "They’re panickin'. They don’t see you yet."
"I see 'em," Keystone muttered. He vaulted a belt and fired upward through the grated metal of the mezzanine.
"Last man on the high rail," Longshot reported, his tone bored. "He’s throwing his piece. He’s surrendering."
Backblast stepped out from cover, his eyes locking onto the bleeding, broken Knuckles. The giant reached for a sidearm, but Longshot’s voice was already in Backblast's ear: "He's drawing. Take him."
Thud-thud. Backblast put two rounds into Knuckles' chest.
Backblast then glanced up at the surrendering man on the high rail. He sent a final burst upward, and the figure collapsed into the safety cables.
"All fifteen signatures dark," Longshot confirmed. "Interior is cold."
"Copy that, Longshot," Backblast said, reloading his rifle in the sudden, ringing silence.
The only sound was the incessant, blaring wail of the factory's alarm system. Backblast scanned the floor, then the gantry again. All targets down. The immediate threat was neutralized.
With the last echo of the firefight fading into the wail of the alarms, Keystone’s voice cut through the air. "I've got the girl!" he yelled, already moving with purpose towards the medical table where Jessica lay, wide-eyed and terrified.
Backblast didn’t need to be told his own objective. During the chaos of the breach, he had heard it—a deep, triumphant roar that was unmistakably Mikhail's. It had come from the clinic.
He jogged across the studio, his boots crunching on spent shell casings and shattered glass, his rifle still held at the ready. He reached the open door of the clinic and swept in, his weapon leading the way.
The scene inside was a grotesque tableau. The doctor, Atkins, was a crumpled, dead heap on the floor, his face a ruined, pulped mess, his eyes burst from their sockets. And in the bizarre dental-gynecology chair, one arm free, sat Mikhail 'Wardog' Vostrikov.
He looked like he’d been through a meat grinder. His face was a swollen, bloody mask. His left hand was a mangled ruin of broken bones and torn flesh. A fresh, bloody gap marred his smile. But his eyes… his eyes were blazing with a fierce, triumphant light.
He saw Backblast, and that bloody, gap-toothed smile widened. He waved his freed, mangled hand in a gesture of jovial greeting. It was a reunion of brothers in the middle of a slaughterhouse.
"Nadav," Wardog rumbled, the name a statement of profound, bone-deep relief.
Backblast's professional mask cracked. He lowered his rifle, his own face breaking into a grin of pure, brotherly affection. "Mikhail," he replied, clapping his friend on his good shoulder. He knelt, his eyes quickly scanning Wardog's condition, the grin fading as he took in the full extent of the damage. "Can you walk?"
Wardog's triumphant smile faded with his, replaced by a deep, shuddering weariness that seemed to settle over him like a shroud. He looked down at his bare feet, still strapped into the elevated stirrups, their skin an unnatural, gleaming, almost fluorescent pink.
"Nadav, my friend," he said, his voice a low, pained groan, the humor completely gone. "Even… even a light feather… it feels like I am being flayed alive." He took a ragged breath. "The doctor… what he did… I do not think there is any reversing this. Not this time."
His eyes, full of a pain that went far beyond the physical, met Backblast's. He was no longer a soldier. He was a man trapped in a prison of his own nerve endings, sentenced to a lifetime of inescapable, agonizing torment.
His gaze flickered down to the sidearm holstered on Backblast's thigh. The look was unmistakable. It was a plea.
"Do me one final kindness," Wardog whispered, his voice cracking. "Please. As my brother."
Backblast stared at his friend, at the raw, pleading agony in his eyes. He saw not just the physical torment, but the deeper horror: the unbreakable man, broken. The thought of Mikhail, the most formidable human being he had ever known, living out his days as a prisoner in his own skin, flinching from the lightest touch… it was an obscenity.
He placed his hand on Wardog’s good shoulder and squeezed, a silent, final acknowledgment. He didn't say a word. He didn't have to. He unholstered his silenced Gloch, gave it a practiced flick, catching it by the silencer, and handed it to his comrade.
He stood up, his face a grim, unreadable mask, and walked out of the clinic, leaving his brother to his final moments of peace.
He re-entered the main studio. Keystone had cut Jessica free and was wrapping her in a heavy tactical blanket, his movements gentle but efficient. He was murmuring something to her, his voice low and reassuring.
He looked up as Backblast approached. "The girl's good," Keystone stated, his eyes asking the unspoken question. "Wardog?"
"He's… compromised," Backblast said, the clinical term a pathetic understatement for the reality. "Medically. He's not moving."
Keystone took in the bleak, final look on his friend's face and understood the unspoken truth instantly. He gave a single, sharp nod, his own jaw tight. The decision was made, a silent, shared burden of command. There was no other way.
A moment later, the single, muffled pop of a suppressed pistol shot from the clinic was a soft, final punctuation mark.
It was done.
Keystone’s focus was already back on the mission. He keyed his comms. "Longshot, we've cleared the main area. The asset is secure. Give me a count on remaining hostile signatures."
Longshot’s voice crackled back in their ears, crisp and clear. "I'm reading two signatures left inside. One is stationary, ground floor, south-east corner… heavy soundproofing on that room. The other is second floor. Executive office. Just sitting there, not moving. That's gotta be the big boss. Frankie."
Keystone looked at Backblast, a flicker of understanding in his eyes as he processed Longshot's description. The debrief with the escaped women back at Derringer's office had been chaotic, but one piece of intel had been chillingly specific.
"The Quiet Room," Keystone murmured, remembering Jolene's terrified, whispered description. "She said it was in the south-east corner. Soundproofed. One way in, no way out."
"That'll be your boy in the box," Longshot's voice had said, not knowing the half of it.
Keystone glanced at Backblast. "Two left. Let's clear the ledger."
They moved with a renewed, grim purpose, leaving the carnage of the studio behind them. They found the door in the south-east corner of the factory, exactly where Longshot's thermal readings and Jolene's traumatized memory had placed it.
It was a thick, industrial steel door, set flush against a concrete wall. There was no external handle, no visible lock. Just a small, dark keypad with a slot for a keycard, which was currently unlit and inactive.
Backblast ran a gloved hand over the seams. "It's a panic room lock," he stated, his voice flat. "Magnetic, sealed from the inside. Once that door closes, no one gets in or out until the timer runs down or someone decides to open it from the inside."
Keystone stared at the impassive steel door, thinking of the young, arrogant thug whose heat signature was a lonely, stationary blob on the other side. Pip. The one who had fallen asleep on the job. The one Frankie had apparently locked away as punishment.
"Jolene said the sessions in there can last for days," Backblast added, his voice a low, cold murmur.
Keystone thought about the resources it would take to breach the door. The time. The noise. He thought about the man on the other side, left to the mercy of automated tortures in a soundproof box.
"Then he can rot," Keystone said, his voice devoid of any emotion.
They turned and walked away without a backward glance, leaving Pip to his fate. One target down. One to go.
They didn't sneak up the stairs to the executive office. They moved with the loud, confident, heavy-booted stride of conquerors. The time for stealth was over. The time for retribution had arrived.
They reached the opulent, dark wood double doors of Frank Romano's office. Backblast didn't bother checking the lock. He simply planted his boot next to the handle and kicked. The doorframe splintered, and the door flew inward with a deafening crash.
Frank Romano was behind his massive mahogany desk, a phone pressed to his ear. He was in the middle of screaming into it.
"…I don't care how you do it! JUST DO IT!" he roared into the phone.
He slammed the phone down and looked up, his face a mask of apoplectic rage. The rage instantly vanished, replaced by a flicker of disbelief, then a cornered, feral fury as he saw the two black-clad angels of death standing in his ruined doorway.
He didn't look surprised. He looked like a king whose castle had just been breached by barbarians.
Keystone raised his rifle, the red laser sight a single, unwavering dot on the center of Frankie's expensive silk tie.
"Elena Kowalski," Keystone said, his voice a low, cold command. "Where is she?"
Frankie stared down the barrel of the rifle, a sneer of pure, undiluted contempt twisting his lips. He spat on his own expensive Persian rug.
"Go fuck yourself," he said.
Keystone didn't move. His aim remained rock-steady. But Backblast, moving with a predatory silence, began to circle the desk.
"We are not fucking around, Frank," Backblast said, his voice a low, menacing purr. He reached out and, with a swift, delicate motion, plucked the white feather from Romano's breast pocket. He held it up for a moment, letting the man see his own elegant instrument of torture.
Then, holding it like a small, sharp dagger, he lunged.
In a single, vicious motion, he plunged the sharp, stiff quill of the feather deep into Frankie's left eye.
Frankie’s sneer of defiance was ripped from his face, replaced by a high-pitched, piercing scream of pure, unadulterated agony. Blood, thick and dark, poured from the ruined socket, streaming down his face. His hands flew up, hovering uselessly, his fingers trembling, terrified to touch the feather for fear of driving it deeper, of causing even more pain.
"WHERE IS SHE!?" Backblast hissed, his face inches from Romano's.
Frankie just kept screaming, a wild, animal sound of pure, blinding pain. He was beyond words.
Backblast grabbed Frankie's closest arm—his right one—and slammed it flat on the polished mahogany desk. He whipped out his heavy tactical knife. Without a moment's hesitation, he raised it high and then drove it down with all his strength.
The blade went straight through the center of Frankie's hand and sunk deep into the wood, pinning Frankie's hand to the desk with a solid, echoing THUNK.
The new, explosive agony was enough to cut through the first. Frankie’s screams stopped. He let out a choked, wet gasp.
"OKAY! OKAY, HERE!" he shrieked, his voice a ragged, desperate sob. He grabbed his computer mouse with his free hand and awkwardly navigated his computer, then opened a file and pressed the PRINT icon. "The auction records! It's all there! The buyer! The location! Just… just take it!"
Backblast ripped the single sheet of paper as it emerged from the printer. It was a transaction record, encrypted and anonymized, but the crucial details were there: a holding company in Zurich, a routing number for a private airstrip, a final destination, a date, and a username. He showed it to Keystone.
Keystone kept his rifle trained on the whimpering, bleeding man pinned to the desk and looked at the paper. "Christ" he muttered. "Longshot," he said into his comms. "We have the intel. We're coming out."
"Copy that," Longshot replied. "Street's still quiet."
They left Frank Romano where he was—bleeding, screaming, and pinned to his vile throne of mahogany.
They descended back to the main factory floor. The alarms had finally died, leaving an eerie, ringing silence broken only by the drip of water and the hum of the emergency lights. The air was thick with the smell of cordite and blood.
As Keystone stood guard, Backblast began a final, methodical body count, identifying the main players from Derringer's files. He checked Scout's body, slumped over the tech desk. He found the hulking form of Knuckles near the gantry stairs. He confirmed the other goons.
"Wait," Backblast said, his head snapping up as he scanned the carnage one last time. "Something's not right."
"What is it?" Keystone asked, his senses immediately on high alert.
"The little one," Backblast said, his eyes sweeping the shadows. "The one with the claws."
"Nails," Keystone finished, a cold knot tightening in his gut. He hadn't been among the bodies on the gantry. And he wasn't here. "He's not here."
He keyed his comms immediately. "Longshot, give me a final sweep of the building's thermal signature. We're missing a body. Nails is unaccounted for. Repeat, we have lost Nails."
A few tense seconds of silence crackled over the comms as Longshot, from his perch three blocks away, re-scanned the building with his thermal scope, his digital eye sweeping every floor, every corridor, every shadow.
"Negative, Keystone," Longshot's voice finally came back, crisp and certain. "The building is clean. I'm reading just you two, the asset you've secured, and the wee shite in the box. No other heat signatures. He's not in there."
Keystone swore under his breath. Nails hadn't been in the firefight.
"Hold on," Longshot's voice cut in again, a new, sharp edge of alarm in his tone.
Keystone tensed. "What is it?"
"FUCK! MOVEMENT!" Longshot hissed. "On the street! Single contact, approaching Derringer's! Moving fast!"
"Get an ID, Longshot!" Keystone commanded, his mind racing. It had to be him. It was the only play Nails had left. Go after the source. "Is it him?!"
"Turning off thermal for a visual ID… Stand by…"
Another agonizingly long pause stretched over the comms. Backblast and Keystone stood frozen amidst the carnage, their rifles up, their senses screaming, listening to the dead silence on the line.
"…False alarm," Longshot's voice finally came back over the comms, laced with a mixture of relief and confusion. "It's a cop car. A marked unit. Blue and white. Just a cop makin' his slow rounds… Wait. Stand by. He's slowing down."
Keystone, who had started to lower his rifle, brought it back up, his body instantly tensing again. "Status, Longshot."
"He's pulling over," Longshot reported, his voice a low, tense murmur. "Directly across from the kill zone. He's… he's stopping. Lights are off. He's getting out of the car."
A new, cold dread, different from the threat of Nails, settled in Keystone's gut. A uniformed officer on the scene was a complication they absolutely did not need.
"He's approaching the bodies," Longshot continued his play-by-play. "Got his flashlight on Slick's corpse… Now he's on his radio. Calling it in." Longshot paused. "He's gonna want to check the only occupied building on this street for witnesses. That's Derringer's, Keystone."
Keystone swore, a harsh, violent sound in the quiet of the factory. "He'll want statements. From Derringer. From the women." He looked at Backblast, the tactical reality crashing down on them. Their safe house was no longer safe. It was about to become an active crime scene, crawling with uniforms.
"Fuck," Keystone snarled. Their window of opportunity to act on the intel they'd just extracted from Romano was closing fast.
He keyed his mic, his voice a low, urgent command. "Longshot, maintain overwatch, but prep for extraction. Backblast, with me. We have the girl, we have the intel. We're scrubbing the mission." He looked around the carnage one last time, at the body of his friend in the clinic. There was nothing more they could do here.
"We're going back to Derringer's. We grab the women, we grab the P.I., and we erase every trace that we were ever there."
Next Chapter (17) - Sarah
The world exploded in a shower of splintered wood and concrete dust.
Backblast was the tip of the spear, hitting the ruined doorway a split second after the breach. But he wasn’t flying blind.
"Clear right, three targets static behind the tech desk. One heavy signature—that’s Knuckles—near the center pillar," Longshot’s voice came through the comms, cold and steady. "You're clear to engage."
Backblast and Keystone moved in a synchronized dance of lead. The cameramen and Scout were neutralized before they could process the breach. Backblast shifted his reticle toward the massive form of Knuckles, but three goons scrambled into his line of fire. He stitched them across their chests, the 5.56 rounds ending their lives in a heartbeat.
As the factory erupted in return fire from above, Longshot’s voice cut through the roar of the HK416s.
"Eyes up. You’ve got a swarm," Longshot reported. "Nine signatures on the steel. Four on the East gantry, three in the North rafters, two flankin' West on the mezzanine. They’re convergin' on your position."
"Copy. I'll, take the rafters! Backblast, you get the floor!" Keystone barked.
"Backblast, Knuckles is moving to your left flank," Longshot warned, his thermal view tracking the giant through a stack of shipping crates. "He's pulling out a rifle. Five meters to your contact."
Backblast dove behind a cast-iron lathe just as a storm of 5.56 chewed the air where he’d been standing. "Keystone, I'm pinned. Clear my overhead so I can move!"
"On it," Keystone replied. Guided by Longshot’s threat assessments, Keystone didn't have to search for targets. He pivoted, firing blindly through a plume of steam from a ruptured pipe.
"Good hits, Keystone. One down on the North rail, one more tucking behind the HVAC unit," Longshot fed him.
Keystone adjusted his aim by two inches and fired. A body tumbled from the rafters, crashing into a conveyor belt.
"Floor is clear for the 40mm, Backblast," Longshot called. "Knuckles is hunkered behind the pillar. He's reloading. Do it now."
Backblast didn't hesitate. He leaned out and popped the underslung launcher. The grenade struck the concrete at the base of the pillar. The crack of the explosion was followed by a roar of pain as the massive Knuckles was blown into the open, his AR-18 skidding away.
"Two more trying to slip down the West stairs to get behind you, Keystone," Longshot whispered. "They’re panickin'. They don’t see you yet."
"I see 'em," Keystone muttered. He vaulted a belt and fired upward through the grated metal of the mezzanine.
"Last man on the high rail," Longshot reported, his tone bored. "He’s throwing his piece. He’s surrendering."
Backblast stepped out from cover, his eyes locking onto the bleeding, broken Knuckles. The giant reached for a sidearm, but Longshot’s voice was already in Backblast's ear: "He's drawing. Take him."
Thud-thud. Backblast put two rounds into Knuckles' chest.
Backblast then glanced up at the surrendering man on the high rail. He sent a final burst upward, and the figure collapsed into the safety cables.
"All fifteen signatures dark," Longshot confirmed. "Interior is cold."
"Copy that, Longshot," Backblast said, reloading his rifle in the sudden, ringing silence.
The only sound was the incessant, blaring wail of the factory's alarm system. Backblast scanned the floor, then the gantry again. All targets down. The immediate threat was neutralized.
With the last echo of the firefight fading into the wail of the alarms, Keystone’s voice cut through the air. "I've got the girl!" he yelled, already moving with purpose towards the medical table where Jessica lay, wide-eyed and terrified.
Backblast didn’t need to be told his own objective. During the chaos of the breach, he had heard it—a deep, triumphant roar that was unmistakably Mikhail's. It had come from the clinic.
He jogged across the studio, his boots crunching on spent shell casings and shattered glass, his rifle still held at the ready. He reached the open door of the clinic and swept in, his weapon leading the way.
The scene inside was a grotesque tableau. The doctor, Atkins, was a crumpled, dead heap on the floor, his face a ruined, pulped mess, his eyes burst from their sockets. And in the bizarre dental-gynecology chair, one arm free, sat Mikhail 'Wardog' Vostrikov.
He looked like he’d been through a meat grinder. His face was a swollen, bloody mask. His left hand was a mangled ruin of broken bones and torn flesh. A fresh, bloody gap marred his smile. But his eyes… his eyes were blazing with a fierce, triumphant light.
He saw Backblast, and that bloody, gap-toothed smile widened. He waved his freed, mangled hand in a gesture of jovial greeting. It was a reunion of brothers in the middle of a slaughterhouse.
"Nadav," Wardog rumbled, the name a statement of profound, bone-deep relief.
Backblast's professional mask cracked. He lowered his rifle, his own face breaking into a grin of pure, brotherly affection. "Mikhail," he replied, clapping his friend on his good shoulder. He knelt, his eyes quickly scanning Wardog's condition, the grin fading as he took in the full extent of the damage. "Can you walk?"
Wardog's triumphant smile faded with his, replaced by a deep, shuddering weariness that seemed to settle over him like a shroud. He looked down at his bare feet, still strapped into the elevated stirrups, their skin an unnatural, gleaming, almost fluorescent pink.
"Nadav, my friend," he said, his voice a low, pained groan, the humor completely gone. "Even… even a light feather… it feels like I am being flayed alive." He took a ragged breath. "The doctor… what he did… I do not think there is any reversing this. Not this time."
His eyes, full of a pain that went far beyond the physical, met Backblast's. He was no longer a soldier. He was a man trapped in a prison of his own nerve endings, sentenced to a lifetime of inescapable, agonizing torment.
His gaze flickered down to the sidearm holstered on Backblast's thigh. The look was unmistakable. It was a plea.
"Do me one final kindness," Wardog whispered, his voice cracking. "Please. As my brother."
Backblast stared at his friend, at the raw, pleading agony in his eyes. He saw not just the physical torment, but the deeper horror: the unbreakable man, broken. The thought of Mikhail, the most formidable human being he had ever known, living out his days as a prisoner in his own skin, flinching from the lightest touch… it was an obscenity.
He placed his hand on Wardog’s good shoulder and squeezed, a silent, final acknowledgment. He didn't say a word. He didn't have to. He unholstered his silenced Gloch, gave it a practiced flick, catching it by the silencer, and handed it to his comrade.
He stood up, his face a grim, unreadable mask, and walked out of the clinic, leaving his brother to his final moments of peace.
He re-entered the main studio. Keystone had cut Jessica free and was wrapping her in a heavy tactical blanket, his movements gentle but efficient. He was murmuring something to her, his voice low and reassuring.
He looked up as Backblast approached. "The girl's good," Keystone stated, his eyes asking the unspoken question. "Wardog?"
"He's… compromised," Backblast said, the clinical term a pathetic understatement for the reality. "Medically. He's not moving."
Keystone took in the bleak, final look on his friend's face and understood the unspoken truth instantly. He gave a single, sharp nod, his own jaw tight. The decision was made, a silent, shared burden of command. There was no other way.
A moment later, the single, muffled pop of a suppressed pistol shot from the clinic was a soft, final punctuation mark.
It was done.
Keystone’s focus was already back on the mission. He keyed his comms. "Longshot, we've cleared the main area. The asset is secure. Give me a count on remaining hostile signatures."
Longshot’s voice crackled back in their ears, crisp and clear. "I'm reading two signatures left inside. One is stationary, ground floor, south-east corner… heavy soundproofing on that room. The other is second floor. Executive office. Just sitting there, not moving. That's gotta be the big boss. Frankie."
Keystone looked at Backblast, a flicker of understanding in his eyes as he processed Longshot's description. The debrief with the escaped women back at Derringer's office had been chaotic, but one piece of intel had been chillingly specific.
"The Quiet Room," Keystone murmured, remembering Jolene's terrified, whispered description. "She said it was in the south-east corner. Soundproofed. One way in, no way out."
"That'll be your boy in the box," Longshot's voice had said, not knowing the half of it.
Keystone glanced at Backblast. "Two left. Let's clear the ledger."
They moved with a renewed, grim purpose, leaving the carnage of the studio behind them. They found the door in the south-east corner of the factory, exactly where Longshot's thermal readings and Jolene's traumatized memory had placed it.
It was a thick, industrial steel door, set flush against a concrete wall. There was no external handle, no visible lock. Just a small, dark keypad with a slot for a keycard, which was currently unlit and inactive.
Backblast ran a gloved hand over the seams. "It's a panic room lock," he stated, his voice flat. "Magnetic, sealed from the inside. Once that door closes, no one gets in or out until the timer runs down or someone decides to open it from the inside."
Keystone stared at the impassive steel door, thinking of the young, arrogant thug whose heat signature was a lonely, stationary blob on the other side. Pip. The one who had fallen asleep on the job. The one Frankie had apparently locked away as punishment.
"Jolene said the sessions in there can last for days," Backblast added, his voice a low, cold murmur.
Keystone thought about the resources it would take to breach the door. The time. The noise. He thought about the man on the other side, left to the mercy of automated tortures in a soundproof box.
"Then he can rot," Keystone said, his voice devoid of any emotion.
They turned and walked away without a backward glance, leaving Pip to his fate. One target down. One to go.
They didn't sneak up the stairs to the executive office. They moved with the loud, confident, heavy-booted stride of conquerors. The time for stealth was over. The time for retribution had arrived.
They reached the opulent, dark wood double doors of Frank Romano's office. Backblast didn't bother checking the lock. He simply planted his boot next to the handle and kicked. The doorframe splintered, and the door flew inward with a deafening crash.
Frank Romano was behind his massive mahogany desk, a phone pressed to his ear. He was in the middle of screaming into it.
"…I don't care how you do it! JUST DO IT!" he roared into the phone.
He slammed the phone down and looked up, his face a mask of apoplectic rage. The rage instantly vanished, replaced by a flicker of disbelief, then a cornered, feral fury as he saw the two black-clad angels of death standing in his ruined doorway.
He didn't look surprised. He looked like a king whose castle had just been breached by barbarians.
Keystone raised his rifle, the red laser sight a single, unwavering dot on the center of Frankie's expensive silk tie.
"Elena Kowalski," Keystone said, his voice a low, cold command. "Where is she?"
Frankie stared down the barrel of the rifle, a sneer of pure, undiluted contempt twisting his lips. He spat on his own expensive Persian rug.
"Go fuck yourself," he said.
Keystone didn't move. His aim remained rock-steady. But Backblast, moving with a predatory silence, began to circle the desk.
"We are not fucking around, Frank," Backblast said, his voice a low, menacing purr. He reached out and, with a swift, delicate motion, plucked the white feather from Romano's breast pocket. He held it up for a moment, letting the man see his own elegant instrument of torture.
Then, holding it like a small, sharp dagger, he lunged.
In a single, vicious motion, he plunged the sharp, stiff quill of the feather deep into Frankie's left eye.
Frankie’s sneer of defiance was ripped from his face, replaced by a high-pitched, piercing scream of pure, unadulterated agony. Blood, thick and dark, poured from the ruined socket, streaming down his face. His hands flew up, hovering uselessly, his fingers trembling, terrified to touch the feather for fear of driving it deeper, of causing even more pain.
"WHERE IS SHE!?" Backblast hissed, his face inches from Romano's.
Frankie just kept screaming, a wild, animal sound of pure, blinding pain. He was beyond words.
Backblast grabbed Frankie's closest arm—his right one—and slammed it flat on the polished mahogany desk. He whipped out his heavy tactical knife. Without a moment's hesitation, he raised it high and then drove it down with all his strength.
The blade went straight through the center of Frankie's hand and sunk deep into the wood, pinning Frankie's hand to the desk with a solid, echoing THUNK.
The new, explosive agony was enough to cut through the first. Frankie’s screams stopped. He let out a choked, wet gasp.
"OKAY! OKAY, HERE!" he shrieked, his voice a ragged, desperate sob. He grabbed his computer mouse with his free hand and awkwardly navigated his computer, then opened a file and pressed the PRINT icon. "The auction records! It's all there! The buyer! The location! Just… just take it!"
Backblast ripped the single sheet of paper as it emerged from the printer. It was a transaction record, encrypted and anonymized, but the crucial details were there: a holding company in Zurich, a routing number for a private airstrip, a final destination, a date, and a username. He showed it to Keystone.
Keystone kept his rifle trained on the whimpering, bleeding man pinned to the desk and looked at the paper. "Christ" he muttered. "Longshot," he said into his comms. "We have the intel. We're coming out."
"Copy that," Longshot replied. "Street's still quiet."
They left Frank Romano where he was—bleeding, screaming, and pinned to his vile throne of mahogany.
They descended back to the main factory floor. The alarms had finally died, leaving an eerie, ringing silence broken only by the drip of water and the hum of the emergency lights. The air was thick with the smell of cordite and blood.
As Keystone stood guard, Backblast began a final, methodical body count, identifying the main players from Derringer's files. He checked Scout's body, slumped over the tech desk. He found the hulking form of Knuckles near the gantry stairs. He confirmed the other goons.
"Wait," Backblast said, his head snapping up as he scanned the carnage one last time. "Something's not right."
"What is it?" Keystone asked, his senses immediately on high alert.
"The little one," Backblast said, his eyes sweeping the shadows. "The one with the claws."
"Nails," Keystone finished, a cold knot tightening in his gut. He hadn't been among the bodies on the gantry. And he wasn't here. "He's not here."
He keyed his comms immediately. "Longshot, give me a final sweep of the building's thermal signature. We're missing a body. Nails is unaccounted for. Repeat, we have lost Nails."
A few tense seconds of silence crackled over the comms as Longshot, from his perch three blocks away, re-scanned the building with his thermal scope, his digital eye sweeping every floor, every corridor, every shadow.
"Negative, Keystone," Longshot's voice finally came back, crisp and certain. "The building is clean. I'm reading just you two, the asset you've secured, and the wee shite in the box. No other heat signatures. He's not in there."
Keystone swore under his breath. Nails hadn't been in the firefight.
"Hold on," Longshot's voice cut in again, a new, sharp edge of alarm in his tone.
Keystone tensed. "What is it?"
"FUCK! MOVEMENT!" Longshot hissed. "On the street! Single contact, approaching Derringer's! Moving fast!"
"Get an ID, Longshot!" Keystone commanded, his mind racing. It had to be him. It was the only play Nails had left. Go after the source. "Is it him?!"
"Turning off thermal for a visual ID… Stand by…"
Another agonizingly long pause stretched over the comms. Backblast and Keystone stood frozen amidst the carnage, their rifles up, their senses screaming, listening to the dead silence on the line.
"…False alarm," Longshot's voice finally came back over the comms, laced with a mixture of relief and confusion. "It's a cop car. A marked unit. Blue and white. Just a cop makin' his slow rounds… Wait. Stand by. He's slowing down."
Keystone, who had started to lower his rifle, brought it back up, his body instantly tensing again. "Status, Longshot."
"He's pulling over," Longshot reported, his voice a low, tense murmur. "Directly across from the kill zone. He's… he's stopping. Lights are off. He's getting out of the car."
A new, cold dread, different from the threat of Nails, settled in Keystone's gut. A uniformed officer on the scene was a complication they absolutely did not need.
"He's approaching the bodies," Longshot continued his play-by-play. "Got his flashlight on Slick's corpse… Now he's on his radio. Calling it in." Longshot paused. "He's gonna want to check the only occupied building on this street for witnesses. That's Derringer's, Keystone."
Keystone swore, a harsh, violent sound in the quiet of the factory. "He'll want statements. From Derringer. From the women." He looked at Backblast, the tactical reality crashing down on them. Their safe house was no longer safe. It was about to become an active crime scene, crawling with uniforms.
"Fuck," Keystone snarled. Their window of opportunity to act on the intel they'd just extracted from Romano was closing fast.
He keyed his mic, his voice a low, urgent command. "Longshot, maintain overwatch, but prep for extraction. Backblast, with me. We have the girl, we have the intel. We're scrubbing the mission." He looked around the carnage one last time, at the body of his friend in the clinic. There was nothing more they could do here.
"We're going back to Derringer's. We grab the women, we grab the P.I., and we erase every trace that we were ever there."
Next Chapter (17) - Sarah
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