Chapter 243

The second operation goes sideways within the first ninety seconds.

One moment Elias is moving through a service corridor with two of Marcus’s men flanking him, comms chatter steady in his ear, the whole operation unfolding with the same disciplined rhythm as the raid two days ago. The next, gunfire erupts from an angle nobody flagged, a stairwell nobody mapped, and the coordinated team scatters into a dozen separate, isolated problems all at once.

“Contact, east stairwell!”

“Where’s the second team, I’ve lost eyes on–”

“Fall back, fall back to the loading bay–”

The voices in Elias’s earpiece fracture into overlapping static, and then the earpiece itself goes dead entirely, either damaged or jammed, he doesn’t have time to work out which. He presses himself against the wall of a narrow stairwell, breathing hard, waiting for a lull that doesn’t come, and when he finally moves it’s because staying still has stopped being an option.

Somewhere out