The corridor was pure chaos. People shoved past in three languages at once, dust filling the air thick enough to choke on. I grabbed a man rushing by and spun him around.
"¿Qué pasó?"
"North entrance." His eyes were too wide. "They found us."
The Pantheon had found us. Zeus had found us. Mierda.
I shoved through the crowd toward the command center, fighting the current of bodies running in the other direction. Jasper moved ahead of me with his hand on the katana across his back, every step predatory. People cleared a path without knowing why.
Hades had the command center running before we arrived. He stood over the central table, pointing at maps and issuing orders while Vihaan hammered his keyboard and screens flashed security feeds. The man prayed before every meal and commanded a room like he'd been born behind a war table.
"North tunnel compromised," Hades said when he clocked us. "They breached the first set of blast doors. Second set is holding. Two separate charges. First was a diversion; second collapsed part of the eastern passage."
"How many?" Jasper asked.
"At least twenty on the feeds," Vihaan said, eyes locked on his screens. "Heavy tactical gear. Myrmidons."
"Casualties?"
"Unknown. Communications are down in that section."
My mother came through the door with a shotgun I recognized from my grandfather's collection. The stock had a crack in it from before I was born, and she held it like she'd grown up with it in her hands, which she had.
"We have men in position," she said. She looked at Hades, but she spoke to me. "The Kalderash are holding the secondary approach. Valentina mobilized everyone who could fight. The children are secure in the lower chambers with Beni and the elders."
The room went still. Hades looked at my mother, then at me. The resistance fighters had expected a lot of things from the Romani families sheltering in their tunnels. A coordinated defense with positions already manned was not one of them.
I followed her into the corridor, Jasper right behind me. Shots cracked and multiplied as we closed on the northern section, bouncing off stone until the sound lost its shape. We turned a corner, and I stopped.
The narrow passage had turned into a killing field.
Valentina crouched behind an overturned metal table, reloading a rifle like she could do it asleep. Kalderash fighters had dug in around her, behind overturned carts and chunks of stone blasted loose from the walls. My people. My grandmother's people. The same families who'd survived a hundred years of worse than this by knowing when to hide and when to fight.
Valentina nodded at me. The others turned too, and the weight of that landed in my stomach. They waited for the word and they looked at me to give it, because I'd won a knife fight on a mountain and my grandmother had handed me a seat. This was the job.
Alonzo worked through the defenders, checking positions, handing out ammunition. He'd been ready before I arrived.
I pulled him aside. "North approach. Widest corridor they have. Break their formation before it reaches us."
He nodded once and signaled to his fighters.
"Valentina. East tunnels. Tight corridors, bad lighting. Their gear works against them in there."
She bared her teeth in something closer to a dare than a smile.
"Fall back if they push too hard. We need you breathing more than we need dead Myrmidons."
She gave me one nod and moved out with her fighters behind her.
Jasper caught my eye before he moved deeper. He pressed two fingers to my chest, right over my sternum, and held them there for a single beat. Then he turned and disappeared into the dark with his katana drawn.
The spot on my sternum stayed warm. I wanted to press my hand over it and hold the heat in. Instead, I grabbed a rifle from the nearest fighter and checked the magazine. Full load. The stock sat cold against my shoulder, and I pressed it tighter because cold and solid was what I had right now.
My tío Emilio taught me to shoot when I was fourteen. He'd set up tin cans behind the barn and stood behind me with his hand on my shoulder and told me the gun was just a tool, Diego, same as a hammer, same as a forge. You respect it and it works for you. He'd been dead for days now, and here I stood in a tunnel with his lesson in my hands and his blood on somebody's ledger.
The fighting came fast.
A myrmidon came around the corner and I put two rounds in his chest before he raised his rifle. He went down, and the next one stepped over him. I fired, missed, and the stone next to my head exploded into chips that stung my cheek. I ducked back. Down here the concussion hit worse than the noise, eachexchange slamming my chest like a fist. My ears went thick after the first volley and everything after that came through cotton.
