A dog barked somewhere beyond the gate, sharp and sudden. Another guard swore at it. The first man slapped the side of the truck twice.
The gate opened and the truck rolled forward.
Pav let air back into his lungs slowly, controlled enough that his chest wound only dragged a little.
The gate closed behind them with a heavy metallic clank. The truck crawled through the yard, engine idling low, tires crunching over packed snow and gravel. Pav tracked the floodlight pattern through the breaks beneath the truck bed. One sweep. Three seconds dark. Another sweep. Eight seconds to the dead angle near the loading bay.
Fox let the truck crawl through the blind angle. “Now.”
Pav’s hand was already on the release clip.
He dropped the last few inches to the frozen ground, absorbed it through his good shoulder and hip, rolled once under the shadow of the truck and came up on a knee, weapon tucked tight.
Zak slid out behind him, silent and fluid. They moved before the engine note settled.
Across the shadows between floodlights. Low and fast, no wasted motion. Fox stayed with the truck, playing driver, still useful in the cab until the last possible second. Pav and Zak cut toward the rear service side of the main building, where the school’s concrete wall met a covered walkway half-collapsed under snow.
A patrolman stood near the generator shed, shoulders hunched against the cold, cigarette cupped in one hand. The orange tip glowed vivid, then smoke clouding the air as he exhaled.
Pav came in from his blind side.
One hand over the mouth. Blade low and fast. He caught the body before it hit the ground. He lowered the man into the shadow behind the generator shed and wiped his blade on the man’s jacket.
“Generator guard down,” he breathed.
“Solid copy,” Zak said from behind him.
Fox came back over comms. “I’m clear of the truck. Moving to secondary.”
That put Fox on perimeter and gate control. Pav and Zak had the school.
Harper.
Her name burned through him, silent and brutal, then hardened into purpose.
Pav crossed to the rear service entrance, Zak close behind. The door was old steel, painted institutional green beneath decades of rust and neglect. Frost feathered the hinges. A secondary lock had been welded over the original mechanism, crude and strong.
Zak ghosted in beside him and pressed the shaped charge into place. No bigger than a pack of cigarettes, fixed against the lock with magnetic clamps while the det cord disappeared beneath his fingers.
“Subtle,” Zak murmured.
Pav glanced at him.
Zak gave a faint shrug, his mouth tipping. “For me.”
They turned their faces away, mouths open against the pressure wave.
The charge blew with a contained punch. A violent cough of sound that snapped through the cold and shoved the lock inward. The generator’s thump ate the worst of it, but not all.
The school building reacted. Dust dropped from the lintel in a dry, powdery curtain. Above the door, glass shuddered in its frame.
Then silence.
Pav was already moving. He entered low, weapon up, Zak peeling off down the opposite corridor. Their shoulders passed close in the doorway, splitting cleanly, sectors covered without a word.
“Try not to die,” Zak muttered.
“Likewise.” Pav headed up the corridor alone.
