“What?”
I shake my head slowly.
“He never thought I’d care about anyone.”
Gabriel hears it too.
And suddenly his face darkens with understanding.
“That’s why he’s fixated on Clay.”
Yes.
Because Clay isn’t a distraction to Wu.
He’s proof the conditioning failed.
The corridor suddenly widens into a massive underground checkpoint.
Blast doors.
Biometric scanners.
Armed guards.
Sentinel operatives spin toward us instantly.
“CONTACT!”
The bunker explodes into violence.
Russ fires first.
One guard drops immediately, shot through the throat.
Lucas takes the security glass with controlled bursts while Mason’s team floods the checkpoint from both sides.
Bullets hammer concrete.
Emergency lights flash blood red overhead.
I duck behind reinforced barriers beside Clay as Gabriel moves toward the biometric terminal.
“We need the blast doors open!”
Two more operatives rush from the lower hallways.
Clay drops one instantly.
The second goes for me.
Big mistake.
Very big mistake.
The operative grabs my wrist—
and memory collides violently with instinct.
