Her fingers resist for half a second before letting go.
“Hannah.”
She looks up at me.
And Jesus Christ—
there’s fear in her eyes now.
Not fear of Wu.
Fear of herself.
“I knew how to do it,” she whispers.
I step closer immediately.
“You defended yourself.”
“No.” Her voice shakes harder. “That wasn’t defense. That was training.”
Nobody speaks.
Because we all know she’s right.
Gabriel finally breaks the silence quietly.
“They trained children to survive.I trained you how to fight.”
Hannah laughs once.
Broken.
“That’s not survival training.”
Her eyes drift toward the dead operative.
“That was assassination conditioning.”
The words hit the bunker like another explosion.
Mason swears under his breath.
Lucas looks sick.
Russ just gets colder.
And me?
I want Wu’s head mounted on the damn wall.
“No, that was saving your ass,” Gabriel says.
Gabriel finally gets the scanner online.“Door opening.”
Warning alarms pulse again as the blast doors slowly begin separating down the middle.
Metal screams.
