My stomach twists violently.
“No!” I shout, rushing toward them. “Move away from the doors!”
The youngest girl freezes completely.
Too terrified to think.
Too trained to disobey.
Clay moves instantly beside me, grabbing two children while I pull the little girl into my arms just as bullets hammer the wall behind us.
The checkpoint erupts into screaming metal.
Smoke.
Gunfire.
Flashing white security lights.
The smell of blood and burning concrete.
One of Mason’s operators goes down hard beside the biometric scanners.
Russ drags him behind cover while returning fire one-handed.
“More incoming!”
And there are.
So many more.
They keep pouring from the lower corridors like Ascension has an endless supply of soldiers buried beneath the city.
Gabriel checks the terminal fast.
“They’re trying to seal lower sectors!”
Clay reloads violently beside me.
“Can they?”
“Not if we reach the core first!”
Then we’re running out of time.
Lucas fires toward the corridor intersection.
“LEFT SIDE!”
Two operatives rush through smoke.
Clay drops the first with a brutal chest shot.
The second swings toward me—
—and suddenly instinct takes over again.
I move before thinking.
