Page 9 of Crossfire Creek Siege

Outside the culvert, the hangar was chaos. Kids were screaming, crying, their voices cutting through the din like sirens. The staccato rhythm of gunfire kept pounding, echoing off the walls, bouncing around in the cavernous space until it was impossible to tell where it came from.

Still in front of him, Rena kept moving with her Glock braced in her right hand, her eyes scanning the opening at the end of the culvert. The flickering light from the still-burning birthday candles cast faint glimmers through the smoke, painting everything in flashes of pink and gold.

The sounds outside shifted. Shouted commands, boots pounding concrete, the metallic clatter of someone reloading.

Gage swallowed hard, heart hammering against his ribs. The mission didn’t matter. Training didn’t matter. There was only survival now… his, Rena’s, and every terrified kid trapped in the dark.

“There’s another culvert near the end of this one,” Gage managed to say. “Might lead to the back of the hangar.”

Rena nodded, no hesitation. They kept crawling, elbows scraping over grit and old concrete. The air inside the tube was close and hot, thick with the metallic tang of dust and gunfire drifting in from outside.

Every movement sent a jolt through Gage’s bad shoulder, but he pushed it down. If they could make it to the rear of the hangar, maybe they could flank whoever had stormed in. Maybe find one of the locked storage crates where real weapons were kept.

Outside the culvert, chaos still reigned. The crack of gunfire, shouts, the echo of something heavy being knocked over. Kids crying. Someone yelling a name. The kind of noise that said the world was unraveling fast.

They crawled faster, the beam curving slightly downward until they reached a junction where a second culvert split off. Gage checked the next opening, the faint draft of cooler air brushing his face.

“That way,” he said.

Rena gave a quick nod, her breathing rough but steady. Together, they pulled through the narrow gap into the adjoining tube, the concrete vibrating faintly under their hands from the chaos outside.

Then, just as they were about to crawl forward again, everything stopped. No more gunfire. No shouting. No movement. Silence dropped hard and absolute, so sudden it made Gage’s ears ring even louder. He froze, listening, pulse hammering.

Rena met his gaze through the dark. Neither of them spoke. Something about that silence felt worse than the shooting.

They held still until silence settled like a weight, pressing in from all sides. Gage’s ears ached from the flashbang. Even the blood in his temples sounded loud. He let his breath out slowly, counting the seconds until the thump in his chest eased enough that he could think again.

The culvert smelled like old concrete and smoke. Dust settled on his tongue when he exhaled. Somewhere above them the laser-tag gear chimed idiotically, then died. And for an instant there was nothing but the soft scrape of fabric as Rena shifted.

He kept his gun up, muzzle pointed into the dark. Every muscle in his body hummed with tension, ready to spring, to move, to die. The idea of stepping into open hangar space with whatever had just gone silent out there made his gut tighten. Still, they had to know. They had to—

A noise cut through the quiet then. A bootstep soft on concrete.

Gage froze, every hair on his arms lifting. Footsteps multiplied, boots moving with a purpose that set his teeth on edge. Voices answered in low, clipped tones, and the sound of Velcro and clipped gear as men spread out.

Rena’s hand tightened on his sleeve. He felt it more than saw it, the small, fierce grip that meant stay. Wait. Watch.

The voice came next, clear and cold, carrying down the culvert like a blade. He didn’t know the man, but the intent needed no translation.

“Find them all,” the man said. “And kill them.”

Chapter Three

Find them all and kill them.

The words looped through Rena’s skull, vibrating with the ache at the base of her skull.

Each syllable hooked into the migraine’s slow crawl and made it flare, a hot pinprick that spread behind her eyes. She breathed through it the way she always did—slow, counted—but the pain rode the breath anyway, a stubborn passenger she couldn’t shake.

She kept moving, elbows scraping concrete, the culvert close and confining around her. The dark tightened to a narrow tunnel, and the noise above became a distant ocean.

Boots, shouted commands, the occasional metallic clang.

With grit in her teeth and dust coating her, she started running through what they had and what they could turn into something useful if they couldn’t get to the armory. Mental inventory, the way pilots ran checklists, because panicking wasn’t an option.

She thought of the training dummies. Maybe the ones near the obstacle course had knives in their kits for realism, but her gut told her those would be locked up with the rest of the live props.

The laser-tag racks were useless for stopping a man in armor, but vests and flashing gear could make decoys. Then there were the tool chests from the maintenance bay. They’d be heavy, awkward but useful as a barricade. An overturned toolbox could buy seconds, and a crate could be a temporary shield.