“Ryan!” I screamed, the sound tearing my throat. I tried to lunge after him, but the agony in my shoulder drove me back to my knees.

Through the open door, the blinding glare of the tarmac looked like a white-hot desert. Ryan was a dark blur, sprinting in a chaotic, zigzagging pattern. He wasn’t running like a parade-ground soldier; he was running like a desperate animal.

Three hundred yards of open ground lay between Building 32 and the base of the North Annex comms tower.

Crack.

The supersonic snap of a sniper rifle echoed off the concrete. A plume of asphalt exploded two feet behind Ryan’s heels.

Crack. Crack.

“Cover him!” Lucas roared. He had managed to find a shard of broken glass from a shattered window and was desperately sawing at his zip-ties.

I grabbed Mercer’s fallen rifle with my bloody right hand. I couldn’t shoulder it properly, so I rested the barrel on the doorframe, wedging it in tight. I didn’t have a scope, just iron sights, but I saw the muzzle flash from the roof of a distant supply warehouse.

I squeezed the trigger, laying down suppressive fire. It was inaccurate, desperate shooting, but it forced the sniper to duck.

Ryan reached the chain-link fence surrounding the tower base. He didn’t bother trying to climb it. He threw himself onto the ground, sliding underneath a gap where the wire had rusted out, tearing his dress whites to shreds.

Inside the corridor, Voss realized what was happening. “No!” he bellowed. He leaned out from behind his pillar to take a shot at Ryan’s retreating back.

My father—my terrified, corporate father who hadn’t held a weapon in thirty years—lunged out from behind his cover. He tackled Voss around the waist.

The two men crashed to the floor. Voss’s gun went off wildly, the bullet ricocheting off the ceiling. My father clawed at Voss’s face, fighting with the feral desperation of a man trying to buy back his soul.

“Get the tablet!” my father screamed, taking a brutal punch to the jaw from Voss.

I dropped the rifle and scrambled toward the tablet. The screen glowed maliciously in the dim light.

81% Complete.

Voss threw my father off him, raising his gun to execute him.

Lucas, finally free of his bindings, launched himself off the desk. He hit Voss like a freight train, driving his shoulder into Voss’s chest. The gun skittered away into the darkness. The two men engaged in brutal, hand-to-hand combat, trading bone-crunching blows. Six years of torture and captivity fueled Lucas’s fists, but Voss was fresh and uninjured.

88% Complete.

I looked back out the door. Ryan had reached the base of the comms tower. He was ripping open the gray junction box that housed the hardline fiber-optic cables.

I could hear Commander Hayes over the radio clipped to Mercer’s vest. “All units, converge on Building 32 and North Annex. Shoot to kill on unrecognized personnel.”

But they were too far away. They wouldn’t make it in time.

94% Complete.

“Pull it, Ryan!” I screamed, praying my voice carried over the wind and the fighting behind me. “Pull the cables!”

Ryan grabbed a thick fistful of the black fiber-optic cables inside the box. He braced his boots against the metal housing and yanked backward with all his might.

The sniper on the warehouse roof found his mark.

Crack.

I watched it happen in horrifying slow motion. The high-caliber round caught Ryan in the right hip. The impact spun him violently in the air like a broken doll. He smashed into the chain-link fence, a spray of crimson painting the silver wire.

“RYAN!” my father shrieked, watching from the floor as Lucas pinned Voss in a chokehold.

Ryan collapsed into the dirt, clutching his shattered hip, screaming in agony.

I stared at the tablet.

99% Complete.

Network Handshake Initiating…

It was over. Halcyon had won. Ryan had died for nothing. I had lost my brother, and the ghosts would remain in the shadows forever.

But out on the tarmac, through the blood and the dust, Ryan’s hand shot out.

His fingers, slick with his own blood, closed around the heavy metal connector joining the main trunk line to the tower array. He didn’t try to pull it with muscle. He wrapped the cable around his forearm, gritted his teeth, and rolled his entire body weight violently down the embankment.

The connector snapped. Sparks showered the base of the tower.

On the tablet in front of me, the screen froze.

Error. Physical Connection Lost. Upload Failed. Data Corrupted. Initiating Failsafe Wipe…

Because the upload was severed mid-handshake, Halcyon’s automated defense protocols misread it as a hostile breach. The system didn’t lock the files; it began dumping them. Trillions of bytes of encrypted data—names, bank accounts, assassination orders—were suddenly hemorrhaging onto the open, unencrypted base servers where every intelligence agency on earth could see them.

Halcyon wasn’t just stopped. They were exposed to the sunlight.

Sirens wailed in the distance. The Quick Reaction Force armored vehicles tore onto the tarmac, their heavy machine guns swiveling to lock onto the sniper positions.

I didn’t care about the sirens. I didn’t care about Voss, who was now unconscious beneath Lucas. I dragged myself out the steel door, clutching my bleeding shoulder, and stumbled across the burning tarmac toward the chain-link fence.

Ryan was lying in the dirt, his ruined dress whites soaked in blood. His eyes were fluttering, his skin terrifyingly pale.

I collapsed beside him, ripping off my black dress sash, pressing it hard against the massive exit wound in his thigh and hip.

“Stay with me, Ryan,” I sobbed, my tears mixing with the dust on his face. “Stay with me, golden boy, don’t you dare close your eyes.”

He looked up at me, a weak, bloody grin stretching his lips.

“Did I… did I embarrass you, Emily?” he gasped.

“No,” I wept, pressing harder as the medics swarmed the fence. “No, Ryan. You were magnificent.”

His eyes rolled back, and he went limp in my arms.

👇

Chapter 5: Aftermath and Ashes