Brace
Dom and Ava stopped at the next marker, and it blinked away.
Ava took a moment to glance around and absorb the hallway. It was significantly smaller than the previous corridors, with uniform gray walls and ceiling. The floor was covered in white tile marked by countless brown and red smudges and bootprints.
There were too many overlapping tracks to estimate how many different pairs of boots had passed through. She couldn’t even tell whether the markings were new or old.
Dom raised one hand and turned toward Ava, his dark-blue eyes shining beneath the bright artificial lights.
“You need to be briefed on what we are about to find. From the scattered communication signals I have intercepted and the limited base footage I was able to access while we traveled, I assess that all four of our targets are nearby, directly behind this door.”
Ava glanced toward the midsized hatch behind him.
She had missed it while looking downward. The door was set into the wall in a way unlike the others she had encountered, though she had seen similar designs before. Once activated, it would sink backward, rotate aside, and disappear into the wall.
It made the entrance easy to overlook and difficult to force open without cutting torches.
She had cutting torches.
“Five targets,” she corrected. “What, are you trying to warn me that they’re beaten up or hurt? I can handle it. We need to get in there and stop whatever they’re doing to them. Stop wasting time!”
“Three targets have strong vital signs. One is unconscious but alive. They have been stripped of their equipment and placed in restraints. Interrogation has not yet begun.
“They removed Peters’s body. Given his previous injuries, it is unlikely he survived what was done to him. He was removed shortly before we arrived. I can recover him, whatever his current condition, if you wish,” Dom promised.
“Open the door. If they moved Peters somewhere else, we can get him next. Just open the damn door!” she shouted.
Dom looked at her, his expression unchanging, before turning toward the door and activating a concealed panel.
The hatch sank backward and rotated aside.
Beyond it was a room with steel-gray walls and cells lining one side. A desk stood near the entrance, an autopistol resting atop several data sheets.
In the center of the room was what looked like a medical examination table beneath a powerful work light.
Inside the cells, Ava saw four people.
Isaac sat on the floor of one cell, holding his head in his hands.
Ethan lay motionless on the floor of another.
Kane stood at the edge of his cell, reaching his arms through the bars into the next one and holding someone against him.
Juarez.
He sobbed uncontrollably in Kane’s arms.
They had all been stripped down to their thermal long johns.
A man in a light combat suit stood near Ethan’s cell without his helmet. He cleaned a heavy baton with a rag while shouting at Kane and Juarez to keep the noise down.
Four others occupied the room.
All but one wore the same combat armor.
Agni Models, Ava realized now that she could clearly see their helmets. Light, inexpensive suits intended for people who wanted to look the part but did not expect to enter real danger.
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The man beside the cells wore the same armor, as did the three now staring at her.
The final person wore Vesta armor and sprayed the floor with a pressurized hose, sending a thick stream of water across the white-silver tiles.
Tiles stained red with blood.
Ava stared at them.
They stared back.
They were armed, but their pistols remained holstered at their sides.
The unhelmeted man seemed to realize something was wrong when the Vesta-suited worker shut off the pressure hose.
He turned toward Ava.
Tall.
Bald.
Ugly.
Shock spread across his angry face.
His nose had recently been broken. Blood ran from it, and it had not yet been reset.
He carried only the baton.
Ava held her bullpup rifle in both hands.
No one moved.
She found her voice.
“Where is Peters?”
Her stomach sank as she looked back toward the pool of blood on the floor.
So much blood.
Too much.
“Where is my friend?!” she screamed, her suit’s external speakers amplifying the demand into a deafening roar.
The three guards reached for their autopistols with practiced ease.
Ava was faster.
She raised her rifle to her shoulder and opened fire.
A three-round burst of thermite ammunition struck each man. Ava had not switched the weapon to single-fire mode.
The shots were poorly aimed but still hit center mass, and the thermite did its work, burning through the cracked and damaged plating where the rounds struck.
The men fell backward, screaming as the burning compounds ate into them.
The Vesta-clad worker raised the pressure hose with one hand and drew his pistol with the other.
Ava fired into his chest.
The recoil carried the burst upward into his neck, and he fell writhing onto the floor.
The final man charged toward Ava as the shooting began.
She turned to meet him after dropping the man with the pressure hose, but something pulled her backward and out of the room.
Dom suddenly materialized between Ava and the charging man.
He caught the descending baton with one hand while holding Ava against his side with the other.
Dom released her.
Ava managed to keep her feet and spun to launch herself back into the room.
The door slammed shut.
She was trapped outside in the empty hallway with the dirty bootprints.
The red bootprints.
And the thick streaks that looked as though something had been dragged from the room.
Ava turned away from the bloodstained floor and threw herself against the door.
Her fists struck the metal again and again. The rifle fell against her body, secured by its sling.
She pounded against the hatch, though she knew it was pointless.
They likely could not even hear her.
She did not stop.
“Open the damn door!” she yelled through both her comms and external speakers.
“Dom! God damn it, open the door!”
She drove her knee into the hatch, producing only the sharp clack of metal against metal.
The door opened again.
Dom stood beside the interior control panel.
Behind him lay the dead body of the helmetless man.
He was considerably bloodier than he had been moments earlier.
Both of his arms appeared broken, bent at unnatural angles. His damaged nose had been folded entirely sideways.
His dead eyes remained open and bulging.
His mouth was frozen in a perpetual scream.
“Ava, I have received intelligence regarding the location of Peters’s body. I will retrieve it while you free and reunite with your people. I have updated your suit with navigational markers leading toward the storage unit containing the equipment and suits confiscated from your team,” Dom said.
He stepped forward to pass her.
Ava swung at him with her left fist, which was already aching from striking the door.
Dom accepted the blow.
Her fist struck his invisible helmet.
He turned to regard her.
“You are angry. That anger is misplaced. I will bring you to the person toward whom it should be directed,” Dom said as Ava’s fist rebounded from the side of his face.
She staggered backward.
She wanted to yell at him.
To scream.
To strike him again, even knowing it would accomplish nothing.
Instead, she sank to her knees and sobbed.
“I will rejoin you momentarily. See to your people, Team Lead.”
Dom stepped into the hallway and broke into a sprint.
He disappeared from view.