Page 2 of Rescuing Ally: Part 1
My instincts tell me to drop to the ground, but the guards shout louder. Only this time, it’s not orders but panic.
Another explosion erupts to my right. It sears jagged afterimages into my retinas.
“RUN!”
The command cracks through the chaos, sharp and commanding, cutting through the alarms like a whip. I obey without thinking. I grab Malia and help her drag her brother forward.
Beneath my feet, the ground trembles violently and grows stronger by the second. The air tastes wrong—metallic, heavy, charged like the crackling edge of a thunderstorm.
Black-clad figures emerge from the shadows, weapons leveled, their movements lethal and precise. At first, fear spikes through me—they’re here to kill us, to finish what the explosions started—but then one of them grabs my arm and yanks me forward.
“This way!” The voice is distorted through his helmet, but there’s something impossibly deliberate in his grip. I lock eyes with him, or try, but his visor reflects only my terrified expression. His grip is unyielding, not cruel—just absolute.
Another figure flanks me on the other side, urging me to pick up my pace. Together, they box me in. They move with the kind of precision that only comes from endless drills—one always watching the other’s back.
They keep me moving through the chaos.
Explosions ripple across the compound, each louder than the last. Gunfire cracks through the air—sharp, jarring, deafening. I glance back once, and a flash of muzzle fire nearly blinds me. Bodies jerk as the black-clad rescuers cut down guards with terrifying accuracy.
Above the noise, the hum of something mechanical fills the air.
Through plumes of smoke and bursts of firelight, shadows shift. They’re too fluid and too calculated to be human.
Four-legged, sleek, and metallic, they move unnervingly smoothly as they appear and disappear through the darkness. They leap—higher and faster than anything living.
Guards scatter, their formations collapsing as the machines brutallyforce them back.
“Move!” The man on my left growls the command, his grip tightening as he guides me toward a gap in the perimeter fence.
I stumble over a clod of frozen earth, barely catching myself in time.
A hand clamps around my arm, yanking me upright. The other rescuer steadies me, his hold bruising but necessary.
“Keep going!” He shoves me forward. When he glances back, his visor catches the firelight, and for a split second, I see my own panic reflected there.
Malia stumbles in front of me. One of the men helps her brother. Whittman falters, his elderly frame nearly giving out, but sheer determination keeps him upright as his grip on Maria’s wrist never wavers. More black-clad rescuers appear, their movements quick and deliberate, herding us toward a gap in the perimeter fence.
That’s when it hits.
This is a rescue.
We reach the razor-wire fencing.
Almost there.
Almost free.
But facility guards flank us, trying to cut us off. A rifle kicks as someone fires, the shockwave punching my eardrums. The shock of it leaves my ears ringing.
Before I can cry out, the man beside me pivots, one hand propelling me roughly forward while his weapon swings up in a calculated arc. He fires, the sound cracking loud and dry in the bitter cold.
The guard crumples, his body sagging into vapor-thickened shadows.
I don’t have time to process his death. My rescuer shouts at me to move, and a new surge of adrenaline feeds my oxygen-starved lungs.
“Don’t stop!” His voice cuts like a bullet, sharp and precise, as he shoves me through the breach in the fence.
The fencing falls behind us, but the vibrations beneath my feetdon’t stop. They’re stronger now, thrumming through every bone in my body. My thoughts spiral in frantic circles.
