FEROCITY

Chapter 2

Present Day

Alarms warped through the complex, rising and falling like a dying siren that could not find the right pitch. The safe house trembled. Dust sifted down from the ceiling and drifted through the harsh light.
Scott crouched in the corner, arms wrapped around himself, trying to make his body smaller than it was.
In the center of the room, four barrels tracked in a tight, lethal dance.
It had been tense the moment Scott, Maxine, and Xavier hit the safe house. Then it turned poisonous. Another Xavier was already there, calm, waiting, as if he belonged.
Maxine and Jacob kept their muzzles level and moved in sync, sights snapping from one Xavier to the other, never holding on either man for longer than a heartbeat. Commit too long and you die.
Charlotte held her position off to the side, weapon up, shifting her feet to keep both men in her lane. Her shoulders were square. Her jaw was locked. Her eyes did not blink.
A deep vibration rolled through the walls. The kind you felt in your molars.
“They’re getting closer,” Jacob said. His voice stayed controlled, but his eyes kept flicking to the steel door. “It won’t be long.”
“Decide,” said Black Xavier, the one Maxine had brought with her, the one wearing the black flight suit. He stood half a pace forward, hands open at his sides, as if he was offering himself. “Take us both, or kill us both. They’re the only two options.”
“For the good of the war,” said Gray Xavier, the one already inside the safe house, the one wearing a slate-gray suit. He did not step back. He did not flinch. “Do what you need to do.”
Maxine felt the Zeds coming. She couldn’t see them, but she could sense them the way you sense a storm: pressure building, air shifting. She kept her weapon steady and searched faces.
Both Xaviers held her gaze. Same dark eyes. Same calm. Same posture. One was the truth. One was a lie.
A solid thud slammed into the steel door. The impact carried through the wall and into Scott’s shoulder, where he pressed against it. He jolted, then fumbled in his pocket and yanked out the two earbuds. He held them tightly.
Would it save them?
Did he really have to do it?
Another attack on the door made the hinges squeal.
Scott shoved them back into his pocket and crept behind Jacob. Jacob’s broad frame blocked part of the chaos. For a second, Scott let himself pretend that size meant safety.
It did not.
“We can hold them off here,” Charlotte said.
“No,” Maxine snapped. “We need to get out of here. In a minute, heavily armed and armored Zeds will swarm us. Then it is only a matter of time before they wipe us all out.”
Charlotte’s eyes cut to the two Xaviers. “What about them?”
Maxine did not blink. “Take them both. We sort it out later.” She swept her gaze over the room, counting people, counting angles, counting the seconds. “Go. Out through the emergency exit.”
“Where are we going?” Jacob asked as the others started moving.
“A place only I know about,” Maxine shouted, already turning.
They pushed into the corridor.
The safe house layout turned into a blur of tight turns and doorways. The lights flickered. The alarms kept screaming. Somewhere behind them, metal hammered, and the sound of it chased them down the hall.
Scott ran in the middle of the convoy, shoved along by bodies, trying not to fall. His lungs burned. His heart slammed so hard it made his vision pulse.
Charlotte brought up the rear, weapon aimed back the way they came, moving sideways so she could retreat without turning her back. Every few steps she paused to listen, then moved again.
Fight if they had to.
Die if they had to.
They reached a second steel door. Maxine punched a code into the keypad with fast, sure fingers.
A heavy clunk sounded as the high-pressure magnet released.
The door swung open.
Maxine stood to the side as Charlotte made her way to the front of the line and took the lead into a dim, red-bricked tunnel that smelled of damp earth and cold stone. The air changed down here. Thicker. Older.
Scott stumbled through. Maxine slipped in last and shoved the door shut.
She started after them, then stopped a few paces into the gloom.
“You coming?” she called back.
Jacob stood at the threshold, detonator in his left hand, submachine gun in his right. He had planted himself like a wall.
“Go on,” he said. “I’ll hold them off here.”
“You don’t need to,” Maxine said. “They’ll—”
A heavy thud hit the door they had just passed through. The frame shuddered.
“Go,” Jacob yelled. “We’ve all got our roles, Maxine. This one is mine. Now get out of here.”
Another hit. Harder.
Jacob turned his head, listening, then looked back down the tunnel. “Go!” he roared over his shoulder. “I’ll hold them for as long as I can.”
Xavier had warned her about moments like this. Moments where the mission demanded a choice that would kill one of them.
Must protect Mr. Harris, he would say. At all costs. He is going to end the war for us. Kill me, all of us, if it keeps him alive. Whatever the cost.
Whatever the cost.
Maxine had never understood it. She still didn’t. But she hoped that one day very soon she would. But she could not doubt Xavier, not after the things he had told her. Not after what he had done for her.
“I’ll see you soon, Jacob,” she said.
Jacob nodded, eyes fixed on the door. He didn’t turn around.
Maxine spun and sprinted after the others.
The tunnel twisted. Corridors split. Doorways appeared and then vanished behind them. Bodies darted through intersections, shadows cutting across brick. The emergency route was as brutal as the way in.
And remembering the sequence, under pressure, felt like trying to recall pi to a hundred decimal places.
Further along, Scott started to break.
He could sense the enemy behind them. Not footsteps, not voices, something worse. A presence that pressed into the back of his skull.
His breath turned ragged. His heart hammered. His hands became slick.
It was time.
Scott yanked out the earbuds and jammed them into his ears.
The tunnel dimmed. The bricks seemed to slide. The air thickened. His heavy footsteps changed tone, as if the world had swapped materials under him.
Scott squeezed his eyes shut.

***

When he opened them, daylight hit like a punch.
Blue sky. Clean and hard. Tall trees flanked a narrow path slick with rain. The ground glistened. Leaves clung to the mud. Water dripped from branches and tapped a steady beat.
Ahead, a man darted around a bend.
Andrik.
Scott surged forward.
Andrik had been on the run for days, ever since he had burst into the brothel, sure he had cornered his prey.
He had been wrong.
Andrik was elusive, fast, and just smart enough to keep slipping away at the last moment. Intelligence suggested he knew everything. Including where Krantz was being held.
He was the last lead, the last bastion of knowledge. Without him, they would never find the deputy director.
Scott pushed harder.
His quads burned as he drove over a rise, weaving between trunks, ducking branches, boots tearing through wet leaves. Fall colors flashed around him, orange and red and yellow, bright enough to feel unreal.
He broke through the last line of trees and skidded onto the path.
Nothing.
No movement. No shadow. No Andrik.
Scott spun, scanning the empty stretch ahead, fury rising hot and sharp in his chest. Again. The bastard had slipped him again.
A flutter of birds burst from a hedge. A scurry of small animals tore into the undergrowth.
Scott’s gaze snapped down.
A utility cover sat slightly askew in the path, the edge lifted as if it had been disturbed in a rush.
Scott ran to it and dragged it aside.
No time to call for backup. Every second Andrik gained distance.
Scott shoved his firearm into a concealed holster and climbed down the ladder into the dark.
Cold air swallowed him.
He dropped into shallow runoff that stank of wet concrete and old grime. Water splashed up his trouser legs. Above, daylight framed the opening like a spotlight, making him feel exposed.
He stopped and listened.
Nothing.
No footsteps. No breathing. No drip disturbed by movement.
Andrik was a ghost. A magician. The kind who vanished from an empty room.
Scott started forward anyway, forcing himself to move, forcing the fear down.
Then he stopped again.
Not because he heard something.
Because he felt it.
A shift behind him. A presence at his back.
Scott spun and launched a fist into the gloom.
His knuckles smashed into something solid.
A dark shape recoiled, then pulled away, silent footsteps fading into deeper black with impossible speed.
Scott swore and chased, splashing through the runoff, shoulders brushing damp walls, breath loud in the pipe. The further he ran, the more the world narrowed to water and concrete and echo.
He hit a crossroads under a shaft of light spilling from an overhead grate.
Three tunnels stretched away. Identical curves. Identical darkness.
No sign of Andrik.
Scott stood still, chest heaving, eyes darting. Another escape. Another dead end.
Then he smelled it.
Perfume. Sweat. Sex.
The scent drifted from the first tunnel, faint at first, then stronger as he leaned into it. A flash of the whorehouse hit his mind: cheap lights, sticky floors, bodies too close.
Andrik had carried it with him.
Scott moved.
He crept along the curve of the pipe, staying high and away from the water to keep his steps quiet. The scent thickened. The darkness eased, black to dark gray to ash, as light found its way in from somewhere ahead.
Around a corner, a clean shaft of daylight cut across the tunnel.
Wind howled through that opening, carrying the scent straight to Scott.
Next corner.
A figure stood in the circle of light, back half turned, as if he was waiting to be found.
Scott raised his voice. “Nowhere to go, Andrik.”
“Oh, I beg to differ,” Andrik said, calm as if they were speaking over drinks. “By the time you make it to the end of this tunnel, I’ll be gone. Forever.”
“I just need to know where Krantz is,” Scott said. “Tell me that and I’ll turn around and walk away.”
Andrik laughed. “There is no more Krantz. He is but an image. A template.”
Scott’s stomach tightened. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Goodbye, Scott,” Andrik said. “It has been an enjoyable experience, but now I must leave.”
Andrik turned and stepped forward into the light.
A blur of movement dropped from above.
A body slammed into Andrik and drove him into the wet concrete.
Scott ran towards the light, boots splashing, eyes squinting as daylight hit again.
Maxine had Andrik pinned, knee between his shoulder blades, zip tie biting into his wrists. Andrik writhed under her weight, spitting water and curses.
“Appreciate the assist,” Scott said, breath still tearing at his throat.
Maxine tightened the zip tie another notch. “Team effort.”
Andrik bucked. Maxine shoved his face into a puddle and held it there.
“Are you going to calm down?” she asked.
Andrik stilled, forced by the lack of air.
Maxine released him.
Andrik coughed and spat. “Fuck you.”
Maxine grabbed his head and drove it down again.
Scott grimaced. “We still need him.”
“Yeah, I know,” Maxine said, and the disappointment in her voice was real. She eased the pressure just enough for Andrik to breathe, then lifted her gaze past Scott.
Her expression changed.
The calm drained from her face.
Fear replaced it, sudden and raw.
“Besides,” she said, voice tight, “we really need to get out of here.”
“We need to interrogate him,” Scott insisted.
“No,” Maxine snapped. “We need to go. Now.”
Scott stared at her. “Why?”

***

“Because the whole damn tunnel is collapsing!” Maxine screamed.
Scott blinked.
Darkness returned like a curtain dropping.
He was back in the real tunnel, fingers wrapped around a ladder rung, Maxine below him, her face contorted as she yelled up through the access hole.
“Jacob has set off the explosives,” she shouted. “We need to go. Now!”
For a second, there was nothing.
Then a low rumble rolled through the brick.
It grew. Fast.
The gentle vibration morphed into a thunderous roar. Dust exploded from seams in the walls. The ground shuddered as the labyrinth behind them started to fold in on itself.
Scott climbed.
His arms screamed. His legs slipped on the wet rungs. He hauled himself upward anyway, lungs burning, panic crushing down on him.
Maxine followed right behind, close enough that Scott could feel her breath on his boots.
Below them, a cloud of dirt and dust billowed up the tunnel as concrete cracked and collapsed, the sound like giant snapping bones.
Scott reached the top and heaved himself out.
Daylight. Street noise. Screeching tires.
Maxine popped up behind him and rolled onto one knee, weapon up, sweeping both directions.
Charlotte had commandeered a beige station wagon in the middle of the street.
The owner froze when Charlotte leveled a rifle at his face. Then survival kicked in. He stumbled out, hands raised, nearly tripping over the curb as he scrambled for cover.
Cars swerved around the scene, horns blaring, drivers shouting through windows.
Maxine stayed on one knee, tracking the flow, waiting for the car that would surge instead of brake. Waiting for the one that would try to hit her.
Through her sights, she picked lanes and distances, already deciding where to place the shot if she had to.
A car squealed to a halt beside her, close enough to spray grit.
“You getting in?” Charlotte asked, voice flat, almost innocent.
Maxine rose, lowered her weapon, and slid into the passenger seat without a word.
Scott stumbled towards the rear door, eyes wide, still half in the wrong world, and the station wagon’s engine revved as Charlotte prepared to punch them into traffic.