They pushed through the industrial back streets—metal shutters and cold, blank walls passing in a blur. Engines died underfoot; the three of them ran on foot now, boots slapping wet concrete. Behind them, the chaos of the warehouse fight thrummed like a wound. Diana and Mostang had thrown themselves into the gap to buy them time; their shouts and the clash of bodies receded into the night like a sacrificial drumbeat.
Emma didn't look back. Her voice was a blade.
"Follow me."
Kane's breath came ragged but steady. "I brought them. Timers are set to manual or remote—your call." He held the slim packs tight beneath his jacket like nervous treasure.
Celeste kept one arm hooked into Emma's elbow, the other cradling a medical kit. Her eyes were pinched with focus; night and battle had made her movements small and efficient. "If there are innocents inside, we stall and pull them out," she said, low. "We don't torch people."
Emma's jaw tightened the smallest fraction. "We take the stabilizers offline. No more patching Vencor's men. Make the deaths permanent so his leverage rots. Carlo has the feeds; you have ninety seconds of black."
Kane's fingers brushed the detonator on his belt. "Carlo says sixty."
They moved like ghosts—slipping through a supply alley, up a service stair, down into the basement corridor of Vencor's field med unit. The place smelled of antiseptic and machine oil, a sterile scent that felt like a lie. Biolights hummed, doors were badge-locked. Emma's hand went to her side; the small blade she favored glinted and then was still. Her eyes never left the corridor.
Carlo's voice flickered in their earpieces—soft, urgent. "Cameras looped. Local feed black for sixty. Two entry points open because of my racks; choose the left hatch. You have forty-five."
They pried a maintenance panel and slipped through. The room beyond was shockingly ordinary for a place that kept Vencor's men breathing: racks of monitors, a wall of stacked ventilators, a row of mobile ICU beds. Two attendants in uniforms sat with their heads bowed over tablets — mercenary med techs, not real doctors. A single locked door bore a sign: STABILIZATION / CRITICAL CARE.
Celeste felt for a pulse in the nearest bed, then checked the ward roll taped to a clipboard. "Two patients — both labeled as combatant. No civilians listed." She didn't need the papers to tell her what she already suspected, but she read them anyway: status green, med tags assigned by Vencor's logistics.
Emma moved like an answer. She whispered order after order: "Kane—servers. Celeste—ward sweep. I clear the stabilizers. We plant on power nodes and the main oxygen lines. Carlo—when I give the signal, you burn their backup and pull the trace."
Kane went to the rack with the practiced hands of someone who'd practiced worse things in worse places. He clipped the first charge to a power relay feeding the stabilizer array and attached a manual timer and remote cut. His hands shook a hair's breadth—enough to notice, not enough to fail.
Celeste darted down the ward, checking under sheets, moving one thin figure to a wheelchair, dragging another out the door and whispering, "You'll be okay. Move." She had the look of someone both made of soft things and iron; a contradictory miracle. Any non-combatant they found she moved to a secured side room and administered sedative and oxygen, assuring they'd be out of the blast path.
Emma slid a charge into the back of the main stabilizer block, fingers sure and cold. She didn't make a face when the wire bit through her glove. She left a second charge on the server cabinet that contained the patient logs and the encrypted routing nodes used to launder med requests through Vencor's networks. "No more patching, no more cover-ups," she mouthed to herself, then pressed the pin.
Forty seconds on Carlo's voice: "Thirty."
Celeste slammed a rolling ICU bed into the doorway and wedged a wedge-plate behind it. "If anyone knocks, they'll have to rip through this and time us," she said. "We move now."
They backed into the corridor and ran, breath burning, chest heaving. Kane's detonator felt like a stone beneath his palm. The building's alarms were quiet for now—Carlo's loop holding the surveillance blind. For sixty seconds they were ghosts in the systems.
Emma's earpiece crackled: "Forty seconds," Carlo breathed.
They rounded a corner and as if on cue the night outside erupted — the distant fight spinning, shouts and metal. Diana's voice came through, raw and bright: "Hurry. We're drawing them off. Keep to the route."
Emma glanced at Kane. He set the timer to manual and clicked. The little display lit: 30…29…28…
They sprinted to the extraction alley where Mostang had staged a van. It was parked in darkness, engine idling. Celeste slid in first and began suctioning the bed wheeled inside, double-checking the handful of evacuees. Kane slammed the side panel and slid into the passenger seat.
Emma was the last to jolt for the van. She checked over the team, eyes sharp, then climbed in. Mostang's fingers itched the ignition. "Go!" he barked.
Kane's breath stuttered as the timer clicked over: 10…9…8…
The van peeled away and hit the road. Lights flared in the distance as the first of Vencor's men spilled into the streets—too late to stop them now.
Three—two—one.
A white, clean concussive flare swallowed the skyline like a throat opening. The stabilizer block bloomed into a controlled fireball, the server rack behind it collapsing in a spray of sparks and smoke. The medical bay's lights went dead and the scent of burning plastic filled the night. Alarms that hadn't been heard for a minute began to scream as backups spiked and fried.
In the van, Celeste clenched her jaw but didn't look away. "No civilians were in the wards," she said after a breath, checking the evac sheets. Her voice was clinically calm. "We did what we needed."
Emma sat forward, hands tight on the metal bar. Her eyes, reflected briefly in the cracked window, were calm and vast and empty in the way of people who'd just taken a difficult, necessary thing and lived. She didn't allow triumph. She allowed purpose.
Behind them the field hospital turned into a black, smoking cavity. The fire ate the servers that processed med shipments; the ledger of who had been saved vanished into the flame. Tomorrow Vencor's men would be dead where before they were patched. His leverage would crack.
Carlo's voice came through like a tired blessing: "Ledger copies wiped. Transfers failed. I pulled a dozen ghosted caches; I'll keep them looped. He's blind on med traffic for now."
Emma's jaw moved once. "Good." Her thumb crushed the rim of the seat. "We gave him a problem he can't buy his way out of."
They drove into the night. Sirens coughed behind them and men screamed orders at the ruined compound. Diana and Mostang found them at the rendezvous point, bloodied and breathing, Valeria nowhere in sight—an absence that cut like cold.
Diana's hand on Emma's shoulder was quick and brief. "You okay?" she asked.
Emma's reply was the smallest of things, but true. "We did what we came to do."
Kane stared out the back window, the detonator warm in his pocket where it had been. He swallowed. "We won't get a sleep tonight, will we?"
Emma looked at the team—at the faces that had kept pace with her through rage and ruin. "No," she said softly. "Not until he's finished."
And somewhere far above the city, in a room warmed by lacquer and smell of old money, Vencor would be counting what he had lost — and planning the weight of what he would make them suffer in return. The war had moved from the shadows into the open, and they had just sharpened the first large cut.
----
Under the burning streetlights and sirens echoing across the block, Valeria's boots dragged dust as she stepped back, chest heaving, shoulder bleeding through her jacket. The pavement beneath her was cracked from the earlier blasts—Kane's explosives hitting too close, Emma's team scattering, Diana and Mostang holding the line.
But no help was coming for her now.
Roland stood across from her, breath heavy but steady, his stance still strong. His coat was torn, knuckles bruised, a smear of dry blood on his cheek—but his eyes were calm. Dangerous. Focused.
He rolled his shoulder once, cracking his neck.
Roland: "You're slowing down."
Valeria spat blood, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and brought her guard back up.
Her arms trembled. Her lungs burned. Every inhale felt like needles.
Valeria (breathing hard): "…shut up…"
She charged.
Her punches weren't as sharp now—but they were angry, desperate, fueled by sheer refusal to collapse.
Roland blocked one. Dodged the second.
The third—she feinted, flicking her hand out to try and jab his eye.
Roland barely jerked back, but it grazed him. A thin red streak opened under his eye.
He froze for half a second.
Valeria swung again—putting everything into her kick—
—but Roland caught it.
And slammed her to the ground.
Her back hit the asphalt with a crack.
Her breath escaped in a choked gasp.
But she didn't scream.
She tried to stand—her hand slipping in her own blood—but she forced herself up to her knees.
Roland watched her. His voice flat. Almost… tired.
Roland: "You don't have to do this. They're already gone. Emma's gone. You… you'll just die for nothing."
Valeria laughed—weak, breathless, broken—
but real.
Valeria: "…Emma… doesn't… leave people behind."
She stood again.
Or tried to.
Her legs swayed.
Her vision blurred.
Roland's expression shifted—just barely.
A flicker of respect. Or pity. Hard to tell.
He stepped forward—raising his fist.
Valeria moved too.
Even now.
Even half-dead.
She kept swinging.
The fight… was theirs.
No audience.
No backup.
No orders.
Just will.
Roland blocked the strike—
and drove his knee into her stomach.
Valeria's body folded.
She collapsed to the ground, coughing, blood dripping onto the pavement.
But her hand reached out—grabbing Roland's boot—still trying to stand.
Roland exhaled.
Roland (soft, almost resigned): "…You are stubborn."
Valeria lifted her head, eyes burning, jaw clenched.
Valeria: "I'm… Emma's second."
Even on the ground—she refused to break.
The street was silent now—only the crackle of nearby fires and the distant siren hum.
Valeria lay on the ground, barely conscious.
Her body was done.
But her mind wasn't.
Roland stepped toward her, casting a long shadow over her.
His breathing was heavy. His stance slightly lowered. He'd been pushed harder than he'd admit.
He reached down to grab her collar—
But Valeria's eyes flickered sharp for just an instant.
Her fingers—blood-slick—closed around something hidden under her sleeve.
A thin, compact field scalpel—Emma's design.
Made for cutting arteries.
Small enough to hide.
Sharp enough to kill.
Valeria didn't hesitate.
She drove it upward—deep—straight into Roland's chest.
Not the heart—she missed her angle—
But she hit under the collarbone, where the artery and nerve cluster ran.
Roland's breath hitched.
His body jerked from the sudden shock.
His arm went weak. His knees wobbled.
A perfect strike.
Valeria wasn't trying to win.
She was trying to pay the price to slow him.
Just enough.
Roland stepped back, one hand pressed to the wound, blood running down his chest.
He looked at her—not angry, not surprised—
but with a quiet, exhausted regret.
Roland: "...You."
Valeria smiled—broken, bloody, proud.
Valeria (weak whisper): "I know…"
Roland tightened his jaw.
He didn't hesitate.
His foot came down—
Crushing her chest, breaking ribs, collapsing lung.
Valeria's body jerked—
—but she didn't scream.
Her vision faded.
Everything was light.
Warm.
Soft.
She could no longer see Roland.
Valeria. Remembered the memories with her. And Emma. In prison. Talking.
About their life.
It's all gone.
Valeria's lips trembled into a soft smile.
Her final breath escaped slowly, gently, like letting go.
Valeria: "Go… my equal… achieve your dream…"
Her body finally went still.
The street was quiet again.
Roland stood there, blood flowing down his side, the scalpel still lodged in him.
He didn't speak.
He didn't look triumphant.
He just closed his eyes—
and silently acknowledged a warrior who did not break.
Valeria is gone.
But her strike will matter.
And Emma will feel this.
She will know.
And she will burn the world for her.