Tyrell had barely finished speaking when the sound hit them. Heavy boots, lots of them, moving fast through the corridor at the end of the sub-level one hallway. Encrypted radio chatter cut through the noise in short bursts. Weapons chambering. The sounds poured in from every direction at once, down the stairwells, through the ventilation shafts, along the fire escapes, closing on the underground levels from every angle.
Carlos racked his rifle and pressed himself against the wall beside the monitoring room door. The confusion that had been on his face was gone. "How many? What's out there?"
"Fifty, sixty at least. No markings on any of them, not U.B.C.S., not a standard Umbrella cleanup crew. I've never seen the kit before." Tyrell's shirt was soaked through at the back. He'd managed half a loop of the outer corridors before turning back, keeping to the underground passages. "They rammed the front entrance with an armored vehicle. Already inside when I ran back. Split into multiple teams and started working through the floors. One group's already down to sub-level one. Footsteps everywhere."
Jill crossed to the window and pulled the curtain aside an inch. One look at the sunken courtyard below and she let it drop. "Ventilation shafts, fire escapes, the auxiliary stairwell. All of them. They're sealing us in on sub-level two. They haven't left a gap."
Kendo didn't hesitate. Becky had just started to stir, and he wrapped her in a blanket and eased her back down before she could sit up. Then he threw the blast door lock and dragged two heavy metal medical cabinets across the entrance, stacking them against the door. "I'm staying here. Nobody gets near her. Nobody."
Dr. Bard held the metal case against his chest, knuckles white against the surface, his face white. "They're here for the documents... they have to be here for the documents..."
Ryan closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them, his attention spread outward through the walls and floors, filling in the building around him the way it always did now. It had started as a twenty-meter radius, back at the beginning. Each crisis, each fight, each wave of zombies had pushed it further. A hundred meters now, when he focused. The entire hospital resolved in his mind: five complete tactical teams, coordinated, covering every approach, sealing every exit with no wasted overlap. A professional encirclement.
He kept that to himself. The others couldn't verify it, and knowing the exact scope of it wouldn't help any of them move faster.
This many people for the handful of us. They really rolled out the red carpet.
"We can't sit here and wait." His voice came out steady. His eyes moved across the group and paused on Jill for a beat, and he touched the back of her hand once, brief. "Main stairwell up on sub-level one already has heavy weapons emplaced. Three teams are converging on sub-level two. If they pin us in this room, we lose all our angles and any firefight puts Becky in the middle of it."
Jill looked at him. No question in her expression, only attention. "What's the plan?"
"We push the line out." He moved fast through the assignments. His hand found Jill's wrist for a moment as he spoke, pressing once, telling her to be careful. "Kendo, you stay locked in here. Blast door sealed, no matter what happens outside. Bard, you're with him, guard the case, back him up if he needs it. Tyrell, take the west side fire escape on sub-level two. Watch the ventilation access. That's the only route they can use to flank us from behind. Anything moves, you call it."
Carlos bit down on something, wound the rifle sling twice around his shoulder, and said, "I'm with you. These people want sub-level two, they're going through me first."
"Me too." Jill swapped out both magazines and tucked two flashbangs behind her belt. Her eyes were sharp and cold. "Three of us working together, we clear the teams pushing down, then drive them back up. That's how we get a path out."
No one wasted words after that.
Ryan looked at Jill and Carlos, counted back from three with his hand, and shoved the blast door open. The three of them moved down the sub-level two corridor in silence, staying out of sight lines, and came around to the side approach of the main stairwell down to sub-level one.
Through the fire door: boots on concrete, radio static, the mechanical click of a weapon being charged. Ryan held position against the wall and read the stairwell clearly. "Two heavy machine guns at the landing corner, four gunners. Three assault troops on each side of the platform, about to push down. Take the gunners first, then the flankers."
Jill and Carlos exchanged a look and nodded.
Ryan hit the fire door handle and pulled.
Jill and Carlos went through together. The stairwell erupted. Jill put two rounds through the foreheads of the left-side machine gun crew before the noise even registered. Carlos raised his rifle and hammered the troops on both platform sides, rounds chewing into the concrete walls and throwing up dust.
The enemy responded fast. Professionally fast. They folded into cover without breaking formation and returned fire in three overlapping angles, every shot deliberate, every shot aimed at the three of them. No spraying. They were keeping it tight, worried about stray rounds reaching sub-level two. Bullets clipped along the edge of Carlos's cover, and when he shifted position, a burst punched through the thin partition wall in front of him. One round went through his left arm clean, in and out through muscle, and a spray of blood followed it.
Carlos hit the concrete wall behind him with a grunt and slid. His left arm gave out. The rifle nearly went with it. Blood ran down to his elbow and began collecting on the floor.
"Carlos!" Jill leaned out from cover with both guns, driving back the trooper moving in to finish the shot. She pulled back and a round from the right caught her in the ribs. The impact locked her up for a second, and she stumbled two steps and went into the wall, forehead breaking into cold sweat immediately. Blood soaked through her shirt and spread down into her tactical pants.
Ryan saw it.
He was moving before he'd thought about it, out from cover and across the open ground with rounds cutting the air around him, and he got an arm around her before she went down and dragged her into the dead angle of the nearest cover. His hand clamped over the wound in her side. He couldn't keep his voice flat.
"Talk to me. Stay still. Don't move."
He looked at her face. She was pale and her eyes were working to stay on him, and the pressure behind his ribs was something he hadn't felt since the beginning. Every fight before this, every close call, he'd kept his head. He understood now that he'd just been lucky it hadn't been her until now.
Jill got her teeth together and swallowed whatever sound had been coming up. She found his wrist with her hand and pressed down to steady the shaking. Her voice came out rough but level. "I'm fine... watch the approach... they're moving..."
She was right. Three assault troops had used the cover of the exchange to advance to the corner, guns trained on their position, not firing yet, waiting for an exposed angle.
Ryan set Jill carefully against the wall, pulled a flashbang from her belt, and threw it.
White light detonated in the stairwell and he went through it at a run. Rounds came at him and missed, couldn't track the pace of his movement. Three shots. Three hits. The troops at the corner dropped, all of them temporarily blinded, all of them with neat holes through their foreheads before the light had even faded.
He turned to go back.
The sniper on the upper landing fired.
The round hit him square in the chest and the impact threw him two steps back into the wall. The pain was extraordinary, like being struck by something at full heat, and it locked his breathing for a second. He looked down. The tactical vest had a deep dent punched into it, the round had gone all the way through the material, and underneath it his skin was completely unmarked.
"Ryan!" Jill's voice came out raw. She got a hand to the wall and started to push herself up, ignoring the blood, ignoring her side.
He raised a hand. Stayed upright.
Carlos had gone red-eyed. He was firing one-handed up at the landing, arm shaking, voice cracking. "Ryan! What the hell, are you hit?!"
"I'm fine." Ryan pressed through the pain still rolling through his chest and moved back into the fight. He tracked the sniper through the stairwell gaps, two floors up, and put a round through the space between the railings. The sniper dropped. The remaining troops had watched a man take a center-mass hit and keep walking, and the hesitation that followed cost them. Ryan cleared the rest of them in the next few seconds.
The stairwell went quiet.
He turned and went straight back to Jill, crouched beside her, and got the first aid kit out. His hands were steady now, working the wound while the last of the adrenaline settled. "Hold on, almost done. Stop moving."
"You..." Jill stared at his chest. The vest was punched through. Underneath it, nothing. Her hand found the spot where the round had hit and she pressed carefully, checking, and she was shaking. "You took a round. Ryan. Are you actually okay?"
"Not a scratch." He caught her hand and pressed it flat against his chest, over his heartbeat, letting her feel it, calm and even. "Hurt like hell, but nothing broke the skin. I promise."