Chapter 10 - The Sub-Level Race
"It's a cellular trigger!" Adrian yelled over the screech of the emergency sprinklers, hauling Sterling up by his collar and shoving him toward Marcus, who had just materialized through the smoke at the end of the hall. "Take this piece of trash down to the holding cells and lock him down!"
"Boss, the tanker—" Marcus started.
"I know about the tanker! Get everyone out of the building, now!" Adrian turned his blazing eyes toward me. "Ava, move!"
"I'm not leaving Nathan!" I shouted back, darting past Adrian into room four.
Nathan was stirring on the surgical table, his eyelids flickering open against the bright lights and the cold spray of the overhead sprinklers, a confused, groaning murmur escaping his pale lips.
"Lucia... what..." Nathan whispered, his hand twitching against the restraint strap.
"You're alive, and we're moving you right now," I said, grabbing the IV pole and unlocking the heavy wheels of the surgical gurney.
Before I could push it toward the door, Adrian was there beside me, taking the opposite side of the metal frame with effortless strength. Together, we shoved the heavy gurney out of the wrecked room and down the flooding corridor just as the building's emergency alarms began to shriek a high-pitched, metallic wail.
15 seconds... 14 seconds...
We burst through the loading dock doors into the torrential rain just as Marcus and Maya piled out behind us, dragging the sputtering, handcuffed Dr. Sterling in their wake.
We hit the pavement and threw ourselves behind the overturned dumpster fifty yards away from the warehouse just as the night sky turned a blinding, violent shade of orange.
The ground beneath our feet rolled like an earthquake.
A muffled, concussive boom echoed across the waterfront district as the sub-level fuel tanker detonated, sending a massive geyser of fire, smoke, and shattered brick roaring straight up through the roof of the old warehouse clinic. The shockwave washed over us, hot and violent, carrying the smell of burning drywall, gasoline, and old medicine into the dark morning air.
I buried my face against Adrian’s shoulder, shielding Nathan’s gurney with my own body as the glass windows of the surrounding storefronts blew outward in a cascading wave of glittering shrapnel.
For several long, breathless seconds, nobody moved. The fire crackled furiously against the pouring rain, illuminating the smoking skeleton of the clinic where I had spent years saving the lives the city had forgotten.
Slowly, I raised my head, staring at the ruins.
Adrian stood up beside me, wiping a smudge of soot from his forehead, his dark eyes fixed on the burning wreckage with a terrifying, unyielding calm. He looked down at me, his strong hand reaching out to pull me firmly to my feet.
"It's gone," I whispered, my voice hollow as I looked at the burning ruins of everything I had built.
May you like
Adrian didn't look away from the fire. He pulled me closer against his side, his voice a low, ironclad promise that cut straight through the roar of the flames.
"They burned down a building, Ava," Adrian said quietly. "Now we're going to burn down their empire."
