The arms didn’t ring—they screamed.

  Shrill, metallic, directionless.

  At Sublevel 5, the elevator doors slid open with a soft ding.

  Then ten rifles lifted in unison.

  Then the world became noise.

  Muzzle fshes stuttered like lightning. Shell casings danced across the floor. Delih didn’t think; she moved. One arm hooked around Laura’s thin torso, yanking her left, behind a steel column that shrieked as bullets tore into it.

  On the opposite side, Taskmaster swept an arm around Sarah’s waist—efficient, practiced—and dragged them both behind a massive coont pipe.

  Concrete spat dust into the air. Sparks showered the hallway like broken stars.

  Laura, however, didn’t scream. She didn’t cower or even flinch.

  She watched the bullets with cold, mathematical interest, as though evaluating their trajectories.

  Taskmaster peeked around the pipe. Two seconds of analysis. Then:

  “Ten men,” he muttered, “three switching mags, two shifting stances, one left-handed, one scared—going to shoot wild when fnked.”

  Delih smirked. “So, fnk them.”

  He snapped his gaze to her. “I wasn’t giving advice. I was predicting, you bitc...”

  She winked, the grin sharp. “Whatever. Cover me.”

  He didn’t argue—just leaned out and sent three precise shots downrange, bursting the overhead lights. The hallway plunged into the angry red emergency glow.

  The chaos was perfect for what she wanted to do. Delih unched forward.

  Her feet hit the ground like hammer strikes. She slid low under the wildfire. Once in range she started.

  A guard adjusted his aim—

  Delih grabbed his rifle—

  Snapped it upward—

  Used the momentum to smash the butt into his jaw—

  And flung his limp body into two more.

  ‘One down. Two staggered.’

  A bullet grazed her shoulder. Pain fred—brief, dismissible. Her healing already began, stitching heat beneath her skin.

  Unbeknownst to Delih Laura had moved to Delih’s other side, silent as a shadow. Small hands flexed. Metal slid from her knuckles with a sickening shnick.

  Her cws caught the red light.

  Her eyes—those eerie, bioengineered green eyes—went bnk and lethal.

  Two guards stepped toward her, shouting.

  Laura sprinted.

  In one smooth movement, she slid under the first man’s rifle, sshed across his hamstring, pivoted, and drove her foot cw upward into the second man’s diaphragm.

  He colpsed without a sound.

  Taskmaster froze mid-shot.

  “…Okay,” he whispered. “Yeah. Definitely not tranqing that kid.”

  Sarah choked a sob. “Laura—baby, please, just come here—”

  But Laura didn’t hear her. No—Laura didn’t recognize her yet. Her conditioning ran deeper than blood.

  Delih stepped in front of the next guard and grabbed his helmet, smashing him back against the wall so hard the wall cracked.

  “Taskmaster!” she shouted. “Clear right!”

  “Already did.” He fired three more times. Three headshots. Clean, surgical.

  The st guard tried to run.

  Laura caught him.

  Her cws fshed—but Delih intercepted her wrist mid-strike.

  Laura snarled, an animal sound, her tiny frame vibrating with razor tension.

  “Enough, think of your crying mother,” Delih said.

  Laura’s lips pulled back. Her pulse hammered like a war drum.

  But she stopped.

  Not because she wanted to, but because Delih’s grip didn’t budge a millimeter. This pulled back the conditioned rage a little and brought her to a more rational mindset, allowing her to hear Sarah.

  Sarah stumbled forward—tears streaking her face, voice shattering. “Laura. Laura, sweetheart, it’s me. It’s Mom. It’s—”

  Laura blinked.

  Confusion rippled under the violence. The conditioning cracked—just an inch.

  That inch was enough.

  Sarah colpsed to her knees, arms open.

  Slowly—haltingly—Laura moved into them.

  Her cws retracted with a soft metallic wisp.

  Taskmaster stared at the scene and muttered, “Jesus. We don’t have time for this mussy stuff.”

  Delih touched Laura’s hair once, gently. “Shut up. Search the bodies for an elevator keycard.”

  Taskmaster eyed the dead guards. “Why me?”

  Delih shot him a gre that could’ve cut steel.

  He didn’t comment again and rummaged around till he found the highest clearance keycard.

  Meanwhile, in Sublevel 3, Sable and Domino moved quickly and quietly. The interrogation had revealed that Sutter and Rice should be on this floor. However, the exact location was lost to them, so they had to search and drop a few bodies along the way.

  They finally reached the central b doors and found Dr. Martin Sutter surrounded by a ring of guards—ten, maybe twelve. All heavily armed. All terrified.

  Domino whistled low. “Guess somebody doesn’t trust the whole ‘secure facility’ thing.”

  Sable rolled her shoulders, unimpressed. “We do this fast. No theatrics.”

  Domino grinned, already loading a fresh mag. “Sorry to tell you, but I am the theatrics.”

  The firefight erupted instantly.

  Sable advanced with cold efficiency, her submachine gun kicking in controlled bursts—knees, throats, hands. She didn’t waste ammunition. Every shot had intent.

  Domino, meanwhile, seemed to be pirouetting through chaos. She ducked behind a rolling medical stool—just in time for a stray bullet to ricochet off a vent, hit a ceiling pipe, and drop a rain of coont onto three guards who slipped, fell, and dropped their rifles at her feet.

  “Thank you, universe,” she chirped, scooping them up.

  Within moments, all guards were down.

  Sutter trembled, sweat dripping down his temples. He grabbed a fallen guard’s gun and shoved it against Domino’s temple.

  “Stay back!” he screeched at Sable. “I’ll— I’ll shoot her!”

  Domino gnced at the weapon.

  “Will you?”

  CLICK.

  Nothing.

  Sutter stared at the jammed gun, horrified.

  Domino gently removed it from his shaking hand, inspected it, and fired it into the floor.

  A perfect, clean gunshot.

  “Aw. Looks like it just didn’t like you.”

  He screamed something incoherent.

  She shot him in the forehead.

  Sable nodded curtly. “Objective one complete. Now we need to find Dr. Rice.”

  Domino wiped her brow. “You ever wonder if we’re the bad guys?”

  “No,” Sable said. “We’re the smart guys.”

  Back with Team Alpha, Taskmaster and the rest had made it up to Sublevel 4. They wanted to ride the elevator to the ground floor, but someone remotely shut down the elevator so they had to exit at Sublevel 4.

  Taskmaster and Delih knelt beside Sarah and Laura, covering the hallway.

  Delih secured her rifle, exhaled once, and assessed.

  “Alpha team is secure. Currently stuck on Sublevel 4, looking for a way up. Beta Team status?”

  “Beta team?” she radioed.

  Sable’s calm voice crackled through. “Sutter neutralized. Rice confirmed to be on Sublevel 4. Proceed?”

  Delih smirked. “Proceed. We’ll regroup on Sublevel 4.”

  Taskmaster checked his ammo. “Extraction will be difficult. I’m sure that Rice guy is the one who shut down the elevator, and it’ll be hot going after him. The little girl will be fine, but the mom might die.”

  Sarah lifted Laura into her arms. The girl clung to her, face buried in her shoulder. “It’s okay, I’ll be fine. Do what you need to get us out of here.”

  “Fine, stay back. Let’s go,” Delih said.