CHAPTER 292: CHAPTER - 292

Chapter - 292

The BANG of Sharon’s 9mm was a deafening, echoing crack in the dead-quiet industrial park, a stark contrast to the polite, muffled pfft of a silencer.

Sparrow One, professional that he was, didn’t get hit. He wasn’t even there. The instant Sharon had raised her weapon, he had dived, using the open door of the wrecked sedan as cover. The laptop was clutched in his left hand, his pistol in his right.

PFFT-PFFT!

Two silenced rounds zipped past Sharon’s head, chipping the brick wall she and Rick were hiding behind. Dust and mortar stung her cheek.

"Raven, we are compromised!" Sparrow One yelled, his voice a tight, professional bark. "Targets are armed and hostile! I’m moving to flank!"

A beat of silence. Then the driver’s side of the sedan exploded outward. Sparrow Two, a mountain of a man who looked even angrier now that he’d had an airbag slam into his face, kicked his way out of the car. He saw Sharon peeking from behind the wall and opened fire.

PFFT-PFFT-PFFT-PFFT!

A spray of 9mm rounds hammered their cover, forcing both her and Rick to duck.

"Great plan, Rambo!" Sharon shrieked, huddling against the crumbling brick. "You built a roadblock, and now we’re in a goddamn shooting gallery! We’re pinned!"

"It stopped the car, didn’t it?" Rick growled back, his eyes scanning the darkness. He was armed with a bent 9-iron. It was like bringing a wiffle bat to a gunfight.

"He’s right!" Rick hissed, grabbing her arm. "He’s flanking! The one with the laptop!"

Sharon risked a look. Sparrow One had vanished into the labyrinth of skeletal, abandoned warehouses, using the sedan’s suppressing fire as cover.

"I’m a little busy, Rick!" Sharon yelled, leaning out and firing two quick shots—BANG! BANG!—at the sedan, forcing Sparrow Two to duck.

Rick made the calculation. The laptop was the mission. Without it, Nadia was dead. 5 Days, 21 Hours...

"Keep him busy!" he yelled.

"Keep him busy? What are you—"

But Rick was already gone. He broke from cover, leaving Sharon completely exposed, and sprinted into the darkness of the nearest warehouse, his golf club held like a weapon. He was a shadow chasing a shadow.

Sharon, now alone, cursed, chambering a new round. "SON OF A BITCH!"

Sparrow Two heard her. He smiled, a bloody, vicious grin. He was dazed from the crash, his shoulder was probably dislocated, but he was a professional. And she was alone. He advanced, firing steadily, forcing her to stay pinned.

Rick plunged into the pitch-black warehouse. It was a cavernous, dead space, smelling of rust, grease, and pigeons. Skeletons of old machinery loomed like dead dinosaurs in the faint moonlight filtering through the broken skylights.

PFFT!

A bullet whined past his ear, ricocheting off an old engine block with a high-pitched scree. Rick dove behind the massive piece of machinery, the metal cold and oily against his cheek. He was pinned.

"Give it up, Smith!" Sparrow One’s voice echoed from a catwalk above. He was smart. He had taken the high ground. "You’re out of your league! You’re just a con artist’s boy-toy, and you’re about to die for a bitch who doesn’t even know your name!"

Rick stayed silent, controlling his breathing. The man was right. He was outgunned. He couldn’t win a gunfight with a golf club. He needed to change the rules. He needed to be smarter. He needed to be faster.

He closed his eyes.

[System: Predator’s Focus Activated. 10 Seconds Remaining.]

The world snapped into a perfect, silent, slow-motion tableau. The sound of dripping water from the ceiling became a slow, heavy plop... plop... The dust motes in the moonlight hung suspended in the air. He saw Sparrow One, moving slowly on the catwalk, scanning the darkness below. He saw the laptop case slung over his shoulder. And he saw a heavy, grease-covered chain hanging from a rusty gantry, just ten feet to his left.

9 Seconds... 8 Seconds...

Rick picked up a broken piece of brick. He didn’t look. He just knew where his target was. In one fluid, super-slow motion, he hurled the brick. It arced through the air, sailing across the warehouse, and clattered against a stack of loose metal barrels on the far side.

7 Seconds... 6 Seconds...

As if in a dream, he watched Sparrow One react to the sound. The man spun, raising his pistol, firing two, silent PFFT-PFFT! shots at the barrels. His back was now to Rick.

5 Seconds...

It was the only opening he’d get. Rick burst from cover, his body a blur of motion. He didn’t run at Sparrow One. He ran for the chain.

4 Seconds... 3 Seconds...

He leaped, his hands grabbing the cold, oily links. His momentum carried him, and he swung in a high, silent arc through the darkness.

2 Seconds... 1 Second...

[System: Predator’s Focus Deactivated.]

The world roared back to life. Rick was airborne, a 200-pound pendulum of violence. Sparrow One heard him, spun around, his eyes wide with shock, but it was too late. Rick was already on him.

He kicked off from the gantry, letting go of the chain and tackling the professional killer. They both went down hard on the metal catwalk, the impact rattling the entire structure. The laptop went skittering away.

Sparrow One was a pro. He rolled, bringing his pistol up. But Rick was a brawler. He brought the 9-iron down, a full-force, two-handed swing.

There was a wet, sickening, unmistakable CRACK of bone. The club connected with Sparrow One’s wrist, shattering it. The pistol clattered uselessly to the floor.

The man let out a high-pitched, agonizing scream. Rick didn’t stop. The follow-up swing, a brutal, downward chop, hit him square in the kneecap. A wet CRUNCH of shattered bone and cartilage. The man’s scream turned into a gurgle as he collapsed.

Rick was on top of him, relentless, his face a mask of cold fury. He was dismantling him.

"Where..." CRACK! (The other knee). "...is..." CRACK! (An elbow). "...Raven?" CRACK! (The other elbow).

Sparrow One was just a broken, mangled heap on the catwalk, screaming and sobbing, his limbs bent at grotesque, unnatural angles. Rick stood over him, breathing hard, the 9-iron dripping.

Meanwhile, back outside, Sharon was in her own personal hell. Sparrow Two, the driver, was advancing, his shots forcing her to stay pinned. She was low on ammo. She had maybe four rounds left.

PFFT! A bullet chipped the brick inches from her face, sending a shard of stone into her cheek, drawing blood.

"Damn it!" she hissed. She was a cop, not a soldier. She was pinned, outgunned, and her backup was a sociopath with a golf club.

Sparrow Two, dazed from the crash but running on pure adrenaline, saw his moment. He charged.

He was a mountain. He burst from behind the sedan, not firing, just running, his face a mask of rage. Sharon had a split second. She aimed, fired—BANG!

—and hit him in the shoulder.

He grunted, a sound like a bear, but it didn’t even slow him down. He was on her in an instant, tackling her with the force of a freight train. They went down, a brutal, rolling, thrashing fight in the gravel and broken glass.

His strength was inhuman. He was on top of her, one hand grabbing her pistol and ripping it from her grasp, the other clamping around her throat, cutting off her air.

"Stupid... bitch..." he gurgled, his face contorting, blood from his shoulder wound dripping onto her. "Badge bunny... thought you could... stop me..."

Sharon’s vision was tunneling. Black spots danced in front of her eyes. She clawed at his hand, but his grip was like iron. She was losing. This was it. She was going to die in a dark lot, choked to death by a man she’d hit with a car.

This wasn’t a clean, procedural arrest. This was an ugly, desperate, street fight. And in an ugly fight, you do ugly things.

She stopped clawing at his hand. With a final, desperate burst of energy, she jammed her thumbs forward and in, burying them deep into his eye sockets.

The sound that came out of him was not human. It was a high-pitched, ungodly shriek of pure, agonizing pain. His grip on her throat vanished as his hands flew to his ruined face.

She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t think. She reacted. Her hand, fumbling in the dark, found one of the jagged, foot-long pieces of rebar they had used for their own roadblock.

She grabbed it, scrambled on top of him, and, with a furious, primal scream, she stabbed him. Not once. She stabbed him in the chest, in the gut, in the neck, again and again and again, long after he had stopped moving, her entire body working to exorcise the terror, the rage, the blood, and the kiss, until she was just a shaking, gasping mess, kneeling over a corpse.

She finally collapsed next to the body, breathing in ragged, hysterical sobs, covered head-to-toe in his blood. She was a cop. And she had just butchered a man with a piece of rebar. She didn’t feel like a cop. She just felt... alive.

She stumbled into the warehouse, her gun raised by pure instinct, her hands shaking so badly she could barely hold it. "Rick?" she called out, her voice a hoarse croak.

She saw him. He was standing on the catwalk, drenched in sweat, a bloody 9-iron in his hand. Below him, a man was mangled and screaming. Rick was covered in blood. She was covered in blood. They just stared at each other for a long, silent second, two absolute bloody messes in a sea of industrial decay.

"He’s... ah... not dead," Rick offered, his voice casual, as if commenting on the weather. He gestured with the club to the screaming man. "Mostly."

Sharon looked at the man’s knees, which were... not knees anymore. They were just bags of wet gravel and broken bone. "Rick... what the hell is wrong with you?"

"He had a gun," Rick said, as if that explained everything. He calmly walked over, picked up the black laptop, and tucked it under his arm. "Got it."

The System Quest timer in his head was still ticking. 5 Days, 20 Hours... The 2-hour location feed had just expired.

He walked down the metal stairs, stepping over the man’s broken pistol. "He’s still alive. What should we do with him?"

Sharon, completely past her moral limit for the day, just let out a long, shaky breath and leaned against the wall. "I don’t care. I’m not... I’m not calling this in. I can’t. My guy... my guy ’fell on some rebar.’ A lot."

"This guy," Rick said, looking down at the whimpering, broken Sparrow One, "is going to ’fall down some stairs’. Repeatedly. If he doesn’t tell me where Nadia is."

The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a weird, giddy, awkward silence. Rick looked at Sharon, who was pale and shaking, a long streak of blood drying in her hair.

"You, uh..." he said, clearing his throat. "You have some... you’ve got some... guy... on your face."

Sharon looked at her own bloody hands, then at Rick’s bloody 9-iron. "So do you, Rick. So do you."

Rick nodded, the grim reality of their situation settling in. He turned his cold, calculating gaze back to the mangled, screaming man on the floor.

"Okay. Round two," he said, hefting the 9-iron. "The 2-hour location feed on you two just ran out. But the one on Nadia... that’s a whole new quest. And I’m guessing it’s gonna be just as... ’intimate’. So, to save me a lot of embarrassment, and to save what’s left of your legs... where are they keeping her?"

Rick spoke, but no one had any idea what he meant.