The men didn't budge. Even as the sound of the approaching enemy advance grew more urgent. They had him on their sights. They looked ready to shoot him then and there. His mind went into He had no ace up his sleeve, no trick to pull. Oh well. He’d made it as far as he could. He braced himself for the flash of gunfire when a figure emerged from the shadows of the hospital.

  "Finally, we’ve been waiting for a long time."

  The voice belonged to a woman. She stepped forward, her presence immediately commanding. "Tüfekleri indiri?. Ol kütken adamlar?m?zd?n biri." The men obeyed lowering their guns without hesitation, which struck Wyatt as odd. Men with guns in a place like this didn’t usually take orders so easily, specially from women. That was when he took a second, harder look at them. Something was off.

  Yes, they wore the uniforms of local enforcers and police, but— His hand flew to his rifle, aiming at the woman. The men raised their weapons again in response. "Your instincts are good, young pup, but we are not the enemy," the woman said calmly. "Now follow me. The objective you must escort is this way… and we should hurry. The artillery barrage is almost done." Her accent was strange—one he couldn’t place.

  She snapped something in the same foreign tongue from before, and the men lowered their weapons again. Wyatt hesitated for a brief moment before stepping inside. Things had taken a turn for the strange. He cast another glance at the men at the entrance. They were more than what their uniforms suggested. That explained the shelling—if the Russians were willing to level an entire hospital, it meant they knew exactly what they were up against.

  Wyatt scanned the building. It looked abandoned, but his veteran instincts caught the details others might miss—the traps, the kill zones, the claymores, and an unshakable feeling that there was more hidden, something just beyond his perception.

  "Who are you?" he asked the woman.

  She half-turned but kept walking, her slow, deliberate pace grating on his nerves. The Russians were coming. They were wasting time. Under the darkness of her hood, the only feature clearly visible was her deep brown eyes. "It doesn’t matter," she said.

  And she was right. Wyatt had been paid to retrieve the target, nothing more. Yet, something compelled him to ask again, so strongly that he clenched his jaw against it.

  In the silence of the building, she stopped and looked at him, as if studying him.

  "Is there a problem?"

  "No, it's just—nothing. It's nothing," Wyatt muttered. She held his gaze for a moment longer, then turned back toward the corridor.

  "If you’re worried about the advancing force, you need not be," she said. "We’ll take care of it. We have the resources for that. But we don’t have the means to escort the mark outside the zone and to safety. Not with the Guardians at our heels" She resumed her slow advance. Wyatt didn’t press to know who these Guardians were.

  The sound of the Russians approaching unnerved him. Another artillery barrage struck the building, and a deafening crash echoed through the halls. A wall of dust roared down a nearby hallway as they descended a level.

  "Can you just tell me where this person is?" Wyatt snapped. "We’re wasting time!"

  "We have all the time in the world," she retorted.

  Wyatt was sweating profusely. After all that running, rushing, fear, and tension this was torture.

  "Are you always this—" he started, searching for an argument, when a firefight erupted behind them on the ground floor.

  "Calm? Collected? Confident?" she offered. Even though he was walking behind her, he could feel the smirk on her face.

  "Yeah," he muttered. He wanted to argue, but the battle behind them was growing fiercer. Explosions joined the chorus of gunfire.

  "Trust, soldier of fortune," she said. "Son of the Great Plains, trust. We don’t usually act so openly, but right now, needs must. We will do our job. You do yours."

  Wyatt inhaled sharply through his nose but dropped the subject.

  They reached the third sublevel. Despite himself, Wyatt scanned the area. It looked like a normal hospital—sterile white walls, abandoned offices, closed rooms. It even smelled clean. Or at least, as clean as a hospital could be in a city at war. Then he heard it. A soft, unmistakable sound. A baby crying.

  They crossed through a reinforced door, the heavy metal frame scraping slightly against the tiled floor as it swung shut behind them. The air inside was cooler, untouched by the dust and heat of the battle outside. It smelled faintly of antiseptic and something else—something human, raw, and exhausted. It was a consultation room, smaller than he had expected, with a single examination bed pushed against one wall and a few pieces of medical equipment left in haphazard disarray. Dim emergency lights flickered overhead. On the bed lay a woman, blonde and pale, her hollowed cheeks and dark circles betraying the sheer exhaustion gripping her body. She cradled a newborn in her arms, the baby suckling weakly at her breast, oblivious to the chaos outside.

  Across from her, sitting stiffly in a chair, was another woman—dressed like the one who had escorted him. Wyatt noted the similarity immediately. The same dark hood, the same quiet intensity. She was watching him, expectant.

  He exhaled sharply, shifting his weight, and turned his gaze back to the mother and child. This was his escort mission?

  Wyatt pinched the bridge of his nose. “So you got me escorting a baby?” His voice came out flat, disbelief laced with irritation.

  The hooded woman who had led him here merely tilted her head. “And the mother,” she added.

  A heavy silence followed. Outside, another explosion rattled the walls, dust sifting down from the ceiling like fine powder.

  Wyatt exhaled through his nose, jaw tightening. He had done a lot of things for money. Some he was proud of. Others he drank to forget. But this? This was something else entirely.

  “I’m not raising him,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve seen this movie before.”

  To that, the three women laughed. It wasn’t a soft, sentimental laugh. It was sharp, knowing. Almost bitter. Then the moment was shattered. A deafening explosion struck somewhere nearby, shaking the building down to its bones. The overhead lights flickered, and the baby let out a startled cry. Wyatt's instincts screamed at him. He was out of time. Dust filled the air. The scent of burning insulation followed. The war was closing in.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The first woman—the one who had led him down here—frowned, voice sounding constrained by surprise. “They’re impressive. They’re pushing harder and more effectively than we expected.” Wyatt’s frown deepened. Something about that didn’t sit right.

  “You know who I am. You have the resources, the manpower to hold the Russians at bay—yet you don’t know who’s leading the attack?” His tone was edged with disbelief. That was the part they were in the dark about?

  “Irrelevant,” the woman said coolly, dismissing his concerns with a flick of her wrist. “We will hold. Now, please.”

  As if on cue, the woman on the bed—the one who had apparently just given birth—sat up, her exhaustion momentarily forgotten. Without hesitation, she dressed herself in the same style as the others, swift and efficient, movements practiced. Wyatt’s brain barely had time to register what she was doing before she passed the baby into the arms of the woman sitting on the chair in front of the bed. Then she reached for a rifle. And then she marched for the door. Wyatt stared, his brain short-circuiting. Excuse me? What?

  “The hell do you think you’re doing?” he finally managed, blinking in shock.

  “For a mercenary, you ask a lot of questions,” the third woman—who had been silent until now—said, her voice younger than the first two. That wasn’t the part Wyatt had the most trouble with. No, what really bothered him was that he still didn’t know any of their names. And why was that getting under his skin so much? He shook the thought off, refocusing. Mission first. “Alright,” he exhaled. “We’re running out of time. How do we get out of here?”

  “There are maintenance passages all along the second sublevel,” the first woman—whom he had mentally tagged as the old one—replied. “They’ll take you to the sewers. From there, you’ll have a clear route to freedom. Though that will be up to you.”

  Wyatt’s gaze flicked toward the third woman, the one who had been sitting the chair the whole time and now rose to her feet. Cradling the baby and putting him in a special harness. The mother. She wasn’t the one who had been on the bed.

  His brows furrowed. “What about the—?”

  “She is here.” The old one gestured toward the third woman

  “But—?”

  “Mercenary.” The old one cut him off with an impatient look. “You really do question too much.” Her voice softened, but only slightly. “She is the mother. That is what matters.”

  Wyatt turned to the younger woman, giving her a closer look. Now that he was paying attention, he noticed the way she held herself—balanced, coiled. She was fit. Even beneath the loose fabric, he could tell. And her clothes were different. Less like something a civilian would wear. More like something suited for action. There was gear under the more outerlayers of her attire.

  Before he could press further, another explosion rocked the building. This time, the gunfire sounded much closer.

  “No more time! GO!” The old one barked, snapping out a sidearm and turning for the door. For the first time, she had lost her composure.

  Wyatt barely had time to exchange a glance with the younger woman before they both bolted.

  They rushed up the stairs, their boots hammering against the concrete. It was only then—only then—that Wyatt realized just how deep they had gone. If they stalled for even a second longer, they risked being trapped underground for good.

  Like a swarm of insects defending their nest, the defenders—whoever they were—had formed a desperate bulwark at the entrance of the second sublevel, holding the Russians at bay. The sheer level of firepower unleashed both upwards and downwards was staggering. The air was thick with smoke, tracer rounds carving glowing arcs through the dimly lit space. The walls shook from the relentless percussion of rifle fire and the occasional, gut-punching thud of grenades going off.

  Before following the woman, Wyatt risked a glance upward. And something looked back.

  A shape loomed in the chaos, tall, coiled, ready. It wasn’t just a man in combat gear, nor was it some armored behemoth. It was wrong—something too dark, too still in the storm of motion around it. Shadows clung to its form like living things, and for a brief, skin-prickling moment, it locked eyes with him. It had noticed them. Then came the scream. It split through the cacophony of gunfire—a primal, enraged howl that sent a spear of ice straight through Wyatt’s spine. That was not human. That was all it took. Wyatt turned and ran. He ran like hell. He didn’t think, didn’t hesitate—just reached out, grabbed the woman by the nape of her neck, and yanked her along with him. She shrieked in surprise, stumbling forward under his grip.

  “Where to?” he barked.

  “Down the corridor—there’s a maintenance door! Follow the green lines!” she gasped, struggling against his iron grip.

  “Good.” That was all he could spare for words. His lungs burned, but fear gave his legs a strength they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

  They sprinted down the dimly lit hallway, boots hammering against the concrete. Wyatt barely registered the flashing emergency lights overhead, the crumbling ceiling tiles, the distant echoes of shouting and gunfire. He was running on instinct, dragging her along whether she liked it or not.

  The maintenance door came into view, a heavy steel thing marked with faded hazard signs.

  “Wait—wait! It opens outward!” she yelped.

  Wyatt barely stopped in time, slamming to a halt just before he could crash into it. He could feel it now—the creeping, suffocating sensation of being watched. Of something behind them, closing in. He wrenched the door open, shoved her inside, then stepped in himself.

  For a second, just a second, he paused. His breath came fast and shallow. Move.

  He spotted a desk and some other furniture in the dimly lit room—a cluttered office space of some kind, abandoned in haste. Without a second thought, he grabbed whatever he could and threw it against the door, barricading it as best he could.

  “Come on!” he snapped.