Page 278 of Fractured Allegiance

She gives a sharp grin, the kind that shows teeth. “Ask the others.”

She shoves me off and stands, already scanning.

Across the yard, Elias has advanced halfway to the compound door, his reinforcements spread out like a living wall. He moves through bodies like a current—calm, lethal, absolute. Mara’s pinned near a crate, Jax covering her, both firing at shadows I can’t see.

“Silas!” Lydia calls out, pointing toward the right flank. “They’re circling the fuel tanks!”

If they light that, the whole damn place will go up.

I grab her wrist, and start pulling her toward the side passage, cutting between two wrecked trucks. The air thickens with smoke and the taste of metal. I can hear the hiss of leaking fuel, smell it mixing with blood.

Two of Drazen’s men are setting charges: plastic bricks along the tank base, fingers fumbling with detonators. Lydia doesn’t wait. She runs straight for them, sliding on the oil-slick concrete, her knife flashing once, twice. One man falls clutching his gut; the other she grabs by the hair and slams into the metal tank, his skull cracking on impact.

He collapses. She finishes him without hesitation.

I move to the charges, yanking the wires free, tossing the bricks away from the leak. One is half-armed, red-light blinking. I toss it toward the drainage ditch and shoot it mid-air. The explosion is small but bright, enough to light the sky for an instant.

Lydia’s chest rises hard, her face streaked with blood. She wipes it away with the back of her hand, her mouth curved in something that isn’t a smile but close enough to count.

“You always know how to ruin a good detonation,” she says.

“Just trying to keep you alive,” I reply.

“Maybe I like the fire.”

“You’d burn just to watch it dance.”

She shrugs. “Better than dying quietly.”

“Lydia!” Elias’s voice from across the yard—sharp, commanding. “Inside! Now!”

She doesn’t argue. Neither do I.

We run.

The main structure looms ahead, concrete and steel, one side already torn open from the blast of the earlier firefight. The sound changes the moment we cross the threshold—gunfire muffled by walls, replaced with the echo of footsteps and the low groan of an old ventilation system still humming through the dark.

We fan out automatically: Elias takes point, Jax behind him, Lydia beside me. Mara stays near the door, covering the rear.

Drazen’s inside somewhere. I can feel it. The bastard’s always one step deeper than the smoke.

Lydia catches my arm before we turn the corner, her voice a harsh whisper. “Are you ready for this?”

I look at her, and for a moment the world shrinks down to her blood-smeared face, her eyes burning like they’ve seen this ending before.

“Past ready,” I say.

She nods once. “Then let’s go finish it.”

We move.

The lights flicker overhead, shadows shifting like ghosts. Every step echoes. Every corner is a risk. But there’s no turning back. Not tonight. Not after this.

The hallway eats sound.

After the chaos of the yard, the silence inside the compound feels wrong—too complete, too controlled. Every footstep lands heavy, every breath feels stolen. The walls are industrial gray, streaked with oil and soot, lit by the pulse of red emergency lights that flicker in and out.

Elias signals a halt with one sharp motion of his hand. His face is streaked with grime, blood along his temple, but his eyesare clear. Controlled. “Two paths,” he murmurs. “We split. Jax, you’re with Mara. Cover the exit. Ward, Lydia—inside, with me.”