Page 2 of Into Hell: Prelude (Holding Cell: Return to the Island)

The girl hissed air between her teeth, a sound like a warning from a feral cat.

But she looked, really looked, at Renley—his empty hands, the slow exhale of his chest, the way he let the forest bugs crawl over his wrist without a flinch.

The boy behind her, maybe her little brother, let his guard down a click, just enough to steal a glance at Alvarez.

Something familiar there: the code of all survivors, all fatherless boys.

One of the kids shuddered, coughed sharply, and spat out a wet phlegm.

Blood flecked his lip, but he wiped it with the back of his hand and didn’t cry.

Alvarez recognized the grit, the stubborn refusal to break even when the world kept pushing, when it was easier to quit than fight. He’d seen it in the mirror once, back when hope was something you rationed like toothpaste in a foster group home, and trust was another word for trap.

Alvarez eased his comm off mute. “James, Athens. You’re on long view.

North ridge, eyes for movement.” He didn’t ask if they’d heard his code—James, with his psycho-calculus brain, always heard everything, and Athens never let a perimeter go soft.

He watched as the sniper and his spotter slid away from the group, moving noiselessly through the underbrush, rifles hugged to their chests.

James’s skull was shaved down to marbled ebony skin, every line of his body lean as a malnourished tiger.

Athens—older, heavier, but meaner—scanned the canopy, his gaze always a half-second ahead of the world.

The kids tracked the movement, eyes wide, muscle memory screaming that men like these didn’t show up to help. Alvarez dropped to a knee, eye-level with the oldest girl. “They’re looking for the men who hurt you. The men with guns and masks. We can stop them, but you have to let us help.”

She weighed this, her knuckles whitening on the rebar. The toddler sagged in her grip, eyelids fluttering. Hunger, or fever—it didn’t matter. They had to move.

From the hill above, a muffled report snapped through the foliage. Hawks’s radio blinked—a soft, distant thump, the kind that only meant silencer. Alvarez froze, one hand up, every muscle in his body prickling. Hawks raised the comm to his lips: “Talk to me, James.”

A measured, almost bored voice came back. “Contact, south face. One. Neutralized. Copy further movement at two-two-zero. Traffickers sweeping the north line. Advise.”

Alvarez didn’t hesitate. “Pin them. Quiet. Athens, call adjustments.” He turned to Renley: “We move the kids. Now.”

Hawks and Gentry took the lead, machete and carbine clearing the undergrowth with surgical efficiency.

The children balked, but Renley and Alvarez herded them upward, the oldest girl finally relinquishing her hold on the rebar, trading it for Alvarez’s battered canteen.

She shoved it at the toddler’s lips, and the little one drank with desperate, shaking gulps.

They cut north through the jagged switchback, the agents fanning out in a moving shield.

The girl—her name, they learned, was Mara—stumbled but didn’t complain, her eyes glued to Alvarez in a challenge as much as a plea.

Renley picked up the littlest, a bundle of damp hair and shock, settling her weight against his chest. She squinted up, judged him, and decided to go limp.

The rest shambled behind, grateful and wary, haunted by the certainty that this was all a trick.

A second pop, closer this time. Hawks spun, weapon up, mouth tight.

“Gentry, on the six,” he snapped. Gentry dropped and rolled, scouring the brush with flat predator eyes.

A black shape tumbled from the ridge above, landing in a heap at the trail’s edge.

Renley, holding the smallest, shielded her face from the sight, but Mara just watched, hunger in her stare.

No tears for the dead, no fear for herself.

Alvarez spotted the telltale white armband— trafficker —and felt a charge of vindication light his spine.

“Go,” he barked. “We’re burning daylight.”

The team surged forward. The world shrank to bootfalls and heartbeats and Mara’s ragged breath beside him.

The jungle was a green furnace closing in, every leaf a blade, every shadow a rifle.

After half a kilometer, the trail split, one branch arcing to the cliffs, the other cutting in toward the heart of the island and the traffickers’ nest. Alvarez checked Renley: “Take Gentry. Get the kids to the extraction point safely. We’ll finish the sweep. ”

Renley’s jaw went tight. “You want backup, Cap?”

“Got it covered.” Alvarez’s voice left no room for debate. “Six minutes, then exfil. No heroics.”

Mara wrapped her arm around the smallest boy, her damp fingers so cold it was like she’d never felt heat in her life.

Alvarez nodded once to Renley, then turned on his heel, Hawks and Athens falling in beside him as they angled back toward the compound coordinates.

The path they took was off-trail, cutting through a tangle of strangler fig and spiny bamboo, the kind of brush that shredded skin and left a man’s face raw with welts.

Hawks muttered under his breath as a branch whipped blood from his cheek, but otherwise, the team kept their silence, senses tuned to the possibility of ambush or movement ahead.

The deeper they pushed, the more the island’s silence thickened.

It was that loaded quiet—too still, too coordinated— like the whole ecosystem held its breath, waiting for violence to pass through.

The air itself was a living thing, pressing damp and insistent against their lungs.

Alvarez’s boots squelched in the loam with each step, and the only other sound was the steady hiss of wind battering the canopy, pushing the stink of ozone and animal shit ahead of it.

They broke the last treeline hard and low, flattening against the ground as the world opened into a clearing.

Hawks, already glassing with the binoculars, grunted, “Jesus. It’s a fortress.

” Alvarez slid up beside him, eyes locked on the compound: a ring of prefab Quonset huts, solar panels, chained dogs, and half a dozen men in mismatched camo with hunting rifles and sidearms. In the center, a new concrete slab, still crusted with the pink of setting agent.

Not the amateur setup they expected—this was a military-grade encampment with a kill radius and a sight line to every approach.

Athens, still watching their six, muttered, “No fucking way we breach that with our team. Even on a good day.”

“Not a breach,” Alvarez said, scanning for weak points. He had thought maybe… but it had been mostly wishful thinking. “Just recon.”

Holland, senior agent, who had kept to the rear till now, moved up beside Alvarez. “We could go in under the cover of night, grab Shafer, and get out. Just a couple of us.”

Alvarez didn’t like the idea of leaving the island without their prize, but surveying the operation now, it felt too risky.

“No,” he murmured, sweeping the monocular over the grounds.

“We can’t identify Shafer by sight. We would be going in after a phantom.

Too risky. We need time to formulate a plan, and we need more bodies on the ground.

” The scope swept over two men who appeared from inside one of the buildings: a middle-aged man and a kid of approximately eighteen or nineteen.

Alvarez squinted, following their movement.

The kid walked with his head partially ducked, hands clasped behind his back, and seemed to listen intently to the older man.

Though not wearing camo as many of the others, the kid was dressed decently and appeared healthy—a stark contrast to the kids they found in the gulch.

“More bodies?” Holland frowned.

Alvarez lowered the monocular and stated bluntly. “We need help. This is too big for us. I don’t just want Shafer.” He glanced toward the compound. “I want this whole fucking thing shut down.”