Page 33 of Victorious: Part 3

“Can you get to ’em?” I demand, ducking as another barrage of bullets slams into our cover.

“Not unless I want my head turned into a canoe. It’s a fucking meat grinder out here.”

“Shit,” I growl. The corridor to the office is a death zone, choked with gunfire, smoke, and stealthy Cartel soldiers that move too fast to track.

Lift groans again, and Vibe curses under his breath as the pressure bandage saturates. Around us, crates explode into splinters, bullets tearing through every damn thing around us. The air tastes like copper and ash and is bitter on my tongue.

Still, we fight.

No giving in.

No surrender.

Just the unspoken understanding that brothers who bleed together, fight together.

I slam a fresh magazine into my weapon, crack my neck, and grab the radio.

I’ve had just about enough.

It’s time to end this shitshow.

“Pyro, I need you to create a distraction. Somethin’ big. I want their attention off that office.Now!”I call into the radio.

“Copy that, Pres. How big we talkin’?” Pyro yells through the static, the sound of gunfire still thundering in the background.

“Big enough to scare the devil, small enough we don’t bury ourselves alive.”

“Copy. Gimme a minute.”

Trax and Ace lay down suppressing fire while Surge tries to get an angle on the catwalk as shells clatter to the floor like hail. I shift position, step out, and nail one of the bastards charging from the side. He goes down screaming, his gun skittering across the floor, and I don’t hesitate, unloading another bullet straight into his head.

Then another pops up behind a crate and fires. A round slams into the metal beside my head, rattling my damn teeth. I spin, dodging another bullet before I squeeze the trigger. He jerks back with the hit, his hand reaches for his chest as he gasps, then he drops, blood pooling beneath him on the concrete.

“Vibe, stay with Lift,” I yell before I take another shot, forcing a Cartel bastard to duck behind a stack of barrels. “We need every second Pyro can buy us.”

The tension stretches like a taut wire.

Too tight, too thin.

I stick my head out, only to be met with a Cartel soldier. He slams his fist straight into my nose, disorientating me. He brings his gun up, aiming it right at my chest, a sinister smirk crossing his face as I grit my teeth, trying to find my footing. “You think you can outsmart the Cartel?” he growls.

I tilt my head, about to reply, when suddenly a shockwave tears through the warehouse like a goddamn bomb dropped from heaven. Pyro’s explosion goes off with so much force that fire erupts in a blinding flash, the floor lurches beneath us, and we’re all thrown off our feet.

My ears ring with a high-pitched whine, and dust and smoke flood the air in a suffocating wave. I slam into the concrete, coughing while debris rains down all around me. A section of the ceiling collapses, and I roll just in time, narrowly missing me, but it falls completely on top of the soldier who was about to shoot me, flattening him like a pancake. Blood seeps out from under the slab while I grimace and slowly sit up.

Light flickers as overhead bulbs shatter. Emergency sprinklers kick in, spraying down water that hisses and steams where it meets flame.

“Fuck! Everyone good?” Trax shouts from somewhere nearby.

“Still breathing,” Surge chokes out, his voice raw.

My ears are ringing, but I push to my feet, my shoulderthrobbing. I think some of the ceiling clipped it on the way down, exacerbating my bullet wound.

But the explosion did its job.

The Cartel is disoriented.

Now’s our shot.