Page 70 of Victorious: Part 3
One keeps hauling Valerie, his arm locked around her throat, while the other two pivot in unison and open fire. The hallway explodes into a storm of lead. Each gunshot detonates like thunder trapped in a steel drum, the sound ricocheting off concrete until it feels like the whole corridor is vibrating. Chunks of wall burst apart, spraying grit into my eyes. The stench of burned powder floods my lungs, making it harder to breathe.
I dive hard right, slamming shoulder-first into a rust-streaked wall. Plaster dust sifts down in lazy flakes. Bullets hiss past, so close I can feel the air shift against my cheek.
Montana doesn’t drop. Doesn’t even duck. He fires back with surgical precision, his gun popping in rapid bursts, every shot tearing the air between them, but the rage in his eyes blazes hotter than the muzzle fire.
Dutch and South push forward to cover him, but a fresh wave of Cartel soldiers floods in from an adjoining block. Guards who have picked their side, Cartel loyalists in correctional gear with their pistols already raised. They cut loose immediately, the sound a hammering wall that forces Dutch and South into cover behind a row of overturned cots and busted steel sinks. Sparks jump as rounds chew through metal.
“We’re separating,” I yell into my comms, but all I get is static. Sharp, high-pitched, and unbroken. Either the jammers just came online, or the tunnel team took out the main grid.
Then the world goes white.
A flashbang has ignited somewhere behind me, the shockwave punching through my chest, rattling my molars. My vision sears, then snaps back into place in choppy frames. My ears ring so hard it feels like someone is pressing glass to my skull. Smoke begins curling down from the vents overhead, pale threads at first, then heavier, swelling into clouds that thicken the air until every breath feels like I am pulling knives into my lungs. The fire alarms howl, urgent and useless. No sprinklers. Just another safeguard gutted long before we ever got here.
Then, without warning, an explosion rolls through the floor beneath us, the vibration rattling up my legs and into my spine. Somewhere deeper in the prison, something collapses, the echo carrying through the bones of the place. Dust rains from the ceiling, the prison groaning out a breath.
Gunfire cracks again. Voices shouting in Spanish, sharp and clipped. Boots hammer concrete in a rhythm that suggests reinforcements.
More bodies.
More guns.
More bad news.
In five seconds flat, everything fractures. Our breach, our plan. It all splinters like glass under a boot. Montana is exposedand charging blind. Dutch and South are pinned hard, and I’m standing in a kill box with no clear exit.
I risk a glance back down the hall.
Valerie is still fighting. One of the bastards holding her swings hard, his backhand snapping her head sideways with enough force to make my stomach clench. She staggers but doesn’t fold. She kicks, twists, and drives an elbow into his gut. There’s fury in her eyes, the kind of fire only a mother refusing to die for her child can summon.
Goddamn, she’s still in there.
Montana is close enough now that I see the sweat streaking down his temple, the way his teeth are bared like an animal ready to attack. Suddenly, a stray bullet catches him high in the shoulder, the impact spinning him into the wall, his boots scraping for purchase. I go to grab him, but he pushes off, charging again, sheer will shoving him forward.
If we don’t reach him now, this is going to end in blood.
“Nighthawk!” I bark into my mic, voice raw. “I need that riotnow!”
“Already started. Every block’s blowing,” her voice cuts into static as another explosion rips the air apart. This one’s closer, sharper, shoving heat down the corridor in a wave that sears my skin.
The air feels heavier as the roar of angry, fierce women, who have finally been let free of their cages, screams in the distance.
Montana disappears around a corner, chasing the operatives who have his mother. I try to follow, but more guards pour into the cell block from the administrative wing. They’ve got tactical gear, night vision, and the home-field advantage.
“Ink, Strings, what’s your status?” I call, but nothing other than static buzzes down the line. “Phoenix, Rip, come in?”
More static.
We’re cut off, communications failing, separated from eachother in a hostile facility that’s designed to contain and control. Everything thatcouldgo wrongisgoing wrong, exactly like I feared. But gunfire still blasts from the direction Montana went.
Which means he’s alive, he’s fighting, and he needs backup as I run after him.
I key my mic one more time, hoping someone can hear me through the interference. “All teams, Montana’s separated and pursuing Valerie. I’m going after him. Hold positions and watch for—”
Suddenly, the lights overhead flicker, die, and I skid to a stop. It’s complete darkness engulfing everything. I can’t see shit. My heart races frantically, my breath coming harshly through my nose as a foreboding silence falls over the facility. I jerk my head around, trying to see something, anything, as emergency power kicks in a second later, bathing everything in deep red. The color shifts every smear of blood into something black and bottomless, but in that moment of absolute darkness, I hear something that chills my blood.
Not gunfire.
Not explosions.
