The silence was the loudest sound I had heard all night.
For five heartbeats, I listened to nothing but the ragged, shallow breathing of the Tinkerer pressed against the greasy bulkhead next to me. Then, the confirmation arrived, colder and sharper than the knife I held in my hand.
Kestrel's comm line remained dead. No static, no hiss, no final breath—just an empty channel where an ambitious, effective mercenary had been moments before. She had slipped hard, and now she was gone.
His voice cut through the airwaves, steady, almost conversational, overriding the panicked chatter of his remaining mercs.
"Control has been restored. Tactics shift. Forget the encirclement. Ghost and the asset are heading southeast. Funnel them to the riverfront. Stage the heavy fire zones at the docks. I want them cut off from the main road, exposed on the water. No negotiation, no hesitation. This ends on the steel, gentlemen."
His tone was worse than any shout; it was the sound of a man who had already won the chess match and was simply moving the rook into position for checkmate.
"They know," I muttered, pulling the Tinkerer tighter against the cover of a rusted freight container.
"Who knows what, Ghost?" the Tinkerer hissed, his voice pitched high, his chest rising and falling like a bellows.
"Deadshot. He's closing the loop. He's run the numbers. We were heading for the chemical refinery—too much cover. He's forcing us toward the dead zone."
We were in the dying heart of the industrial district: a labyrinth of fractured asphalt, skeletal cranes reaching into the smog, and the pervasive reek of motor oil and decay. Every shadow was thick, but the shadows were finite. Deadshot was turning my escape route into a pipeline.
I checked the briefcase—the Collapse Trigger—held securely under my arm, then glanced at the river. The distant water was flat and dark, framed by derelict docks and the massive, rusted skeletons of loading equipment. If we went that way, we'd be trapped between the river and a wall of organized fire.
If we fought here, the Tinkerer would die instantly.
"Move," I ordered, pushing him forward. "Stay low. Follow the line of the containers."
We crept past gutted factories whose shattered windows watched us like hollow eyes, the air tasting metallic and thick with the damp fog that bled from broken cooling pipes. The environment made sound travel poorly, but when we hit the waterfront road, the silence snapped.
The road was split by fissures, concrete slabs tilting into the muddy verge. Ahead, the docks were a dark promise, and then the promise turned to fire.
A high-pitched, electric whine was followed instantly by the deafening roar of mounted turrets opening up.
The first volley didn't hit us, but it shredded the container we had just passed, peeling back the thick steel like tin foil. Shrapnel spun past my face, hot and stinging.
"Go! Left!" I yelled, shoving the Tinkerer toward the meager cover of a stack of weathered pylons.
The muzzle flashes were visible now—two heavy caliber units, staged on high ground along an overpass support, creating an overlapping kill zone exactly where Deadshot had promised. They weren't aiming for surgical hits; they were using volume to clear the ground.
The sound was unbearable, a continuous, tearing shriek of rounds hitting concrete, steel, and water. A wave of pulverized earth and dust washed over us.
Tinkerer, paralyzed, stumbled backward, whimpering, his breathing cutting off entirely. He was a valuable mind but a soft body, utterly useless under real pressure. He nearly stepped out from behind the pylons, instinctively seeking open space over cover.
I didn't waste breath on an order. Dropping the briefcase an inch, I grabbed him by the back of his jacket and slammed him against the concrete pillar. The force knocked the air out of him, but it brought him back to reality.
"Look at me," I snapped, my voice buried under the gunfire. He blinked rapidly, wide-eyed. "You move when I move. You stop when I stop. If you freeze again, I will leave you."
The threat was cold, absolute, and effective. His jaw trembled, but he nodded.
We were pinned. The suppression was perfect. Any attempt to advance along the docks, or retreat the way we came, would result in immediate incineration. Deadshot wasn't relying on marksmen this time; he was relying on physics.
I pressed deeper into the cover, pulling my pack off my shoulder. The Collapse Trigger—the actual Trigger—was safely hidden inside a ballistic liner there. The briefcase was just a decoy, a tactical necessity for the early stages of the extraction.
I realized the answer wasn't to survive the barrage, but to redirect it. Deadshot and his mercs were professionals, but they were working for payment, and the objective—the Trigger—was their currency.
I opened the dummy case. The interior was lined with dense foam, but nestled within the foam padding was a brick of scavenged C4 and a short-range remote detonator, rigged to a dead man's switch. Enough to make a statement, and certainly enough to destroy the case beyond recognition.
"Time for bait," I whispered.
I toggled the charge arming into the short-range frequency. I couldn't risk leaving the detonator in my pack, so I strapped the switch firmly to the bottom of my left wrist, disguised by the cuff of my jacket.
I took a breath, timing the slight stutter in the turret fire as the barrels cycled.
"When this blows, you run toward the water's edge," I instructed the Tinkerer.
He didn't argue. He just looked at the case in my hands, then at the storm of lead tearing apart the dockside.
I swung my arm, launching the briefcase in a flat arc toward the middle of the cracked pier, about twenty meters ahead. It clattered loudly on the steel grate of the access ramp, resting fully exposed under the harsh sodium lights of a derelict crane.
The turret fire stuttered again, the crews catching sight of the objective.
Silence, thicker than the exhaust fumes, settled over the docks.
Then, greed took over.
A fodder merc, heavily armored but lacking discipline, burst from his concealed position behind a stack of rusted piping, sprinting toward the exposed briefcase. He was fast, driven by the thought of the payday, disregarding the tactical risk.
Wait for it.
He reached the case, dropping to one knee, fingers outstretched for the handle.
Now.
I slammed my fist down hard on the switch built into my wrist.
The explosion was immediate and violent. The charge wasn't massive, but its placement was perfect. The merc vanished in a blinding flash of orange and black smoke, vaporized by the blast and the high-density casing shrapnel.
The structural integrity of the old pier, already corroded by decades of water and salt, buckled instantly. A huge section of the wooden walkway peeled away and plunged into the murky water with a deep, echoing splash.
For the mercs, the message was clear: Ghost had just destroyed the prize. Their reaction was tactical madness, pure frustration unleashed. They didn't pause to analyze the decoy.
They unleashed everything.
The mounted turrets, the small arms fire, the occasional grenade launcher thud—it all swung toward the impact site, tearing apart the already damaged pier and the surrounding area. They focused on the smoking crater, convinced that Ghost was either dead or pinned right next to the smoking remains of the objective.
"Move!"
We were moving before the echo of the blast died.
This was not a sprint; this was a dive into a current. We had to cross fifty meters of open, flat ground, exposed to the fringe of the crossfire.
The world had devolved into a sensory attack. The air screamed with ricocheting bullets, the lead rounds striking the remaining steel structures with the sound of snapping chains. Concrete exploded in miniature geysers of dust and gravel.
I kept the Tinkerer slightly ahead of me, using my body as a shield, my eyes scanning for any change in the patterns of fire. I returned fire only when absolutely necessary, focusing a targeted burst on a merc trying to flank us from a position near a defunct fuel pump. One shot, two hits—the merc dropped. I couldn't afford to waste ammunition on suppressive fire. Every round had to count.
The ground seemed to dissolve around our feet. We ran past shattered planking and sparking electrical conduits. It was like running through a river of bullets, the flow so thick you could almost feel the weight of it pressing down.
Tinkerer was screaming, but the ambient noise was so loud I couldn't hear the specifics of his panic. He was just a white-knuckled forward motion, propelled by sheer terror and my lethal presence behind him.
A heavy slug slammed into the edge of a stack of metal beams I was using for cover. The beam rang like a bell, blinding sparks showering us both. I tasted blood—a ricochet had grazed my cheek, a thin, burning line.
We were nearing the end of the docks, nearing the edge of the firing arc, but there was nowhere left to go except the frigid water.
At the terminal edge, chained to the last remaining mooring post, was our impossible salvation.
It was an old, intercity ferry, maybe fifty years retired. Half-sunken, listing badly, its hull rusted orange and green, the superstructure leaning against the pier like a tired corpse.
"The boat!" I shouted, pointing.
Tinkerer nodded jerkily, understanding the desperate logic instantly. Any shell was better than open air.
The gap between the pier and the ferry's rusted deck was perhaps six feet of black, choppy water. The mercs finally realized the crater was empty and began shifting their fire toward our position. The rounds started walking toward us, kicking up massive splashes.
I saw the last chance window.
"Slide!"
I grabbed the Tinkerer by the shoulder, shoving him down and forward. We slid across the ruined dock, gravel tearing the fabric of our clothes, then we pitched out over the gap.
The bullets screamed, inches from my back, sounding like tearing silk.
We tumbled over the railing of the abandoned ferry.
The landing was brutal. We hit the rusted, water-slicked deck, falling hard into the narrow promenade, the air rushing out of my lungs. Then we rolled down a short, open stairway.
The world went from the roaring firestorm outside to the echoing, claustrophobic darkness of the ferry's hull. We landed in bilge water and decades of debris.
The mercs immediately adjusted, ripping into the boat's exposed exterior. The old steel groaned and shrieked as heavy caliber rounds chewed through the hull, sending sprays of rust and water across the dark interior. But the thickness of the metal shell, however corroded, acted as a temporary absorber.
I scrambled up, pulling the Tinkerer, who was coughing hysterically, behind a massive, dormant engine block.
Water dripped everywhere. The metal around us creaked under the shifting weight of the half-sunken vessel. We were in a steel coffin, but for the moment, we were alive.
"Status," I demanded, ignoring the pain in my ribs.
"Alive. Wet. Safe?" Tinkerer managed, his teeth chattering.
"Temporary shelter," I corrected him, checking my weapon and my remaining magazines. "We bought minutes. Not the river. Not the road. We're deep in the trap now."
The gunfire outside eased, replaced by the sound of boots on the splintered dock. The mercs knew we hadn't escaped the area; we had merely sheltered in place. They would breach the hull soon.
I pressed my back against the engine casing, listening to the dripping water and the ominous, heavy footfalls approaching the ramp.
From the outside, across the expanse of the river, Deadshot stood on the elevated platform of a derelict refinery chimney stack. He lowered the heavy rifle he was using to direct his teams, replacing it with a high-powered spotter scope.
Through the scope, the abandoned ferry was pin-sharp. He could see the bullet holes riddling the superstructure, the slight movement of the hull as the two figures settled inside.
He smiled, a cold, thin expression that never reached his eyes.
He lowered the scope, the dark metal of the custom suppressor reflecting the distant, sodium lights. He switched his comms back on, his voice a low vibration that carried no emotion.
"He's cornered now," Deadshot confirmed to the remaining teams. "Nowhere left to run."
The hull of the ferry shuddered as he chambered a fresh, custom-made round.
Click-schick.