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CHAPTER 221
Behind the trucks, two tubes lifted toward the sky. A deep, hollow thump rolled across the fog, then another, then another. Natalie flinched. On the camera feed, three small dark shapes arced high above the courtyard, climbing, slowing, then turning downward like falling birds."Incoming!" Okafor's voice screamed through the radio. "Mortars! Take cover!""Hold your posts!" Marco shouted back. "Nobody moves! Nobody moves!"Walking fire. They are bracketing the safe house. Marco's heart hammered against his ribs, but his hand did not shake as it moved to the system interface. One shell to find the range, the second to correct, the third to land."Marco." Natalie's voice was small. "Marco, please.""Trust me." He did not look away from the screen. "Barrier. Maximum power. Now."The system chimed once, a cold clear sound. A shimmering wall of pale blue light bloomed upward from the ground around the safe house, rising ten meters into the air, rippling like a sheet of water hung on nothing
CHAPTER 220
The headlights came out of the fog at six in the morning, a long white line of them bending around the southern curve like the eyes of a single enormous animal.Marco sat in the command room with the black control panel at his elbow and every camera feed glowing on the wall in front of him. Tank stood at his knee, rigid, ears pinned back. Natalie sat on the other side of the table with her coat still buttoned to her chin."Six trucks." Okafor's voice crackled through the radio from the Building 2 rooftop. "Plus the ram. They are coming in slow and loud.""Loud?" Marco leaned toward the speaker."Listen."A voice rolled across the frozen neighborhood from a loudspeaker mounted on the lead vehicle. It was a recorded message, smooth and professional, the kind of voice that sold insurance policies on late night television."Residents of this community. You are surrounded by the forces of the Ironclad Consortium. Surrender your weapons and your supplies, and you will be treated with dignit
CHAPTER 219
Wendy Castellanos stood in the middle of the old parking garage with her sleeves rolled to the elbows and a roll of medical tape hanging from her wrist like a bracelet. Around her, volunteers dragged mattresses across the concrete, stacked clean blankets against the far wall, and set up three long tables under hanging work lamps."Station one is for the walking wounded." Wendy pointed with a pair of scissors. "Station two is for anyone bleeding badly. Station three is for the ones I cannot save. I am sorry to say it that way, but that is what it is.""Station three," a young volunteer repeated, and his face went grey. "You mean the ones who are going to die.""I mean the ones who need comfort and not surgery." Wendy softened her voice but did not look away from him. "If I spend ten minutes on a dying man, three other people bleed out. That is the math of this job. Can you carry a stretcher without crying?"The young man swallowed and straightened his back. "Yes, ma'am.""Good. Then yo
CHAPTER 218
Okafor came through the safe house door on the thirty ninth day with snow melting off his shoulders and a look on his face that made everyone in the kitchen stop talking. He did not sit. He did not take off his gloves. He walked straight to the map on the wall and tapped the black circle drawn around the Ridgemont Galleria."They stopped hiding." Okafor's voice was low and rough. "My scouts watched the mall for two days. No more night movements, no more cover. Colton is gathering everything out in the open, like he wants us to see it.""How many?" Marco asked. Tank lifted his head from the floor and pressed against his boot."Forty trained men in the first wave. Six armored trucks. A mortar team with at least two tubes." Okafor counted each item on his fingers, and his knuckles were white. "And one more thing. A Consortium engineer was seen testing a breaching ram built from a salvaged tow truck. They welded steel plates across the front and reinforced the boom.""A battering ram." De
CHAPTER 217
Wendy opened her eyes and straightened. Her voice came out sharper than anyone expected from someone that tired."Casualties. That is what I keep thinking about." She pushed a strand of hair from her forehead. "Every fight we have had so far, people got hurt in ones and twos. This will be different. If Colton hits us with real force, I could have twenty wounded at once. Maybe more.""What do you need?" Marco asked."A proper triage setup. Three stations, not one. Stretchers, tourniquets, blood clotting packs, and at least six people trained to carry the wounded without dropping them." She looked around the table. "And I need them trained this week, not the day the shooting starts.""Diane, give her whoever she asks for." Marco looked at Diane, who was already writing. "Pull them off scavenging if you have to.""Done." Diane did not hesitate. "I will redo the whole labor schedule tonight."The meeting stretched for three hours. Marco asked questions, Okafor argued, Delgado found holes
CHAPTER 216
Perry arrived at the safe house before sunrise with frost in his beard and a folded report clutched against his chest. He did not sit down. He did not take off his coat. He laid the paper on the kitchen table and stepped back as if it might bite him."Read it." Perry's voice was thin and tight. "Please."Marco picked up the report and read it twice. Tank watched him from the floor, ears forward, sensing the change in the air before anyone spoke."Colton finished his purge." Marco set the paper down slowly. "He found someone to blame for the leaks.""Not Okafor." Perry pushed his taped bifocals up his nose, and his hands were shaking. "A sergeant named Harlan Voss. Caught stealing medical supplies a week ago for a completely unrelated reason. Colton decided he was the traitor, put him in front of the whole mall, and shot him. Case closed.""Closed." Marco repeated the word and tasted how bitter it was. "He found a convenient corpse and declared victory over his own paranoia.""And the
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