Page 91 of Mortify

The door's reinforced steel, but Emil's already there with the breaching charges.

"Fire in the hole," he whispers.

The explosion is controlled, precise, and shows that we’re not letting this bastard get away this time.

The Patriot has evaded us for long enough.

The door buckles inward, and we're moving before the smoke clears.

Inside is immediate chaos.

Muzzle flashes in the darkness.

The sharp crack of automatic fire.

"Contact in the front!" I shout, diving left as bullets spark off concrete where I was just standing.

Return fire is instant.

We move in teams, covering each other, clearing corners like we've done a hundred times before.

The truth is, we’re trying to keep this as uniformed as possible, but it’s hard.

You can never anticipate how these attacks will actually go.

The warehouse is a maze of hallways and storage areas, each one potentially hiding shooters.

But they were ready for us.

More ready than expected.

Magnus grunts as a round catches his vest, spinning him back. "Fuck!"

"How many?" Runes demands over the comm.

"Too fucking many," Dag responds, pinned down behind a forklift. "They've got overlapping fields of fire. This is fucking ridiculous."

I peek around my cover, counting the bodies I see immediately.

At least a dozen shooters, well-positioned, using the warehouse's layout to their advantage.

This isn't normal security.

This is an ambush.

"They knew we were coming," I tell Kraken.

"Yeah, no shit." He's reloading, blood dripping from a graze on his cheek. "Question is how."

Dylan.

Has to be.

That fucker's photos from our last raid, his intel gathering.

He warned them.

"We need to smoke ‘em out," Fenrir calls.

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