Chapter 25: The Bleeding Lie
The severed strip of duct tape hung from Santiago’s knife for a second before fluttering to the wet grate.
Beneath it, the wound was a different story entirely. A raw, angry graze streaked across Sam’s thigh, about eight inches long. It bled, but it was a superficial weeping, not the pulsing flow of a through-and-through. The blood soaking her jeans was mostly smeared, artistically applied from the smaller, genuine wound higher up.
The silence in the junction was absolute, broken only by the distant, eternal drip of water.
Sam didn’t move. She lay in Frankie’s arms, her face a mask of pain that suddenly looked as thin as paper. She met Cynna’s eyes over Frankie’s shoulder, and in that green gaze was no surprise, only a cold, evaluative clarity.
Frankie didn’t put her down. He didn’t yell. He just stood there, holding her, his expression emptying of all its easy warmth. It was like watching a house go dark, window by window.
“Talk,” he said. The word was quiet, flat, devoid of any inflection.
“Frankie—” Sam began, her voice slipping back into that pained waver.
“Shut up.” It was Cynna who spoke, pushing off from the pipe she leaned against. She limped forward, each step a controlled stab of agony, until she was right beside them. She looked at the graze, then up at Sam’s face. “The blood pattern was wrong. Too much saturation below the supposed exit wound. The pressure you were applying was off-axis for the trajectory of a shot from that angle. And your breathing.” Cynna’s voice was clinical, a psychologist dissecting a lie. “You were modulating it. Timing the hitches for maximum effect.”
Benny lowered his shotgun, his broad face a storm of betrayal. “You were playin’ us? While Will’s girl is in a tank?”
“It’s not what you think,” Sam said, but the performance was gone. Her voice was just tired.
“Then what is it?” Frankie asked. He finally moved, bending at the knees to set her on her feet. He didn’t drop her, but the care was gone. It was a functional placement. His hands came away from her back slick with her blood—the real blood from her arm, the fake blood from her leg. He stared at his red palms.
Sam sagged against the turbine housing, her leg buckling slightly from the real injury. “The contractors. They weren’t here to extract Petrosian. They were here to sanitize him. The call about the breach? That was my doing. I triggered a secondary alarm on a delay, one I planted weeks ago. It was the only distraction I could think of.”
“Bullshit,” Santiago spat, not sheathing his knife. “You sold us out for your sister. Now you’re a hero?”
“I am trying to keep us all alive!” Sam snapped, a flash of her real frustration breaking through. “They shot me, Fish. They were going to kill me. I needed a reason for you to not leave me behind in that tunnel. A gunshot wound you couldn’t fix? You’d have to carry me. You’d have to keep me.” She looked at Frankie, her eyes pleading for a understanding that wasn’t coming. “I know how you work. Liability gets left. A wounded friend gets carried. I made myself a wounded friend.”
Frankie wiped his hands slowly on his trousers, leaving dark streaks. “You are a liability, Sam. You have been since the moment you led us here under false pretenses. This?” He gestured to her leg. “This just makes you a lying liability.”
“They have my sister!” Her shout echoed in the metal chamber, raw and desperate. “They showed me video. She’s in a place like this, Frankie.Not a lab. A… a holding facility. I had to give them something. You were the something. But I never wanted you dead. I rigged the alarm. I created chaos so we could all get out. Don’t you see? I’m trying to fix it!”
Cynna laughed, a harsh, pained sound. “By manipulating him. As usual.”
“And you?” Sam turned her fury on Cynna. “The cool, collected psychologist. The real agent. You have a counter-agent? For Addison? You planted a cure in a system that’s about to eat itself? That’s not a solution. That’s a fucking academic exercise so you can feel like you did something noble while we all die down here!”
Cynna took a step forward, ignoring the fire in her side. “It’s more than you’ve done.”
“Enough.” Will’s voice cut through the rising tension. He wasn’t looking at any of them. He was staring down the dark tunnel, the one that led back toward the sealed silo. His hands hung loose at his sides, but they were trembling.“Just… enough. She’s in a tube. She’s alone. And we’re arguing about… about this?” He made a vague, disgusted gesture that encompassed all of them.“Frankie. What’s the play?”
It was the only question that mattered. It hauled them all back from the brink of their personal fractures.
Frankie breathed out, a long, steadying stream. He looked at Sam, at her exposed deception. He looked at Cynna, swaying on her feet, holding the secret of a possible future. He looked at Benny and Santiago, his brothers, waiting for an order. He looked at Petrosian, gagged and bound on the floor, the architect of all of it.
“The play doesn’t change,” Frankie said, his voice regaining a semblance of its usual command, though it was colder now. “We reach the service shaft. We go up. Sam, you walk. You can walk on that. So you will. You fall behind, you’re left. That’s the new deal. No more carrying.”
Sam nodded, once, her jaw tight. She ripped a cleaner strip from her undershirt and tied it around her thigh with brutal efficiency, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
“Cynna, you’re with Benny. Santiago, you’ve still got point. Will, you’re with me on Petrosian.” Frankie scooped up the scientist by his bound arms, hauling him upright. “We move fast. The chaos she bought us won’t last forever.”
They moved. The dynamic had shifted, turned jagged and mistrustful. Benny supported Cynna, his bulk a steady crutch. Santiago vanished ahead into the gloom, a ghost in the shadows. Will fell in beside Frankie, his movements robotic.
And Sam walked alone, a limp in her step that was now mostly real, trailing a few feet behind the group, a space of cold air and silent recrimination surrounding her.
The tunnel began to slope upwards. The air grew slightly colder, drier. The flickering lights became more sporadic, leaving long stretches of darkness they navigated with weapon lights cutting swaths through the black. The sound of their breathing, their footsteps, the rustle of gear, was the only orchestra.
Santiago’s voice crackled in their earpieces, low and calm. “Reach a junction. Left goes deeper into the geothermal vents. Right ascends, steel rung ladder in the wall. Gate at the top is chained, but it’s old. I can crack it.”
“Go right,” Frankie responded.
They found him at the base of a vertical shaft. Rusted iron rungs, bolted into the concrete, vanished upwards into darkness. A stale, metallic breeze drifted down. Fifty feet up, a dim, grey light filtered around the edges of a heavy circular hatch.
“Blast door,” Santiago said, already shimmying up the first few rungs. “Old school. Chain looks rusted through. Give me sixty seconds.”
He climbed, swift and silent. The rest of them clustered at the bottom, a pocket of vulnerability. Benny kept his light and shotgun aimed back the way they’d come. Cynna leaned against the wall, her eyes closed, conserving strength. Will stared blankly at the floor.
Sam stood apart, checking the knot on her bandage. She spoke without looking up, her voice barely audible. “The cure. Is it real?”
Cynna opened her eyes. “Yes.”
“Can you replicate it?”
“Not without the original base matrix. Which is on Petrosian’s wiped server, and now, on mine. Somewhere else.” Cynna’s tone was factual, devoid of its earlier heat.
“So it’s useless,” Sam said.
“It’s hope,” Cynna corrected softly. “It’s a maybe. Sometimes that’s all you get.”
Above them, metal shrieked in protest. A loud clang echoed down the shaft, followed by a wash of cooler, cleaner air. Santiago’s face appeared, haloed by weak daylight. “Clear!Come on up! It’s a maintenance bay. Looks abandoned.”
The climb was a fresh agony. Cynna went next, with Benny boosting her onto the first rung and climbing close behind, a safety net. Will gestured for Frankie to go with Petrosian. Frankie slung the gagged scientist over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and began the arduous climb, the man’s dead weight making every rung a tremor in his shoulders.
Sam waited until last. She looked up the shaft, then back down the dark tunnel they’d come from. For a moment, her expression was unguarded—a profound, weary loneliness. Then she set her jaw, gripped a rung, and began to haul herself up.
One by one, they spilled out onto the grease-stained concrete floor of an ancient vehicle bay. High, grime-clouded windows let in the milky light of an overcast day. Abandoned tools lay rusting on workbenches. The huge rolling doors were sealed with decades of grime. It was desolate, but it was topside. The oppressive weight of the mountain was gone.
Santiago had the only door—a reinforced personnel entrance—cracked open, peering out. “Loading area.Deserted. No signs of the contractors. We’re at the edge of the complex. I see… nothing. Just tarmac and mountains.”
Frankie dumped Petrosian on the floor, breathing hard. They’d done it. They were out.
The relief was physical, a collective unwinding of shoulders. Benny helped Cynna to a stack of old tires, where she sagged down. Will walked to a window, staring out at the grey sky as if he’d never seen it before.
Sam leaned against a workbench, her head down.
That’s when the radio in Frankie’s pocket, scavenged from a guard days ago, crackled to life.
The voice was digitally distorted, but the message was crystal clear.
“Asset retrieval team to command. Package is not at primary extraction point. Repeat, package is not at Point Alpha. Proceeding to contingency. Initiating Protocol Clean Sweep. Thermal signatures show multiple hostiles in sub-level beta and the old vehicle bay. Authorization granted. Burn it down.”
Frankie’s blood went cold.
Outside, through the filthy windows, they all saw it at the same time. A dot in the grey sky, growing larger, the familiar, deadly thump-thump-thump of rotor blades beginning to vibrate through the floor.
It wasn’t a transport helicopter.
It was a sleek, black attack bird, its stubby wings already laden with munitions.
Santiago slammed the personnel door shut and threw the heavy bolt. “They’re not extracting,” he said, his voice grim. “They’re sterilizing.”
Frankie looked around the bay. At his wounded friend, his broken brother, the traitor, the monster, and the woman he maybe loved. They were in a concrete box with one door and no back exit.
The thumping of the rotors grew to a deafening roar, shaking dust from the rafters.
“Find cover!” Frankie yelled, his voice cutting through the noise. “Now!”
But there was nowhere to go.
The thunder of the helicopter was a physical pressure, vibrating in their teeth. Through the filthy windows, they could see it hanging there, a predatory insect, its chin-mounted gun swiveling to find the bay.
Frankie’s mind raced over the geometry of the room—workbenches, stacks of tires, the bulk of a dead forklift. Nothing that would stop a 20mm round.
Then Cynna moved.
It wasn’t the pained, limping shuffle from the tunnel. It was a sudden, vicious burst of energy, all focused intent. She lunged forward, her hand closing in the fabric of Petrosian’s stained lab coat. She hauled him up like a ragdoll and shoved him stumbling toward the center of the bay, directly in front of the largest window.
Her hands flew up, fingers sharp in the dusty air. She signed to Frankie, her movements urgent and clear: Take them. To the right.Side door. Cover.
Frankie’s eyes snapped to the right wall. There was a smaller, metal-clad door, almost hidden behind a rolling tool cart. It led outside, but into a narrow alley between buildings—partial cover from the chopper’s direct line of fire.
He gave a sharp nod, already turning to grab Will’s arm. “Benny, Santiago, on me! Right side, now!”
Sam hesitated, her eyes locked on Cynna. “What is she doing?”
Cynna didn’t look back. She kept her gaze on the hovering helicopter as she tore open her own jacket.
The lining was packed with dull, putty-gray bricks. Wires snaked between them in a complex web, leading to a single compact trigger device clenched in her left hand. Her thumb rested lightly on the guarded button.
She opened her coat wide, facing the window, a grotesque exhibit.
The smile that spread across her face was all teeth, devoid of warmth. She spoke, her voice not a shout, but something that carried, icy and precise, through the rotor wash. “Surprise, asshole.”
She tilted her head, addressing the invisible crew in the black helicopter. “Hey, Bryant. I know it’s you. I read the mission roster. You always did like the dramatic fly-by.”
Frankie had everyone moving, shoving them toward the side door. He glanced back, his blood running cold. “Cynna!”
She ignored him, her eyes fixed on the cockpit. “Fucking let them go.Right now. Or else I blow your entire dossier to the world. Every black receipt, every buried op, every photo from Caracas. You know I’ve got it. The real files, not the sanitized ones.”
The helicopter seemed to waver. The gun’s targeting laser, a malignant red dot, had been painting the concrete near Petrosian’s feet.It froze.
“She’s bluffing!” Sam hissed, pressed against the wall by the side door. “She’d die too.”
“She isn’t,” Frankie said, the realization a cold knot in his stomach. He knew that look on her face. It was the same one she’d had when she’d sealed the lab. It was the price, already paid.
Cynna’s voice dropped, somehow more carrying. “You have ten seconds to pivot and fly away. Nine. I blow the mountain, the base, and every secret in it into the atmosphere.Eight. The subsequent data dump goes to six major news outlets and three adversarial governments. Seven.”
Petrosian, standing paralyzed before her, began to whimper through his gag.“Six. Five.”
The helicopter’s engine pitch changed. The nose dipped slightly.
“Four.”
With a final, frustrated roar of turbines, the black bird banked hard and fast, peeling away from the bay. The thunder of its retreat echoed between the buildings, fading into a heavy, ringing silence.
Dust motes swirled in the sudden quiet.
Cynna slowly lowered her arms, letting her jacket fall closed. Her hand, still on the trigger, trembled just once before she willed it still. She didn’t look at the others. She stared at the empty sky where the helicopter had been, her face pale and empty.
Frankie let go of Will’s arm and walked toward her. The sound of his boots on the concrete was unbearably loud.
He stopped in front of her, his eyes searching hers. He didn’t touch the jacket. He looked at the trigger in her hand, then back at her face. “Caracas?”
“Later,” she whispered, the word cracking. "It... it's not pretty."
A new sound cut the silence—not rotors, but the grinding of heavy tires on gravel. Multiple vehicles, approaching fast from the access road.
Santiago, peering through a crack in the side door, swore. “Two SUVs. Blacked out. Rolling up hot.”
Cynna took a shaky breath, her performance crumbling to reveal the exhausted, wounded woman beneath. She met Frankie’s gaze. “They’ll send ground teams next. Bryant’s just buying time to regroup.”
Frankie nodded, the operational switch in his brain flipping. The emotional quicksand was for later. He turned to the group, his voice low and steady. “We’re not done. We go out the side, into the alley. We find wheels, or we hit the tree line and disappear. Now.”
He didn’t wait for agreement. He shoved the side door open, revealing the narrow, shadowed gap between buildings. “Benny, you’ve got Cynna. Santiago, take point. Will, with me on Petrosian.”
Sam moved to follow, but Frankie stopped her with a look. “You’re in the middle. Where I can see you.”
The hurt that flashed in her eyes was genuine this time. She said nothing, just ducked into the alley after Santiago.
Frankie looked back at Cynna, who was fastening her jacket with fumbling fingers, concealing the terrible fabric of her resolve. He reached out, not for the trigger, but for her hand. He squeezed it once, hard.
“Don’t push that button yet,” he said, his voice rough.
A ghost of her real smile touched her lips. “No promises, Cat.”
Then they were running, a wounded, broken chain of survivors, swallowed by the dark alley as the sound of slamming car doors echoed behind them.
The alley was a canyon of stained concrete and dripping pipes, so narrow their shoulders brushed the walls. The smell of diesel and rot was a physical presence. Santiago moved like a ghost ahead, his knife now replaced by a silenced pistol held low. Behind them, a voice shouted, crisp and military-clean. "Spread out! Check the bay first!"
Frankie shoved Petrosian forward, the man's whimpers muffled by the gag. "Move, or I leave you for them," he breathed, the words carrying no heat, only simple fact.
Cynna’s breathing was a ragged scrape beside Benny, each step an exercise in swallowed agony. She clutched her jacket closed with a white-knuckled grip. The weight of the bricks against her ribs was a constant, grim reminder.
"Left at the end," Santiago whispered back, voice barely carrying. "Parking lot.Junkers."
They burst out of the alley into a cracked asphalt sea littered with dead vehicles. A graveyard of old base trucks and sedans, some on blocks, sat under a bleached sky. The helicopter was a fading throb to the east. The slamming doors came from the other side of the vehicle bay they'd just fled.
"Which one?" Will asked, his voice hollow. He was looking at the cars but seeing Addison in her tube.
"That one," Sam said, pointing to a rust-pocked panel van. "No windows in the back.Old diesel. Harder to track electronically."
Santiago was already at the driver’s door, smashing the window with the butt of his pistol. The crack of glass was alarmingly loud. "Fish, a little help!"
Frankie shoved Petrosian toward Benny and joined Santiago, reaching into the jagged frame to pop the lock. The hinges screamed as Santiago yanked the door open. "Clear the cab, check for keys."
Frankie’s hand found a sun-bleached visor. A set of keys clattered to the floor mat."Got 'em."
From the bay, a sharp call."Footprints! Heading east!"
Benny half-lifted Cynna into the van’s rear, where she collapsed onto the bare metal floor. Will climbed in after, mechanically pulling her further from the door. Sam followed, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
Frankie hauled the violently resisting Petrosian up and in. "Benny, keep him quiet."
Benny’s massive hand clamped over the scientist’s mouth, pinning him to the floor. Petrosian’s eyes bulged.
Santiago slid into the driver’s seat, jamming the key into the ignition. Frankie took shotgun, his window down, his own pistol now tracking the alley mouth they’d just exited.
The engine turned over with a reluctant, grinding groan.Once. Twice.
"Come on, you ugly piece of shit," Santiago muttered, pumping the gas.
A figure emerged from the alley—black tactical gear, rifle raised. He saw them.
The engine roared to life in a cloud of black smoke.
"Go!"Frankie yelled.
Santiago slammed the van into reverse, jerking them backward as the first bullets sparked off the asphalt where they’d been. Frankie leaned out the window, squeezed off three suppressed rounds. Not to hit.To suppress. The figure dove for cover.
The van slewed around, gears grinding, and Santiago shoved it into drive. They lurched forward, weaving between carcasses of old machinery. Two more shooters appeared, aiming.
A bullet punched through the rear door with a dull thwack.
Cynna flinched, curling tighter around the payload in her jacket. Will stared at the new hole, a sliver of daylight piercing the dim interior. Sam braced herself against a wall, her face pale.
Frankie kept firing, methodically, forcing the pursuers to keep their heads down. "Where's the gate, Santiago?"
"South fence! Saw it on the satellite overlay. Should be—there!"
A chain-link fence topped with sagging razor wire appeared ahead. A simple padlock held a gate closed.
"We're not stopping," Santiago said, his foot pressing the accelerator to the floor.
The van hit the gate with a deafening shriek of tearing metal. The chain snapped. The fence folded, raking the sides of the van with a nails-on-chalkboard scream. They were through, bouncing onto a potholed service road that cut into a sparse pine forest.
Silence, broken only by the van’s labored engine and the wind whistling through the bullet hole.
Frankie watched the rearview. No immediate pursuit. He sank back into his seat, the adrenaline leaving a metallic taste in his mouth."Everyone breathing?"
A low groan from the back. "Barely," Cynna managed.
Benny eased his hand from Petrosian’s mouth. The man gasped for air, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face.
They drove for ten minutes, the road deteriorating into little more than a dirt track. The only sounds were the van’s protests and the ragged rhythm of their breathing.
Sam finally spoke, her voice quiet against the road noise."Where are we going?"
"Anywhere that's not there," Santiago said, his eyes constantly flicking to the mirrors.
"We need a plan," Frankie said. He looked back into the dim hold. Will was catatonic. Cynna was fading, her head lolling against the wall. Petrosian was a shaking lump. Benny’s face was etched with deep concern. Sam watched him, waiting.
He met her gaze. "The cure on your server, Cynna. You said ‘somewhere else.’"
Cynna’s eyelids fluttered open. She touched her temple, her fingers coming away smeared with dried blood and sweat. "Dead drop. A PO box in Tehachapi. Mailed it to myself before we even went in. Just in case."
A fragile, desperate hope flickered in Will’s eyes for the first time. "A cure?"
"A recipe," Cynna corrected softly, wincing. "The base matrix. Need a lab to synthesize it. A proper one."
Frankie nodded, turning back to the windshield. The trees were thickening. They had a direction. They had a possible, fragile key. And they had each other, a damaged, distrustful, bleeding knot of people.
But they were out.
For now.
He watched the dirt road unravel ahead of them, a brown ribbon leading into the uncertain grey of the mountains. The van chugged on, a slow, steady exhalation carrying them away from the nightmare, and into the next one.