Chapter 31 - The Crimson Triangle
The crimson laser bore into the bridge of Naomi’s nose, hot and unblinking through the sheeting downpour.
Ethan’s Colt .45 wavered, just an inch lower than her forehead, his eyes wild with grief and betrayal. He saw the red dot glowing between her brows, yet his own finger remained hooked around the curved steel trigger. "Answer me, Naomi!" he shouted over the howling wind. "Is my sister's life locked in your skull?!"
"Ethan, down!" Naomi roared, her voice stripping away any lingering trace of the quiet maid he had known for three years.
Before Ethan could process the command, Naomi lunged forward. She didn’t slap his gun away; she slammed her shoulder straight into his chest, carrying both of them down into the saturated peat and mud. A microsecond later, a supersonic round ripped through the exact volume of air her head had occupied, snapping the sound barrier with a concussive *crack* that rattled their teeth. The round cratered into the masonry of the ruined estate behind them, detonating stone like dynamite.
"Cleaners!" Naomi hissed into his ear, dragging Ethan by the collar of his ruined bespoke jacket behind the stone balustrade of the shattered terrace. "Division executioners! They don't want you, Ethan. They want the neural drive inside my temple—and they will burn this county to ash to scrape it out of my skull!"
Ethan choked on rainwater and mud, coughing violently as more high-caliber rounds chewed the stone balustrade into blinding sprays of gravel. "Then give it to them! Give them whatever they want so I can get Clara back!"
"If they get it, Clara dies anyway. You die. Everyone who ever heard my real name dies," Naomi spat, her fingers working with frightening speed as she unslung the tactical rifle she had recovered from the Iron Guard corpse. She checked the chamber by touch in the pitch-black rain. "The Division doesn't trade hostages. Sterling took Clara to London as bait to draw me out. The Division is here to execute us both so neither Sterling nor the world ever hears the data I carry."
Across the flooded lawn, three figures stepped through the treeline. They wore matte-black composite armor, completely devoid of insignia, moving with the terrifying, rhythmic glide of military-grade cyborgs or heavily conditioned specters. Their multi-spectral optics glowed dull amber through the mist.
"Operative 09," a flat, digitized voice projected through a tactical loudhailer, carrying effortlessly through the storm. "Surrender the core. Your bio-signature has been decrypted. Terminal sanction is authorized."
Ethan stared in horror as the balustrade above him was systematically chipped away by silent, tungsten-core penetrators. "We can't fight an army!"
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"We aren't fighting an army," Naomi whispered, her gray eyes turning colder than the rain running down her pale cheeks. "We're surviving five minutes. Keep your head down, Ethan. If you peek, your family's line ends tonight."
With unnatural grace, she rolled out from behind cover into the open mud, leveling her rifle before her knees even touched the earth.
