Extraction Point

  Mission: Survive Again

  N/A

  Heat was everywhere—above me, beneath me, inside my lungs. It pressed against my skin like a living thing. My vision kept breaking into fragments: orange, red, white-hot flashes that blinked in and out like someone was switching the world on and off. The air tasted like metal and smoke. My body registered pain in waves—sharp in some places, dull in others—like my nerves couldn’t agree on what was most urgent.

  Then something tightened around my arm.

  I jolted, breath catching, and forced my eyes open. September was crouched over me, one hand gripping my sleeve to keep me from drifting back into that hazy darkness. Her face was streaked with grime. Blood ran from the side of her head in a thin line, dark against her skin, and her fingers were slick with it too.

  “Connor… Connor…” she wheezed, voice tight like she was holding herself together by sheer discipline.

  My mouth was dry. My tongue felt too big for my throat. “September—you good—?”

  “Yeah,” she said, but the word came out strained. Then her gaze dropped, scanning me quickly, brutally, like an agent checking a body for what still works. “I just hope you are.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re bleeding bad again.”

  I tried to laugh, but it came out as a rough exhale. “I’m… quite the bleeder, I guess…”

  My fingers trembled as I pushed myself up. My Perk answered sluggishly at first—like it had to crawl out of the smoke with me—but it sparked into my muscles and steadied my frame. I shifted toward the shattered window, intent on dragging myself out.

  And then—

  A black boot planted itself in the dirt just outside the glass.

  My entire body locked. Every thought stopped, like my brain had been unplugged. I didn’t even breathe. I couldn’t. My heart jumped so hard it felt like it skipped time.

  “Come on!” a voice snapped nearby. Feminine. Sharp. Commanding. It carried that same poisonous hate I’d heard before—the kind that didn’t just dislike you, but needed you gone. “It’s three cars. What’s the hold up?”

  My blood turned cold.

  “Mari…” I breathed, barely a sound.

  September leaned closer, her mouth near my ear. “She must’ve known,” she whispered, barely moving her lips. “While she was in YMPA, she probably studied every base, every fallback route. We thought we were discreet. They knew we were at Fordross the whole time.”

  I wanted to cry. The urge hit fast—hot behind my eyes—but fear slammed it down. My eyes stayed dry, wide, useless. I stared around the wrecked interior and my stomach dropped.

  The driver and the agent up front were still in their seats.

  Scorched. Motionless.

  No. No, no, no—

  My brain refused to accept it. Like it could bargain reality back into place if it just denied hard enough. The terror came with anger behind it, sick and furious.

  We were so close.

  So close to extraction. So close to leaving this behind, to normal classes, normal days, normal problems. And now we were trapped in a burning skeleton of a vehicle because Mari French couldn’t just leave me alone.

  September’s grip tightened on my arm, anchoring me. “Connor,” she whispered, steadying her voice like she was steadying me. “We crawl out. We move. We get away from the wreck. The transport is still coming. They can still get us.”

  “I’ll go first,” she added.

  “No.” The word came out too quick. Too loud in my head. “No, no— I’ll do it.”

  My hands felt like they had fractures in every finger. I couldn’t tell if it was pain or shock or both. But my Perk surged into my arms and I forced myself through the jagged frame of the window, careful not to shred what little control I had left. My knees hit the ground outside, and I turned immediately to help her.

  September wasn’t as lucky.

  The blast had hit her side of the car harder. Even if the impact point was the front, the shockwave didn’t care about fairness. The fact that we were both breathing at all felt like a mistake the universe would correct any second.

  She slid forward, shoulders shaking, and managed to get her upper body out.

  Then her legs caught, and her breath hitched.

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  I grabbed under her arms and pulled.

  She tumbled out—and the moment she tried to stand, her legs betrayed her. She pitched forward like she’d been unplugged.

  I caught her just before her head could slam the ground.

  “Jesus…” she muttered, jaw clenched. “Okay. Where’s—”

  BOOM.

  Another explosion punched the air. The ground kicked beneath us like it was alive. Everything lurched sideways. I threw my body around September and activated my Perk, bracing as we slammed into rubble.

  Wood cracked under us. Something sharp jabbed my shoulder. Even with the Perk, it hurt—because pain always collects its payment. The world rang like someone had struck a bell inside my skull.

  Dust rained down, thick and choking.

  And then—through the ringing—my radio crackled.

  “Prodigal. Prodigal, do you copy?”

  I coughed, swallowed dust, and fumbled for the radio like it was a lifeline. “Director Chavez?” My voice sounded wrong—hoarse, smaller than it should’ve been.

  “Thank the Lord,” Chavez snapped, relief and panic tangled together. “Listen to me. Multiple reinforcements are moving to you. You need to stay hidden until help arrives. If you can reach the gate, do it. But don’t be stupid about it.”

  “How did the TSA even know?” I demanded, anger leaking into my words. “How did they—”

  “You’re asking the wrong guy,” Chavez shot back. “I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know.”

  September shifted, wincing as she forced herself upright with my help. “Mari’s the reason,” she said into the radio, voice low but sharp. “She was at YMPA long enough to learn our patterns. She knew the nearest base. She watched. She waited. And she hit us when we stopped moving.”

  “Mari’s there?” Chavez’s tone spiked like a siren.

  “Yes,” I muttered. “Boogeywoman’s here.”

  There was a pause. I could picture Chavez pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut, trying not to explode through pure stress.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Get away from the wreck. Now. Team A is rerouting. Additional units are coming from the other side. But you have to stay alive long enough for them to matter. Understood?”

  “Like I don’t know that,” I hissed.

  I clipped the radio back to my waistband. The air outside was chaos—fire chewing through debris, little glowing embers floating through smoke like angry insects. The sky looked unreal, darkened and smeared, like a painting someone had wiped their hand across.

  September swallowed hard and rubbed her left forearm like she was checking if it still belonged to her. “We need cover,” she muttered. “Somewhere they won’t search first.”

  She nodded toward a small one-story house across the road—roof rusted, metal panels dipped and warped, structure leaning like it was tired of existing.

  I scanned the open ground between us and it. “They have to be coming soon, right?” My voice cracked. “Transport was already in the air. It should’ve been here.”

  “Hold on,” September said, and we moved.

  We trotted across uneven terrain, stepping over burning wood and twisted scraps of metal. Heat rose in waves off the ground. I pushed smoke aside with a quick gust of wind—more instinct than strategy—but it fought me. The smoke was heavy, thick with soot, and it crawled back into my lungs the second my focus slipped.

  We reached the house.

  September yanked the door open and we slipped inside, shutting it fast. Darkness swallowed us. The only light came from the orange bloom outside, bleeding through cracks in the boards and broken window edges.

  It smelled like dust and old wood.

  September raised her radio again. “Chavez. Where’s the extraction team? TSA is actively searching.”

  A beat of static.

  “They got hit too,” Chavez replied. “They’re rerouting. Different approach.”

  “What different approach?” I snapped before I could stop myself. “They’re in the sky—how long is it going to be now?”

  “Stand by,” Chavez said, and I heard muffled voices on his end. He was asking someone else. Confirming. Calculating.

  Seconds dragged.

  My heartbeat was too loud.

  Then Chavez came back. “An hour. Possibly.”

  My stomach dropped. “An hour?”

  “It’s bad out there,” Chavez said grimly. “We’re trying to get surveillance over the site. We’ve got a drone inbound to your position.”

  “Can it see through smoke?” I whispered, hating how desperate I sounded.

  “Infrared,” Chavez said quickly. “Connor—stay off open streets. If you see flares or strobes, that’s our guys. Don’t run toward anything you didn’t trigger yourself. Do you understand?”

  Before I could answer—

  September shoved me down so fast my chin bounced off the floor. A jolt of pain flashed through my jaw and I bit back a sound. She pressed a finger to my lips, her whole body going still, like she’d turned to stone.

  Crunch.

  Crunch.

  Crunch.

  Footsteps outside.

  Slow. Controlled. Not frantic like civilians running for exits—these were measured steps. The kind of steps people take when they expect to find someone.

  I grabbed September’s sleeve without thinking, fingers tight enough to crumple fabric. My mind spiraled into a frantic mess of thoughts that didn’t help anything.

  Why couldn’t I have been born normal? Why did my life have to be this? Why did I ever accept any of this? Why—

  “Any sight?” someone asked outside, voice low.

  Another voice answered, closer, sharper. “Talk into the radio.”

  A flashlight beam cut through the darkness like a knife.

  It swept the room—fast at first—spilling across old furniture and forgotten junk. A table. A collapsed chair. A shelf full of dusty glass bottles. The light jittered as the person holding it shifted their stance, searching.

  The beam passed over the table we were hiding behind.

  Then it froze.

  My breath stopped.

  The light stayed there—staring—like it could smell fear.

  My heartbeat hammered so hard it felt like it was shaking my ribs. Sweat rolled down my forehead and I couldn’t wipe it. I didn’t dare move. Even my eyes felt too loud.

  September’s whisper barely reached me. “Just stay quiet.”

  Her eyes were focused—but trembling. She looked cold and controlled on the outside, but the small cracks showed: the slight shake of her breathing, the tension in her jaw, the way her pupils tracked the light like she was mapping the room in her head for escape routes.

  Seconds stretched until they felt like minutes.

  Then the beam snapped away, scanning the far corner again.

  Footsteps moved.

  A radio crackled faintly outside.

  And then the light disappeared entirely.

  The house sank back into darkness.

  I sucked in a tiny breath, almost silent. “We need to move,” I mouthed, and September nodded once.

  We rose carefully, keeping low.

  I reached for the door handle.

  And of course—because my life clearly runs on bad luck and worse timing—when I swung the door open, two figures stood right there.

  Guns up.

  Flashlights aimed.

  “Ay! We found the—”

  September reacted before the sentence could finish.

  A blast of rock exploded forward, ripping up debris and slamming into both of them like a wave. Their bodies snapped backward and crashed into the dirt with shocked yelps.

  “Go!” September shouted.

  We sprinted.

  Out into the ashen streets, past burning rubble and broken metal, running so hard my lungs burned like they were full of sparks. Behind us, voices erupted—shouts, orders, boots pounding.

  And then the gunfire started.

  Bullets snapped through the air in tight, angry bursts.

  We weren’t just running anymore.

  We were being hunted.