Chapter 2 - THE MIDNIGHT PURSUIT"Stay behind me!" Gabriel barked, firing two rapid, silenced shots through the shattered front window into the swirling fog of the alley.
The muffled thip-thip of the suppressed weapon was answered by the deafening roar of automatic gunfire chewing through the exterior brick wall of the wellness center. Plaster and lead rained down around us, turning the quiet clinic into a war zone. I dropped to my knees, coughing violently as the acrid smoke burned my lungs, my mind screaming with only one terrifying image: Oliver sleeping alone in our apartment three miles away.
"Sebastian, the back exit!" Gabriel yelled over the gunfire, grabbing the handles of the wheelchair with one hand while keeping his weapon leveled at the front door.
"No," Sebastian said, his voice cutting through the chaos with absolute, terrifying authority. He didn't sound like a man who had spent twenty years paralyzed; he sounded like a general ordering a counter-offensive. "They want us to run through the alley. That’s where the kill team is positioned. Gabriel, pop the floor safe behind the reception desk. Get the secondary comms."
I scrambled across the floor on hands and knees, tears blurring my vision. "My apartment! We have to go to my apartment right now!"
"If we go there now, we walk straight into an ambush," Sebastian said, his dark eyes locking onto mine through the haze. He gripped the wheels of his chair, his biceps straining with sudden, visible fury as he lifted his own dead weight three inches off the seat to pivot the chair around a fallen shelf. "Listen to me, Clare. Your son is already being moved."
I froze, terror turning my blood to ice. "What? Who moved him?"
"My head of security, Marcus," Sebastian said grimly. "The moment the school alarm triggered, my protocols activated. Oliver is currently in an armored safehouse ten miles north. But Mercer’s men are tracking our digital footprint. They knew about you the second you pulled that first muscle contraction in my leg."
The front door groaned as heavy tactical boots kicked it off its reinforced hinges. Through the thick smoke, three figures clad in matte-black body armor and night-vision goggles surged into the room, assault rifles raised.
Gabriel didn't hesitate. He kicked a heavy oak treatment table forward, using it as barricade cover while laying down suppressive fire that dropped the lead operative instantly. The remaining two returned fire, riddling the walls with holes, but Gabriel was already grabbing my arm and hauling me toward a concealed steel hatch cut directly into the floor beneath a rolled-up yoga mat.
"Move, Clare! Now!" Gabriel shouted, shoving me down the steep, concrete-lined emergency stairwell.
Sebastian didn't wait for assistance. With a sudden, explosive grunt that seemed to rip straight from his chest, he drove his own hands against the wheelchair wheels, launching himself backward down the concrete ramp just as a barrage of bullets chewed up the wood where his head had been a second before.
We slammed the heavy steel bulkhead door shut from the inside, throwing the locking bolt into place just as heavy fists and rifle butts hammered furiously against the exterior metal.
"Where does this tunnel lead?" I gasped, clutching my chest as I tried to drag air into my smoke-filled lungs.
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"Straight to the underground utility lines beneath Chicago," Sebastian said, wiping soot from his forehead. He looked down at his left leg, his expression a turbulent mix of fury and disbelief. As we descended into the damp darkness, his big toe flexed involuntarily against the footrest once more.
He didn't mention it. Neither did I. But the war had officially begun.
