Chapter 18 - The Siege of the Sanctuary
The freezing mist swallowed the entire north wing, dropping the ambient temperature to near freezing in a matter of seconds.
Vanguard’s elite operators moved cautiously through the thick fog, completely blind to thermal imaging.
Emily crawled silently along the ceiling ductwork, moving like a venomous spider above her highly trained prey.
She had spent years analyzing the tactical playbooks of these black-ops teams, and she knew exactly how they would breach the corridor.
Below her, a four-man fireteam stacked up against the heavy oak doors leading to the nursery wing.
The point man raised a breaching charge, preparing to blow the doors off their heavy steel hinges.
Emily silently dropped a small, highly compressed tear gas canister directly into the center of their tight formation.
The canister detonated with a sharp hiss, instantly flooding their immediate area with blinding, suffocating chemicals.
The operators choked and stumbled, their flawless coordination entirely shattered in an instant.
Michael stepped out from the shadows at the end of the hallway, firing his assault rifle with terrifying, ruthless precision.
He dropped three of the operators before they could even raise their weapons in defense.
The fourth operator blindly fired a wild burst, clipping Michael’s shoulder and sending him crashing against the wall.
Emily dropped from the ceiling duct directly onto the remaining operator, driving her combat knife deep into his neck.
The man collapsed silently into the fog, completely neutralized.
Emily rushed to Michael, pulling him into a defensive alcove and quickly checking his bleeding shoulder.
"It is a through-and-through, it missed the artery," she assessed quickly, pressing a trauma pad hard against the wound.
"They are not going to stop, there are at least thirty more men breaching the lower levels," Michael winced through the pain.
"We cannot hold the nursery, we have to move Noah to the underground server vault," Emily decided.
Michael nodded, leading the way into the heavily reinforced nursery where Noah was crying loudly in his crib.
He scooped the terrified baby into his good arm, holding him tightly against his chest.
They moved rapidly back into the freezing, foggy hallways, fighting a brutal, running gun battle toward the basement elevators.
Emily covered their retreat, laying down suppressing fire and using every tactical trick she had ever learned.
She triggered automated security turrets, dropped remote explosives, and turned the beautiful sanctuary into a lethal maze.
They finally reached the heavy steel doors of the underground server vault, breathing heavily and completely out of ammunition.
Michael placed his bloodied hand on the biometric scanner, and the massive doors hissed open.
They rushed inside, but the feeling of safety was instantly shattered into a million pieces.
Standing directly in the center of the humming servers, completely bypassing the biometric locks, was a man in an impeccable gray suit.
He held a suppressed pistol aimed directly at Michael’s chest.
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It was Vanguard.
And he looked exactly, undeniably, like Michael.
