CHAPTER 12 THE RUN THROUGH HELL
749 Words
The refinery gate clanged behind them like the jaws of a monster trying to snap shut. Jaxon didn’t stop running. He couldn’t. Rafe’s blood was soaking into his shirt, warm and sticky, each step a reminder of how close he was to losing him again.
Lena sprinted beside him, clutching her wounded arm, breaths sharp and fast.
“Left!” she shouted.
Jaxon veered, jumping over a broken pipe, landing on cracked concrete. Gunfire erupted behind them, bullets sparking off metal and asphalt.
“Faster!” Lena yelled.
“I’m carrying a grown man, Lena!” Jaxon barked.
“Try harder!”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
A Syndicate SUV screeched around the corner ahead, headlights flaring through the night.
“Down!” Jaxon roared.
He dropped to one knee, shielding Rafe as the SUV opened fire. Lena slid behind a rusted pillar, pulling her gun.
She fired back three shots, fast and precise.
One hit the driver’s windshield. The SUV swerved violently, collided with a wall, and burst into flames.
“Nice shot!” Jaxon called.
“I work in a garage, remember?” she yelled back. “I know cars.”
He grinned through the fear and adrenaline.
But more engines roared in the distance.
Viktor was unleashing everything.
Jaxon scanned the dark alleys and crumbling industrial skeletons around them. They needed cover now.
“There!” he pointed to an abandoned waste-processing building ahead.
They sprinted inside, the heavy doors groaning shut behind them. The interior was a maze of old conveyor belts, broken cranes, and pools of blackened oil. The shadows were thick enough to hide them if they stayed quiet.
Jaxon laid Rafe on the floor gently. The man’s chest rose and fell in shallow, painful breaths.
Lena knelt beside him. “He needs medical attention.”
“He’ll get it,” Jaxon said. “After we lose them.”
Bootsteps echoed outside.
Flashlights cut across the broken windows.
Lena leaned close, whispering, “They’re sweeping the whole block.”
Jaxon stood, pulling out a knifequiet weapon, his favorite.
“I’m ending this sweep.”
“Jaxonno.”
He turned to her, voice low and fierce. “They’ll find us eventually. Better we take out the first wave before they corner us.”
Lena swallowed hard. “I’m coming with you.”
“No,” Jaxon growled. “Stay with Rafe.”
She opened her mouth to argue but froze.
Rafe groaned.
Both of them turned.
His eyes fluttered open, dazed and full of pain.
“Jaxon…” his weak voice rasped. “You… came back.”
Jaxon knelt, gripping his brother’s shoulder. “I’m not losing you again.”
Rafe gave a faint, broken smile. “Then… finish it. Kill Viktor.”
Jaxon’s chest tightened. “I will.”
Rafe’s eyelids drooped. “Go. I’ll… hold on.”
Jaxon looked at Lena.
She nodded. “Go.”
He straightened and melted into the shadows just as Syndicate soldiers kicked open the side door.
Jaxon became a ghost.
He moved silently, dropping one man with a chokehold, dragging him into a ditch. Another stepped past himJaxon slit his tendon, clamped a hand over his mouth, and dragged him down.
He took guns, ammo, and a radio.
He became a one-man storm in the dark.
By the time the fifth soldier dropped, the others were shouting, panicking.
“He’s in here!”
“Where the hell is he”
“I can’t see”
Jaxon took down two at once, slamming one into a pillar and using another as a shield until bullets cut through him instead.
Then he grabbed a fallen rifle and fired a burst at the last men standing.
Silence.
The building breathed again.
Jaxon returned to Lena and Rafe. She was pressing cloth to his wounds, face tight with worry.
“They’ll send more,” she whispered.
“I know.”
Rafe reached for Jaxon’s wrist, bloodied fingers curling weakly.
“Jax… there’s something you need to know…”
Jaxon leaned close.
Rafe whispered something into his ear
And Jaxon froze.
Eyes wide.
Face draining of color.
“Are you sure?” he whispered.
Rafe nodded slowly, painfully. “He… he planned everything.”
Lena frowned. “What? What’s going on?”
Jaxon stood. Fury burned through him like wildfire.
“Viktor didn’t just take Rafe,” Jaxon said, voice breaking between shock and anger. “He took someone else.”
“Who?” Lena asked.
Jaxon’s jaw clenched.
“My mother
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