Badge of the Death Game

Chapter 057

Sable Plaza in the last days of summer had the unhurried quality of a city that didn't yet know it was about to have a very bad evening. The air was cool, carrying the faint promise of autumn, and the streets around the square were thick with the usual mix of tourists consulting their phones, office workers loosening their ties, and locals who moved through the crowd with the easy confidence of people who belonged there.

Soren moved with them, white coat gone, right hand wrapped around the grip of his Glock 17 beneath his jacket. He kept his pace measured and his eyes moving, scanning doorways, parked cars, the gaps between buildings. He needed a clothing shop. Something with a back exit and enough foot traffic that one more person browsing a rack of jackets wouldn't register on anyone's radar.

He was still running the calculation when a child's voice cut through the ambient noise of the square.

"Mum, look! Birds!"

The woman beside the boy tilted her head back, squinting. "Those aren't birds, sweetheart. I can't see any wings..."

Soren looked up.

Three drones hung in the sky above the plaza, small and dark against the pale clouds, moving in slow, deliberate arcs. Not birds. Not recreational. They were maintaining coverage patterns, overlapping fields of view, the kind of deployment you used when you wanted to track a specific target through a dense urban environment without losing visual.

He was already moving before he'd finished the thought.

The nearest shop had a display of jewelry and accessories visible through its window. He pushed through the door without breaking stride. The interior was small and warmly lit, two female tourists browsing a stand of earrings near the entrance, two shop assistants behind the counter. Soren was already crossing toward the rear of the shop, his hand coming out from under his jacket.

"Sir, you can't go through there—"

The assistant who spoke got as far as the second word before she registered what was in his hand. The color left her face. She didn't finish the sentence.

Soren pushed through the back door and kept moving.

He was barely clear of the doorway when he heard the front entrance open again. He pressed himself flat against the exterior wall, to the left of the door, and waited. The voices inside were low and clipped.

"The man who just came in. Where did he go?"

A pause. Then the soft sound of someone pointing.

The door swung outward.

Soren fired twice before the first man's eyes had time to adjust to the change in light. Both rounds connected at head level. He caught the body before it fully dropped, spinning it in front of him as a shield, and drove three more shots through the torso into the second man emerging behind it. The second man staggered back and went down hard.

Soren let the first body fall, stepped over both of them, and was back in motion.

He didn't make it far. Four more agents in suits were converging from the direction of the plaza's main street, and they had a clear line of sight the moment he cleared the alley mouth. They drew and fired without any preamble whatsoever.

He threw himself sideways into the alley as the rounds cracked past, and took stock. The alley ran parallel to the main street, currently empty of civilians, the last few pedestrians having scattered the moment the shooting started. The sky above was thickening with cloud, a damp heaviness in the air that pressed down on everything. Rain was coming. That was something, at least.

He stripped the suppressor from his Glock and dropped it. The extra weight wasn't worth it anymore. Subtlety had left the building several bodies ago.

He came out of the alley at a run and immediately counted six more agents fanning out from multiple directions, moving to cut off his routes in a coordinated sweep that had clearly been pre-planned. They'd anticipated where he'd emerge.

He shot the closest one before the man had finished raising his weapon. The Glock barked three times, loud and flat in the open air, and the agent dropped. The sound rolled across Sable Plaza like a starting pistol. Every civilian still in the area began screaming and running at once, a sudden chaotic outward surge that briefly disrupted the remaining agents' lines of fire.

Soren used the cover of the crowd's movement to reach a parked sedan, dropping into a crouch behind the engine block. He ran a tactical reload by feel, keeping his eyes up. In his peripheral vision he clocked four more agents spilling out of the alley he'd just vacated, spreading into a firing line.

He went to one knee, both hands on the weapon, and settled into a stable platform.

At range, with a solid base and a clear sight picture, his Marksmanship was a different animal entirely. He worked left to right, smooth and unhurried. Three headshots in quick succession. The fourth agent took two rounds to the chest and folded before he could find cover.

Then the MP7 submachine guns opened up.

The burst came from a vehicle parked along the side street, two large men bailing out of the passenger doors with their weapons already cycling. They swept the remaining MI6 agents in a single coordinated volley, the suppressed chatter of the MP7s cutting through the chaos with brutal efficiency. The entire MI6 team went down in under four seconds.

Soren had already identified them as a separate threat. He was moving the moment their muzzles began to track toward him.

He hit the restaurant's front window at a full sprint, shoulder-first, and came through in a cascade of glass. The owner and a staff member were huddled behind the cash register, arms over their heads. He registered them, dismissed them as non-threats, and found the nearest load-bearing column, pressing his back against it as the MP7 fire tore through what was left of the shopfront.

The two men worked well together. One maintained suppressing fire while the other reloaded, then they swapped roles, a rhythm that was practiced and smooth. When both were loaded, they split, one moving to the wall beside the restaurant's exterior entrance, the other advancing through the ruined shopfront. Flanking him from both sides simultaneously.

One of them called out, his voice carrying easily over the ringing silence between bursts.

"Nighthawk! There's nowhere left to run. Hand over X-017 and we'll let you walk away."

I'd love to, Soren thought. I genuinely have no idea where it is.

He said nothing. He pressed himself against the column, controlled his breathing, and watched the shadows moving at the edges of his vision. He had one chance at this, a narrow window between their advance and his position, and it required them to commit to the final push before he moved.

They committed.

Both men stepped forward in unison, weapons up, closing the last of the distance.

The sound of tires screaming against tarmac hit the street outside like a thunderclap.

Blue lights strobed through the shattered windows. Doors slammed. And then the Aegis Tactical Response Unit arrived in force, a dozen officers stacking up outside with SIG 516 assault rifles already leveled, and they opened fire through the restaurant's facade without any preliminary announcement.

The two men with MP7s scrambled for cover, the initiative ripped away from them in an instant.

Soren moved. He came off the column in a low pivot, brought his Glock up with both hands, and put two fast rounds into the nearer of the two men before the man had finished finding his new position. The man dropped and stayed down.

The second man emptied half a magazine in Soren's direction, but Soren was already behind the column again and the rounds chewed plaster instead of finding him. The man's options were narrowing fast, Aegis pressing from outside, Soren holding the interior angle, nowhere clean to move.

A metallic clatter skittered across the floor. Then two more.

A tear gas grenade and two flashbangs, lobbed in through the windows in quick succession.

The detonations were simultaneous, the concussive force of the flashbangs slamming through the enclosed space like a physical blow. Soren had his eyes shut and his face turned away, but the pressure wave still rattled his teeth. The Aegis team came through the entrance in the smoke, visored and coordinated, and the second gunman took several rounds before he'd managed to raise his weapon again.

Soren was already in the kitchen.

The back corridor was narrow and smelled of cooking oil and damp concrete. The rear door at the far end stood open, a rectangle of grey evening light. He ran for it.

Behind him, boots hit the kitchen floor. Voices called out. The Aegis team had pushed through faster than he'd expected.

The gunfire that followed him out the door was loud and very close.

He made it three steps into the alley before his legs stopped working properly.

The ground came up to meet him and he caught himself on one hand, the other pressing instinctively against his side. He already knew what he'd find. The spreading warmth, the way his shirt had gone heavy and dark, the specific quality of weakness that settled into his limbs like wet concrete.

He'd been hit before. He recognized it.

"Of course," he said quietly, looking down at the blood soaking through his shirt in a spreading stain. The entry point put it somewhere near the kidney. Not immediately fatal, but not something a person walked off either.

The Aegis team came through the door behind him. He heard the commands, the rapid footsteps, the click of weapons being brought to bear.

He had nothing left to work with.

He let it happen.

The darkness came, and then the light, and then the familiar sound of a voice he was already tired of hearing.

"Dr. Hawke, are you all right?"

Right. Again.