The stairwell became a kill zone.
Gunfire hammered through the narrow space, bullets tearing into concrete and steel, sending clouds of dust and debris billowing into the red-lit darkness. The team had taken cover behind a barricade of fallen lockers and office furniture, their weapons barking in controlled bursts, their faces grim with the cold focus of people who had been fighting for their lives for so long that it had become second nature. The air was thick with cordite and the sharp, metallic smell of fresh blood.
Caleb pressed himself against the wall at the corner of the stairwell, his knife in one hand and a stolen pistol in the other. He could hear the Prime's operatives below—dozens of them, by the sound of it—their boots pounding on the concrete, their voices shouting orders i
