Chapter 111 — Echoes in the Wire

Chapter 111 — Echoes in the Wire
Reggy

The house is quiet except for the fans in my rig and the tick of the kitchen clock down the hall. Three monitors, six split screens each—interior cams, rooftop feeds, corridor maps I built from scraps we salvaged on earlier runs. The garden mics are useless now—just screaming, gunfire, and the deep boom that means the gate is no longer a gate.

Okay. Breathe. Do the job.

I sweep the cams again. Hall A—smoke. Hall C—two guards running past, safeties off. Sub-level… there.

“Thomas,” I whisper, even though he can’t hear me yet.

He’s on his knees in a concrete cell, hands chained high, face swollen, lip split. Still breathing. Still angry. I flip open my tool and slide into the building controls we mapped weeks ago. No movie-style magic, no neon code—just a vendor backdoor 
Come on, come on… got you.

The lock outline flips from red to green.

The door clicks.

Thomas looks up, confused for half a heartbeat, then yanks free and surges to his feet like he’s been waiting all day for permission. He checks the hall with a quick glance, then steps out, rolling his wrists, blood streaking down to his knuckles.

“Hold still,” I mutter at the screen. “Let me make this easier.”

I piggyback into the floor panel for Sub-level Two and pop the intercom mic. A soft chime pings above his head.

“Thomas,” I say, voice steady into the headset. “It’s Reggy. You’re clear to move. Two doors left, first stairwell. I’ll steer. Weapons closet at the landing.”

He doesn’t waste breath on questions. He just moves.

I open Door 12 before he reaches it, close 9 behind him to cut off the two guards sprinting back the way he came. He grabs the stair rail, takes the steps three at a time. He comes out with a baton and a short pry bar that might as well be a sword in those hands.

“Next floor up,” I tell him. “Long hall, then right. I’ll kill the lights when they hit you.”

He nods once at the ceiling—our unspoken okay—and shoves through the door.

Two guards round the corner and open fire. I drop the corridor lights to black.  flashes strobe the hall. Thomas is a shadow between them. One crunch, a wheeze, the baton cracks bone. The second tries to backpedal; Thomas drops him with the pry bar’s flat end—clean, fast, not pretty.

“Good,” I breathe, fingers flying. “Hold on—I’m giving you a window.”

I push the house speakers again. “Thomas, listen. Amara’s forty meters ahead on E. Liam’s with her. You need to reach them before those doors seal.”

“Copy,” he grunts—the first word since freedom—and bolts.

I open a side office as he passes; he snatches a roll of gauze without slowing. I lock three guards inside an equipment room they shouldn’t have entered, then trigger a false alarm at the far end of the floor to peel a squad away from Amara’s route.

“Left,” I say. “Now right. Duck.”
He ducks; a lucky shot scorches the wall where his head had been. He slides into the intersection low—baton snapping out, knee, throat, down. Thomas doesn’t gloat. Doesn’t look back. Just moves.

“Three more in E-two,” I warn, watching them stack near the garden exit. “I’ll buy you two seconds.”

I drop sprinklers in E-two—just that zone. The guards curse and shield their eyes. Thomas barrels through the water, baton whistling. One down. Two. The third lunges; Thomas pivots and buries the pry bar in the doorjamb beside the man’s head, pinning his collar. A body shot and he slumps.

“Clear,” he says, breath rough but steady.

I zoom the far camera. Amara’s closer now—hauling Liam down the last corridor toward the outer hall. Blood on her dress, blood on the floor, and a look on her face like fire learning to walk. She’s doing it. She’s actually doing it.

“Twenty meters,” I tell Thomas, opening the next two doors, closing every other one so he gets a straight shot. “Go. I’ve got you.”

Gunfire hammers the wall behind him. I throw opposing locks, sealing the pursuers out. My hands shake, but the cursor doesn’t. I’ve done this a thousand times from a thousand chairs; none of them mattered like this.

“Ten meters,” I say. “On your right—”

Thomas is already there. He grabs a dropped pistol, checks the chamber, and keeps moving. There’s a new cut along his cheek; he doesn’t notice.

“Reggy,” he pants, “status on the garden?”

“War,” I answer. “Ricky and Clause are holding the line. I’ll keep the gates open as long as I can. Focus on E.”

“Copy.”

The next corner opens into the hall that leads to the room Amara just left. And there she is—dragging Liam, jaw tight, gun up, eyes bright with that too-calm fury past fear. Liam’s gray-faced, fighting to keep weight off her. Stubborn, even bleeding out. 
Thomas stops for a single breath. Relief. Fury. Relief again.

“Little devil!” His voice carries.

Amara’s head snaps up. For the first time since I found her feed, something like hope flickers in her eyes.

“Thomas!” she calls back, and my monitors sharpen.

Movement behind her—two more guards spilling in from a side door I missed.

“Behind you!” I bark, slamming that door back shut. It catches one guard’s arm in the frame. The second squeezes through and raises his weapon—

Thomas doesn’t hesitate. Three strides, pistol barks twice. The second guard drops. The first howls; Thomas ends it with two swings of the baton.

I kill power to E’s last bank so the blast doors won’t cycle. I loop the nearest camera so anyone in Killian’s control room sees an empty hall. I open an elevator at the far end as a decoy and lock the stairwell the moment a squad commits to it.

“Thomas,” I say, “you’ve got thirty seconds of clean.”

He closes the distance in ten.

Up close, I see what cameras flatten—the out-of-control bleed on Liam’s thigh, the way Amara’s hand shakes only when she’s not pointing the gun, the grime on all of them, the kind that doesn’t wash off.

Thomas holsters the pistol, drops the baton, and takes Liam’s other side 
“I’ve got him,” he tells her, voice gentler than the last five minutes deserve. “I’ve got him. You cover.”

Amara nods, presses her shoulder under Liam’s arm, eyes the hall like it owes her a debt. “Exit?”

“Straight,” I say, unlocking the final door. “I’ll keep it green. Ricky and Clause are two minutes out if I can peel them a hole.”

“Do it,” Thomas says. To Amara: “Breathe, little devil. Almost there.”

She huffs a laugh that isn’t one. “Don’t call me little.”

“Too late,” he says—and somehow that sounds like home.

The last door flashes red.

No. No, no—

A failsafe. Manual deadbolt from the security office. I pull the bypass; it laughs in my face. Fine. Different route.

“Left detour,” I say. “Maintenance corridor. Two more doors. I can make that one sing.”

“Trusting you,” Thomas replies, already pivoting them toward it.

I open, lock, open, lock. The building fights me like it knows me, but it’s still a machine—and I’m meaner. The last maintenance door rolls up slow. Too slow.

“Come on,” I whisper. “Come on.”

Footsteps behind them. Shouts. The thud of another squad turning the corner.

Thomas looks back once, then lowers his center of gravity. He shifts Liam higher and meets Amara’s eyes.

“Run when it opens,” he says.

“You’ll hold when we’re all through,” she snaps, already braced under Liam’s weight.

The door shudders halfway, then up, up—

“Go!” I yell
They move.

Amara first, dragging Liam with the kind of strength you only get from vows made in the dark. Thomas last, pivoting on a heel to shield them.

The door clears the track. I drop it the second his boot crosses steel. The pursuing squad slams into it and bounces off with a chorus of curses.

Silence floods my office like cool water. I sit back for the first time in twenty minutes and only then notice my hands shaking hard enough to rattle the house.

“Home stretch,” I say into the mic, swallowing. “Straight line from here. I’ll keep the lights green.”

On the far-right monitor—the one I didn’t realize I’d zoomed in on—Amara’s face turns toward Thomas for half a second. She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t have to.

“Come on,” Thomas murmurs to Liam, voice low, steady. “Stay with us, brother.”

“Keep him talking,” I say, because it’s the only medical advice I’ve got. “Two more doors.”

The last feed catches them hitting the outer hall—Amara, gun up; Liam, pale but alive; Thomas, broad as the doorway, moving like a wall with a heartbeat.

I open the final exit.

They cross it.

And for one breath—just one—the house is quiet again.