Chapter 144

Chapter 144
Third person's POV

Chaos erupted on the screens. Marcus's men poured from all directions, weapons raised, their heat signatures blooming like angry flowers across Gabriel's monitors. Felix rushed to Marcus's side, voice crackling through the audio. "Sir, the eastern surveillance point was destroyed! We've lost visual on that sector!"

"Damn it!" Marcus cursed. "Get people out there now! Find out who—"

His words died as new heat signatures appeared, a squad of figures bursting from the shadows with weapons raised—but their guns weren't aimed at Quincy. They were aimed at Marcus.

Gabriel leaned forward, eyes narrowing as he watched this betrayal unfold on screen. "What?!" Marcus's voice came through, twisted with disbelief.

At their head was a figure Gabriel's system identified as Sergei, one of Marcus's trusted men. His voice came through Quincy's microphone, cold and mocking. "Sorry, boss. Your time is over."

"You dare betray me?!" Marcus roared. "I gave you money, status, everything—"

"Money?" Sergei laughed coldly. "You think I care about your pocket change? Donovan, you're too arrogant. You thought you controlled everything, but you have nothing. Accounts frozen, weapons network destroyed, allies abandoning you. What do you have left?" He paused. "If you and Quincy both die here tonight, wouldn't that be perfect? Then I can take over everything you built."

"Do it."

Gunfire erupted suddenly, the audio crackling with the shriek of automatic weapons. Gabriel watched the chaos unfold on thermal imaging—Quincy rolling with practiced precision, taking cover behind a pillar as bullets sparked off stone. Marcus returned fire, curses cutting through the din, but Sergei's aim was cold and lethal.

The first bullet struck Marcus's shoulder. Gabriel saw the heat bloom of blood on the thermal display, heard the cry of pain through his earpiece. Two more shots followed in rapid succession—abdomen, thigh. Marcus's gun clattered away as he fell, voice weak and gasping. "You... you'll regret this..."

Then only the dull sound of a body hitting stone.

Gabriel's jaw tightened. Before he could issue orders, the second explosion hit. This shockwave was even more violent, rattling the command vehicle even three kilometers away. On screen, the church's western wall collapsed in a cascade of stone and timber, the ceiling cracking like an eggshell.

"Damn it!" Gabriel surged to his feet. "Move faster! Get in there now!"

"Yes sir!" Aiden barked into his comm. "All units, immediate action! Objective: extract Quincy, capture Marcus alive! Repeat, capture Marcus alive!"

Gabriel's eyes remained locked on the thermal display, watching the building's heat signatures scatter and fall as the structure came apart. Quincy's signal was moving, weaving through chaos toward the northern breach where Aiden's team was fighting their way in. The audio had degraded to static, screams, and intermittent gunfire.

Inside the collapsing church, Quincy could barely hear anything over the ringing in his ears. The second explosion's shockwave had hurled him into a pillar, pain exploding through his chest. He dragged himself upright, vision swimming, forcing his body to move.

Sergei's men and Marcus's remaining loyalists were locked in vicious combat around him, bullets whining through the smoke, muzzle flashes strobing. Stone and timber continued falling with suffocating thuds.

He scanned for exits—the main entrance was blocked by rubble, the side door destroyed. Then he heard a shout cutting through the chaos like a lifeline.

"Quincy!"

Aiden's voice. Quincy turned to see him leading a squad through the northern breach, advancing through bullets and falling debris. Several had fallen, but the rest kept moving, providing continuous covering fire.

"This way!" Aiden shouted.

Quincy gritted his teeth, forcing his legs into motion. He wove between rubble and corpses, bullets screaming past his head, more than once nearly ending him. The distance to Aiden seemed impossibly far, but he was closing it—

The third explosion came from above.

The entire vaulted ceiling came down with an apocalyptic roar. Quincy had time only to glance up before a massive block crashed down, and the world went dark with crushing weight.

"Quincy!" Aiden's cry was swallowed by the greater roar as the church collapsed entirely, reduced to rubble and dust.

In the command vehicle, Gabriel watched Quincy's heat signature vanish beneath debris and thermal bloom. His hands clenched into fists, knuckles bone-white, his entire body rigid as he stared at the screen where his second-in-command had disappeared. The audio was dead. The thermal imaging showed only cooling rubble and fading heat sources.

"Boss." Aiden's voice came through the radio, hoarse with dust and shock. "The church is down. Marcus... Marcus is dead. Quincy's buried. We're digging now."

"Some of Sergei's men tried to escape, but we've already captured them. Sergei himself is missing—no sign of him yet."

Gabriel's voice was cold and hard. "Dig. Send more people."

After a brief pause, his voice came again. "Whatever it takes. Get him out."

Ten minutes later, the dust had finally settled enough to see. Aiden led the survivors in a frantic search through the wreckage. Their faces were covered in dust and blood, hands bleeding from moving stones, desperately seeking any sign of life. Emergency lights cast harsh shadows across the ruins, illuminating the rubble field like a nightmare.

"Found something!" someone shouted.

Aiden rushed over to see Marcus's body pinned beneath massive stone, eyes still open, staring in death. Blood had congealed beneath him, his face frozen in rigor mortis.

"What about Quincy?" Aiden asked urgently, already turning away.

"Still searching!" another man called from deeper in the rubble. "There's blood here—he might be buried deeper!"

Aiden gripped the radio, staring at the mountain of rubble that had swallowed his comrade, feeling utterly powerless. He knew that with each passing minute, Quincy's chances of survival grew slimmer. But he didn't give up.

"Everyone!" he roared, voice carrying across the ruins. "Keep digging! Don't stop!"

The night deepened, but the search continued. Emergency lights cast long shadows across the devastation. People worked with bloodied hands, moving stones one by one, calling Quincy's name into the darkness, receiving only silence in return. The bodies of the dead lay where they'd fallen, forgotten in this desperate race against time.

Three kilometers away, Gabriel sat motionless in the command vehicle, face shrouded in shadow, staring fixedly at the thermal display that showed only cooling rubble. His hands remained clenched into fists, knuckles pale, every line of his body taut with tension. On the monitors, he could see Aiden's team searching frantically through the ruins, their heat signatures bright and jumping against the cold stone, but Quincy's signal remained silent.

The night stretched on, the digging continued, and Gabriel waited in the darkness. Apart from his own breathing and the crackling radio reports repeating over and over, there was nothing: still searching, still nothing, keep digging.