Chapter 28 CHAPTER 26: INTO THE BADLANDS
"This is a mistake.” Jax said from his perch by the open back of the military jeep. I knew he meant it with how low and serious his voice was.
Bro really didn't want to be here.
“It’s an opportunity,” I replied, watching as he checked the magazine of his rifle for the third time.
“It’s a suicide note.”
We parked on the ragged edge of the city, where the asphalt crumbled into gravel and the streetlights were nothing more than rusted, bent skeletons.
Beyond the bridge lay the mad lands. It was a place where the Council’s laws were a joke and the police didn't even bother to send a siren. It was a graveyard for the living. A ghetto of dilapidated high-rises and lawless gangs.
I turned to look at him fully. The dim dashboard light carved hard lines across his face, but it couldn’t hide the fear in his eyes.
“Viper doesn’t send people here unless she’s ready to lose them,” he continued. “This isn’t a test. It’s a filter.”
“Then I won’t be filtered out.”
His jaw tightened. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
I reached out and placed my hand over his, stilling his nervous movements.
He didn't pull his hand away. Instead, he turned his palm up and laced his fingers through mine, squeezing hard. For a moment, the air between us was thick, charged with the kind of raw emotion that I was sure Sienna usually strangled before it could breathe.
“I can handle this,” I said quietly.
“I know you can fight,” he snapped, pulling his hand away. “That’s not the point.
This place doesn’t follow rules. There’s no retaliation structure or any sort of protection. You bleed here, you just… bleed.”
The honesty in that statement did something sharp to my chest.
“I need this,” I told him.
He studied me as if trying to measure how much of this was ambition and how much was obsession.
“You know you don’t have to prove anything,” he said.
“Yes, I do.”
Because if I didn’t rise fast enough, the shadow above Kanan would move faster.
Jax exhaled slowly, killed the engine and stepped out.
“Man you've been weird ever since you woke up,” he muttered to himself under his breath. He turned to me, his eyes stern. “But if this turns bad, we leave. Ledger or no ledger.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
We crossed the bridge, officially entering the madland and the transition was immediate.
The air turned heavy with the smell of rot and acrid smoke. There were no people on the streets, only shadows that skittered away from our flashlight beams.
We reached the warehouse district about twenty minutes later. It was a maze of rusted corrugated metal and rotting timber.
"She said the ledger is in the central office upstairs," I whispered, gesturing toward a building that looked like it was being held together by rust and prayer.
We moved in, but the silence was a lie. The moment we stepped into the main floor, a flare hissed into the air, bathing the warehouse in a blinding, artificial red light.
"Ambush!" Jax roared.
Bullets suddenly slammed into the wooden crates around us. I dove for cover behind a stack of steel drums, my heart in my throat. I fired back, the kick of my pistol jarring my arm. In the chaos and the smoke, I saw Jax get pulled back by a group of men in ragged leather. I tried to reach for him, but a volley of fire forced me to roll the opposite way.
"Jax!" I screamed, but the sound of an explosion drowned me out.
I was separated. I was alone in the dark, and I could hear the heavy thud of boots closing in on my position.
"There she is! The curse of the Valentis!"
A man with a jagged scar across his face stepped into the light. He was flanked by four others, all of them wearing the faded crest of Reid's family. They didn't look like professional soldiers; they looked like men fueled by a decade of bitterness.
"You killed our prince, Siren," the leader spat, raising a rusted iron pipe. "If not for you, the Harbingers wouldn't have had a reason to put him down. You’re the reason the Valenti name is a joke now."
"Jesus Christ," I hissed, rolling my eyes. "Don't you guys have something else to do than chase me around?" I got into my fighting stance, my fingers tightening around the grip of my knife. "You guys must be very jobless how that your gang is failing. I think you should ficus your strength on that instead of the this cat and mouse game you are playing with me."
The first one lunged. I ducked under his swing, my blade finding the soft tissue of his thigh. He went down with a grunt, but the others were on me in an instant. It was a flurry of raw, ugly violence. I used a crate to launch myself into a spinning kick, my boot connecting with a man's jaw with a sickening crack. I spun, slashing the forearm of another, but I was outnumbered.
I stumbled as a sharp, searing pain suddenly tore through my shoulder.
"Fuck!" I gasped, stumbling back.
A bullet had torn through the muscle of my left shoulder. It wasn't fatal, but my arm went numb immediately, the heat of the blood soaking through my tactical suit.
I threw a smoke pellet, the grey cloud blooming instantly, and used the distraction to scramble into a narrow crawlspace beneath the office stairs.
I sat there in the dark, my breath coming in jagged hitches. I could hear them frantically searching, their voices echoing in the vast space.
"Find her! She can't have gone far! I want her head for the Don!"
The footsteps grew closer. I gripped my knife with my good hand, preparing for a final stand. I was scared. Truly, deeply scared.
Then sharp, rhythmic crack of a high-powered rifle echoed through the warehouse. One by one, I heard the screams of the men outside. I heard bodies hitting the floor with heavy, wet thuds.
The remaining men seemed to have frozen.
“Jesus! it’s him!” one shouted, panic replacing rage instantly.
"Oh God! It’s him! Run!
They scattered, running in different directions.
Three more precise rifle shots echoed through the yard.
Then heavy silence.
"Siiiireeen," A deep male voice sang out like we were playing hide and seek. " You can come out now. You are safe."
I bit the inside of my cheek, staying silent. I didn't like the disturbing, manic edge the voice held.
I stayed in the dark, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“I know where you’re hiding,” he continued lazily. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now.”
To prove his point, a bullet hissed through the air, striking the wooden beam just inches above my head. I flinched as the splinters showered my hair.
I slowly crawled out from the darkness, my hand clutching my blood-soaked shoulder.
"There you are."
Standing in the center of the warehouse was a tall, muscular man dressed entirely in black. A full-face mask concealed everything but his eyes.
Surprisingly, his boots and clothes were expensive designers but what caught my eye was the patch on the sleeve of his jacket: the flaming skull of a Harbinger executive.