Chapter 75 Crossfire
(Amani POV)
The forest is a wound that won’t stop bleeding.
Every step I take through Ember Pass feels carved out of smoke and rage. The rain comes down in slow sheets, turning the ground into a graveyard of mud and footprints. Behind me, the echoes of gunfire fade into the kind of silence that only means reload or retreat.
Zuri’s ahead, barely upright, blood painting her sleeve. I see her silhouette through the fog — steady, defiant, half-alive and still fighting like she owes the world nothing. She shouldn’t be moving this fast with what she’s lost. But that’s Zuri Moretti: she runs even when the world ends.
I reach her as she stumbles behind a boulder. Her knife’s slick with someone else’s blood, her eyes sharp and wild. She sees me, and for a heartbeat, the whole war narrows to that single breath.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” she says.
“Been hearing that my whole life.” I drop beside her, check her arm. The wound’s bad but not deep enough to stop her heart. My fingers come away red. “You need stitches.”
She laughs, hoarse and broken. “You offering medical or moral support?”
“Neither. Get moving.”
We start down the slope again. The trees grow thinner, replaced by stone ridges and twisted roots. The path splits ahead — left toward the southern flats, right toward the cliffs. I know the terrain; I studied this valley months before we blew Moretti’s cover. He’s using the pass as a funnel. If we choose wrong, we’ll walk right into a kill zone.
I kneel, drag my hand through the mud. Bootprints everywhere. Too many.
Zuri crouches beside me. “They’re surrounding us, aren’t they?”
I nod once. “Two squads. One from the ridge, one from the south. They’ll try to box us in.”
She exhales, slow. “Then we make our own way out.”
“That’s not how traps work, Zuri.”
Her eyes flick to mine — that old fire, the one that makes me forget reason. “Then we break the rules.”
There’s a sound behind us — low, rhythmic. The rumble of an approaching vehicle. I drag her behind cover, press a hand to her mouth. Headlights slice through the trees, sweeping the slope. Two armored transports grind up the trail, the Moretti crest stamped across their sides.
Zuri’s body goes rigid under my hand. I can feel her heartbeat against my palm — too fast, too strong.
“They’re not hunting,” she whispers when I release her. “They’re closing.”
Exactly.
The forest’s angles have changed. He’s not chasing us anymore — he’s herding. Forcing us toward something.
I look down the ridge, past the broken line of trees. A faint light pulses through the fog — a beacon, faint but steady. Old Syndicate tech. Ghost’s people use those for extractions.
Hope. Or bait.
Zuri sees it too. “That’s Ghost’s signal,” she says. “It has to be.”
“It’s too clean,” I mutter. “No static, no interference.”
She looks at me, desperate. “It’s a chance.”
“It’s a trap.”
“Then it’s his trap.” Her voice cracks on the word. “And I’m done running from him.”
Before I can stop her, she’s moving — sliding down the slope, mud splashing under her boots. I curse and follow, pain blooming in my shoulder like fire. The gunfire above starts again, cutting through the rain. Bullets whine past. One grazes my arm; another tears bark inches from her head.
We make the clearing in seconds that feel like hours. The beacon blinks on a crate half-buried in rock — same design as the one she found in the cave. And etched into the metal again, carved deep enough to gleam even in the rain: Keep breathing.
Her breath catches. Mine too.
“Is it him?” she whispers.
I don’t answer. I move to the crate, pry the lid open. Inside: ammo, gauze, a comm link still active. The line hums, weak but live.
I hit the receiver. “Ghost, this is Kane. If you’re reading me—”
A voice cuts through, smooth as smoke. “Amani.”
Not Ghost.
Antonio Moretti.
The sound of his voice turns the rain cold.
“I have to hand it to you,” he says, calm, indulgent. “You’ve been harder to kill than I expected.”
Zuri steps closer, fury building under her skin. “Where are you?”
He laughs softly. “Closer than you think. You’re in my house, figlia mia. Every path here ends where I say it does.”
I rip the comm wire from the unit. “He’s tracking the signal. Move!”
We run — no time for direction, no plan beyond survival. The forest explodes around us as mortars hit the ridge. Fire and dirt swallow the ground. I grab her arm, drag her through the smoke, both of us half-blind. The world becomes flashes of orange and white, deafening noise, and the taste of iron.
She trips; I pull her up. A branch snaps inches from her head. Every sound, every breath is war.
We break through the treeline into an open gulch — flat, exposed, and already crawling with Moretti’s men. Floodlights cut the dark.
Zuri stops cold. “He’s been waiting for this.”
I raise the rifle, eyes darting for an opening. “Then we don’t give him what he wants.”
“Which is what?”
I look at her — her soaked hair plastered to her face, eyes blazing through pain and fear and defiance — and realize the answer’s been the same since the day I met her.
“Us apart.”
She grips the knife tighter. “Then we stay together.”
The first wave hits — gunfire pouring down from the ridges. We move fast, weaving through debris, ducking under fallen trunks. I fire back, taking two down before my rifle jams. Zuri grabs a fallen sidearm, fires clean and fast. She moves like she’s been waiting her whole life to fight this man.
Smoke and ash fill the gulch. The men keep coming, a tide of faceless armor.
Zuri shouts over the noise. “There’s no way out!”
“There’s always a way out!”
I catch sight of an old supply tunnel half-collapsed in the cliff face. I grab her wrist. “There!”
We sprint — through fire, through bullets, through everything he built to keep us apart. The air burns, the world shakes, but we don’t stop.
By the time we reach the tunnel’s mouth, half the mountain’s on fire. I shove her inside first, cover fire behind us.
“Go!” I yell.
She hesitates — eyes locking on mine for a single heartbeat too long. “Amani—”
“Run!”
She goes. I follow, firing until the magazine clicks empty. The tunnel walls close in — dark, narrow, alive with echoes of pursuit.
We keep moving until the light disappears and all that’s left is the sound of our breathing.
Zuri stops, hand on the wall, chest heaving. “He’s not going to stop, is he?”
“No,” I say quietly. “But neither are we.”
The rain filters through cracks above us — thin silver threads falling into darkness.
Somewhere behind, Moretti’s men regroup. Somewhere ahead, the world narrows toward the only thing left: escape or death.
Either way, this pass will burn before it belongs to him again.