Safety off—one more round chambered.
The few remaining enforcers under Longchar's command cleared the crowd, sealed the theater, and cordoned off the empty stage. They no longer rushed in blindly to search; instead, they braced rifles behind seat backs, forming a defensive line.
On the second-floor corridor, John Hastings crouched behind the wall. He reached through the debris beside him and picked up a shard of glass. After the prolonged strain of precision shooting, his arms burned with exhaustion.
Cold air seeped through his sweat-soaked shirtfront; his tie lay draped over the Benelli M4 pressed against his chest. Beneath the pure-black tails of his coat, a belt of red 12-gauge shells was cinched tight around his waist.
He pulled one free and seated it on the side saddle as an emergency spare.
A spotlight swept overhead. He squinted against it. A sharp, searing jolt of neural pain stabbed from the base of his skull; for an instant his vision flickered with faint chromatic fringing and ghost images trailing at the edges of everything.
"Deep breath, John."
A tactical glove that had no right to be there gripped his shoulder. The familiar voice rasped right beside his ear—yet it carried no echo, no trace of the room's acoustics.
John turned his head. "White Beard" Jason, geared in full urban combat kit, leaned into the low wall beside him in cover. His face was grim, breathing heavy, a breaching pry bar still strapped to the back of his plate carrier.
"They'll have the exits locked down. Only way out is straight through."
Jason racked the charging handle on his short-barreled carbine and let out a dry chuckle. John knew precisely what the phantom was driving at—stealing a dead man's voice to cut through the haze.
"Wouldn't be the first time."
In the stuttering frames of his double vision, Gray Horse Task Force Captain John Hastings answered. He closed his hand around the forend of the semi-auto shotgun and extended it—five gloved fingers open.
"And clearly not the last."
Jason drew a smoke grenade from his belt and placed it in John's palm. The blinding light swept past again. In his black formal wear, John closed his fist around the solid weight of the grenade. Beside him, the space stood empty.
"Of course."
He muttered to himself and yanked the pin.
Inside the theater, the enforcers held their breath.
A metallic clink echoed—then a smoke grenade trailing dense black smoke arced out from the east corridor. Twelve rifles came up as one and opened fire, chewing through the low wall, kicking up sprays of plaster and dust.
Heads snapped around. From behind the curtain, two more smoke grenades rolled onto center stage, hissing thick fog that rolled across the floor in seconds. Sensing the trap, the enforcers swung their muzzles toward the spreading darkness and hammered out suppressive fire.
Bullets tore straight through the churning smoke, yet the haze seemed to swallow their paths and close behind them. The cloud slowly began to thin.
"Turn on the exhaust fans!" Vitomira Longchar screamed from the far side of the darkened stage. A bodyguard still held her arm; her legs had buckled, but she refused to lean on anyone, trembling harder under the adrenaline.
The dozen enforcers emptied their magazines. They drew pistols from beneath jackets and edged cautiously into the half-black, half-gray murk, ears straining for any sound of movement.
"He's—"
The man who stepped into the smoke never finished. A dry, bony snap of twisting vertebrae cracked from within. His terrified face jerked half a turn under a fleeting hand and he crumpled sideways.
"He's here!"
Another enforcer latched onto a faint silhouette in the gloom and, in pure panic, fired twice. The shape vanished. He rushed forward—only to roll back his own dead comrade.
His world suddenly darkened. He started to turn, but a hard, hollow muzzle was already pressed into his back.
Deep in the smoke, a muzzle flash split the murk—then another, and another, and another.
Strobing light carved his outline in jagged bursts, his steps uneven yet blindingly fast.
He tucked the stock into his armpit and moved with savage, unpredictable close-quarters fury: lightning pivots, smoke-masked spins, shots too quick to counter. The lethal spread of 12-gauge buckshot devoured the enforcers whole.
Within the curtain of smoke, John Hastings bounded, sidestepped, fired, and dropped the next man. After dumping half the tube, he dropped to a crouch, swept his coat aside, and palmed two shells at once. Shouldering the stock, muzzle low, he thumbed them home in rapid succession.
Rising, he twisted at the waist and fired a low diagonal shot into an enemy's legs, then put a follow-up into the falling man mid-air. He padded forward, dropped low, spun to meet a flanker, and fired twice to kill the threat. Rolling to dodge incoming rounds, he went prone and answered with tight, controlled mid-range shots.
The buckshot ghosted through the haze like invisible wraiths, slamming bodies without warning. Dark shapes staggered, were hurled back, or pitched face-up as flash after flash lit the gloom.
At contact distance he kept firing while reloading on the move. When several lined up, he raised the Benelli M4 and swept them with one devastating pattern. He thumbed the side-saddle spare into the empty tube, slapped the release, pivoted, and dropped the last man closing on his flank.
Stepping clear of the deep-gray smoke, John let the hot, smoking Benelli fall from his hands. The theater's main doors stood open to the outside. Snow drifted in.
Longchar stumbled into the waiting car, staring wildly through the window as her bodyguard fired the engine. Through the frost-rimed glass, a figure in pure black walked out into the snow—backlit against the fading theater, standing motionless in the pale world.
Like an immovable black monolith. From the instant it appeared, only the epitaph it bore could ever be etched into its surface; the rest of the world could carve away nothing.