Chapter 215: Fighting Back-to-Back

They moved like hunted animals through the city’s underbelly, the rain a constant, cold companion. The safe house betrayal had severed their last tie to planned refuge, leaving them adrift in the concrete wilderness. Sabatine’s declaration—to stop running, to set a meeting—was a necessary fiction, a spark to keep Anton’s spirit from guttering out. But first, they had to survive the immediate aftermath. They had to shake the pursuit that would surely be intensifying, fanning out from the compromised townhouse.

Sabatine led them not to wide avenues or open squares, but deeper into Geneva’s utilitarian infrastructure: the loading docks behind a shuttered department store, the echoing, graffiti-tagged space under a railway bridge, the fenced perimeter of a municipal water treatment plant humming in the dark. It was a landscape of grit and function, a world away from silk and penthouses.

Anton moved in a haze of pain and determination. Each step was a battle, his shoulder a throbbing core of misery that radiated out to his fingertips and skull. But Sabatine’s grip on his wrist, though gentler now, was a lifeline. He focused on that point of contact, on the ragged, steady rhythm of Sabatine’s breathing ahead of him. He would not be the weight that sank them.

They were skirting the edge of a vast, all-night logistics warehouse when Sabatine suddenly froze, pulling Anton into the deep shadow of a stacked pallet of shrink-wrapped goods. He held up a fist. Silence.

Then Anton heard it too. Not the distant sirens, but the close, purposeful scuff of a boot on wet asphalt. Then another, from a different direction. They were being flanked.

Kaine’s net, adaptable and relentless, had found them again. The operatives weren’t charging; they were converging, methodically cutting off escape routes. The warehouse lot was a canyon of towering cargo containers and forklifts—a maze with limited exits.

“They’ve got us bracketed,” Sabatine breathed, his eyes scanning the geometries of shadow and steel. He still had the captured submachine gun, but ammunition was low. His pistol was his primary. “We can’t outrun them this time. Not in your condition.”

Anton understood. The time for flight was over. Here, in this grimy cathedral of commerce, they had to turn and fight. A primal fear, cold and sharp, cut through his pain. But beneath it, a newer, stranger emotion surged: a fierce, protective clarity. He would not let them take Sabatine. Not after everything.

“Then we stand,” Anton whispered, his voice surprisingly steady. He looked around, his CEO’s mind assessing the terrain not for profit, but for survival. He pointed to a narrow alley formed by two high stacks of shipping containers. It was a dead end, but it had a single advantage. “There. They can only come at us from one direction at a time.”

Sabatine followed his gaze, a grim smile touching his lips. “A bottleneck. Good.” He met Anton’s eyes. “You take the left wall. I take the right. Back-to-back. You see anything move that isn’t me, you shout. Don’t be a hero. Just be my eyes.”

He pressed the submachine gun into Anton’s good hand. “Safety’s off. It kicks. Short bursts. Aim low if you have to shoot; the ricochet in here will be hell.”

Anton’s fingers closed around the cold, unfamiliar polymer. It felt alien, hateful. But it was a tool. He gave a sharp nod.

They moved into the container alley, a slit of deeper darkness. The walls were corrugated steel, smelling of rust and salt. The rain dripped from the edges above, creating a steady, metallic patter. Sabatine positioned Anton with his back against one container, then turned, his own back pressing against Anton’s. The contact was solid, real—a shared spine. Anton could feel the tension in Sabatine’s muscles, the heat of his body through their soaked clothes. It was the most intimate and terrifying embrace of his life.

For a moment, there was only the rain and their synced breathing. Then, the sounds of pursuit grew precise. Two sets of footsteps, cautious, approaching the mouth of the alley.

A sliver of light from a distant security lamp painted the opening. A silhouette appeared, low and cautious, weapon raised. He was checking the angles.

Sabatine didn’t wait. As the man took his first step into the alley, Sabatine’s pistol spoke twice—thwip-thwip. The suppressor made the shots sound like books being dropped. The figure jerked and crumpled.

But the second operative was smart. He didn’t follow his partner. A small, cylindrical object arced through the air, bouncing off the container wall and landing at their feet with a metallic clatter.

Flashbang.

“CLOSE YOUR EYES!” Sabatine roared, spinning and shoving Anton’s face into his own shoulder, wrapping an arm around his head.

The world disappeared in a deafening CRACK and a searing white blast that penetrated even through closed eyelids and the barrier of Sabatine’s body. Anton’s ears rang with a high-pitched shriek. Disorientation swamped him, a nauseating loss of balance and sense.

Sabatine, trained to mitigate the effects, recovered faster. He shoved Anton sideways, breaking their contact. “LEFT WALL! STAY DOWN!”

Anton stumbled, his back scraping against the cold steel, and slid to the ground, blinking rapidly, trying to clear the swimming purple blotches from his vision. He saw Sabatine, a blur of motion, firing down the alley at a shape rushing in.

Then movement to his immediate left—from a gap between the containers he hadn’t seen. A third attacker, using the flashbang’s chaos to approach from a perpendicular service aisle.

This one was on Anton. He was big, fast, and he didn’t have a gun drawn—he had a telescopic baton in one hand, a knife in the other. Silent take-down. Up close.

Anton’s brain, fogged by pain and disorientation, clicked into a cold, hyper-focused gear. The submachine gun was useless at this range, in his state. He let it clatter to the ground. His eyes darted around his immediate vicinity. Nothing. Just wet asphalt and…

A bright red fire extinguisher, mounted on the wall of the container a few feet away. A regulation safety item.

The man lunged, baton swinging for Anton’s injured shoulder.

Anton didn’t try to block. He dove toward the man, inside the swing, his body screaming in protest. The baton whistled past his ear, striking the container with a deafening clang. Anton’s momentum carried him past the attacker, his hand closing on the cold metal handle of the fire extinguisher.

He yanked it free from its bracket, the weight surprising him. He turned, using the spin, and swung the heavy cylinder like a medieval mace.

It wasn’t elegant. It was brutal, desperate physics. The steel base of the extinguisher connected with the side of the attacker’s knee with a sickening, wet crunch. The man howled, his leg buckling. Anton didn’t stop. He reversed the swing, bringing the nozzle-end up in a vicious arc into the man’s jaw. Teeth shattered. The man dropped, unconscious or dead, Anton didn’t know or care.

He stood over the fallen man, the extinguisher heavy in his hand, breathing in ragged, sobbing gulps. His shoulder was a universe of agony. He felt the warm trickle of blood where the bandage had torn.

Behind him, the staccato dance of Sabatine’s pistol had stopped. There was a grunt, a heavy thud, then silence.

Anton turned.

Sabatine stood at the mouth of the alley, breathing hard. The second operative lay at his feet. Sabatine’s left arm was bleeding from a shallow knife slash, his jacket torn. But he was upright, his eyes scanning the wider lot for more threats. Seeing none immediately, he turned his gaze to Anton.

His eyes took in the scene: the man sprawled at Anton’s feet, the dented fire extinguisher, Anton’s heaving chest and wild eyes. There was no relief in Sabatine’s expression. Only a fierce, blazing pride that cut through the gloom and the lingering stink of cordite.

“Clear,” Sabatine said, his voice a rough scrape.

Anton let the extinguisher drop. It landed with a dull thud. He swayed.

Sabatine was at his side in an instant, catching him. “Easy. I’ve got you.” His hands were gentle as they probed the reopened wound on Anton’s shoulder. “It’s superficial. The bandage was the worst. Can you walk?”

Anton nodded, though he wasn’t sure he could. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving a vast, hollow exhaustion. “You’re hurt,” he managed, looking at Sabatine’s bleeding arm.

“A scratch.” Sabatine ripped a strip from his own already-torn sleeve and tied it roughly around the cut. “We can’t stay. That noise will bring company.”

He retrieved the fallen submachine gun, checked the remaining operative for pulses (there were none), and then led Anton out of the alley, away from the warehouse lot, into a labyrinth of smaller side streets.

They didn’t speak for a long time. The fight had changed something fundamental. It wasn’t just that Anton had survived; it was that he had fought. He had been Sabatine’s eyes, and then, when the moment demanded it, he had become his own weapon. He had protected the shared spine.

After several blocks, they found a recessed doorway to a closed tailor’s shop, deep enough to offer shelter from the rain and prying eyes. Sabatine guided Anton to sit on the dry stoop, then sank down beside him, their shoulders touching.

In the quiet, the synchronization of their breathing returned. In, out. A perfect, unspoken rhythm.

“You fought well,” Sabatine said finally, his head resting back against the door.

“I hit a man with a fire extinguisher,” Anton replied, the absurdity of it hitting him. A hysterical laugh bubbled in his chest, but it came out as a choked sob. “I think I killed him.”

Sabatine’s hand found his, their fingers interlacing, both hands stained with grime and blood. “He was going to kill you. To kill us. There’s no morality in that moment. There’s only survival. And you chose us.”

The simplicity of it was a kind of absolution. Anton leaned his head against Sabatine’s, drawing strength from the contact. They sat in silence, listening to the rain and the distant, fading echoes of the city’s ongoing crisis.

The fight back-to-back had proven something more valuable than their ability to survive an ambush. It had proven their unity was not just emotional, but operational. They could be a single, formidable entity. Sabatine the precision blade, Anton the unexpected hammer.

“You were right before,” Anton murmured, his voice thick with fatigue. “We have to set the meeting. We have the prototype. It’s the only move he won’t have pre-written. We dictate the where. The when.”

Sabatine nodded, his eyes closed. “We need a place with leverage. Somewhere he can’t just surround and sanitize. Somewhere public, but controlled. Somewhere with… witnesses he can’t afford to disappear.”

Anton’s mind, even through the fog of pain, began to work. The corporate strategist, merged now with the survivor. He thought of Geneva, of its icons and its vulnerabilities.

A place where the world was watching. A place where a violent spectacle would be catastrophic for a man who dealt in clean narratives.

A slow, grim smile touched his cracked lips. “I have an idea.”

—-