Chapter 1: The burst

Damien Wolfe

The first scream came before the first gunshot

After that, everything was fire and hell

I still remember how it started , it was too loud, too fast, too real to process. The kind of night that grabs you by the throat before you can think. We weren’t even supposed to find anyone alive. This was supposed to be a sweep check records, confirm what was left of Rivera’s operation, see if my cousin Elma’s name showed up anywhere in the dirt to prove she was still alive and where they kept her.

But the second I stepped through that broken doorway and saw the cages, I knew. This wasn’t a cartel warehouse. It was a grave.

Gunfire broke the silence before we cleared the gate. The place lit up like a warzone. My men fanned out without waiting for orders. We’d done this too many times. Everyone knew where to go, who to cover, when to move.

The Rivera cartel never died quiet. They always had to make it ugly.

I expected that. Hell, I wanted it.

The smoke burned down my throat and the air tasted like rust and sweat and something rotten underneath. Girls screamed from somewhere in the back. Dozens of them shaking, looking dirty, clutching each other like they’d forget how to breathe if they let go.

“Get them out,” I said, but my voice didn’t sound like mine.

My men broke the locks, dragged them out one by one. You could see it in their eyes that hollow kind of terror that doesn’t fade, even when you’re free.

I kept moving. If you stop to look, you start to feel, and feeling slows you down.

The fire was spreading fast. I was sure the cartel did that to send us away. The walls were bleeding smoke. The floor cracked under our boots, glass and bullet shells crunching like bones. Someone yelled orders in Spanish a burst of gunfire cut him off. I didn’t look. I just kept pushing forward.

Elma.

That’s all that kept looping in my head. My cousin. More than ten years gone. Ten years of chasing ghosts and rumors. I was sure it was more than ten years because I had stopped counting at some point. Every lead had gone cold, every trail had ended in a body that wasn’t hers. But I came anyway. Because you don’t ignore blood, even when it’s a memory.

She was ten when they took her. Dark hair, funny laugh, could never stay still. Used to hum when she was nervous. I still hear it sometimes, even when I don’t want to.

We cleared the upper floors, room by room. Each one worse than the last. Broken beds, burned photos, walls covered in fingerprints that would never be matched to names. You start to wonder how people can live with themselves after building hell like this.

By the time we got to the basement, the shooting was still going, but fainter now. The sound bounced off the metal and concrete, coming from everywhere at once. Ethan signaled left. We kicked through a door and stepped into another kind of nightmare.

Cages. Real cages. Stacked like someone’s twisted idea of order. There must’ve been fifteen, maybe more. Girls inside, too thin to fight, too tired to cry.

Some begged. Some didn’t.

We tore the locks apart. Ethan and Christiano worked fast, shouting, dragging them out before the smoke finished choking them. The fire alarms were already howling.

“Move them to the trucks!” I yelled, and they moved.

Then came more gunfire. Closer and sharp. My ears rang. I turned and fired back without thinking. Two of Rivera’s men hit the ground. Another tried to crawl away until someone’s boot stopped him cold.

When the last shot faded, it went too quiet. Only the sound of breathing rough, panicked, humans

We’d done what we came to do. We could’ve left. But I couldn’t. Not yet because something in me pulled me back

I walked deeper into the hall, checking every room.

That’s when I saw it , the last door, hanging off its hinges, a low crack of light spilling through. The smoke was thicker there. I pushed it open.

The heat hit me hard. The room was falling apart fire crawling up the walls, beams dropping from the ceiling. And in the corner, something moved under a pile of broken wood.

I kicked the debris aside.

She was there.

A girl. Small, covered in soot, blood running down her arm. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t really seeing me. She looked lost like she’d forgotten how to exist.

I don’t know what I felt right then. Not pity. Not anger. Something in between. Something that made my chest twist in a way I didn’t understand.

Her face was filthy, streaked with tears and ash. But there was something about her. Something too familiar.

“Hey,” I said, crouching down. “Can you hear me?”

She didn’t move or show any signs . She was kept breathing, shallow and shaky.

Christiano called out behind me, coughing. “Boss, we have to go. Place is falling apart.”

“She’s alive,” I said.

“We’ll call medics once we’re out. She’ll be found.”

I shook my head. “No. She won’t.”

The girl blinked, slow, like she understood me somehow.

Christiano hesitated. He’d seen me like this before, stubborn and stupid when I decided something mattered. “Boss…”

All of the thing I would have said in that moment only one broke out

“Bring her,” I said.

He didn’t argue after that. He just nodded and called for help.

When I lifted her, she didn’t fight. Her head fell against my shoulder, light as a secret. I could feel her heartbeat through the smoke. Weak but there.

We got out just before the roof came down.

Outside, the night was chaos. The trucks were loaded, the girls crying, my men yelling orders over the sirens. I laid her down gently on the back seat of the last vehicle. For a moment, I thought she’d stopped breathing. Then she stirred just enough to look at me, just enough to whisper something I couldn’t hear.

And that was it.

That’s how it started.

I went there looking for my cousin. I came out with a stranger who would ruin everything I thought I knew about saving people.