جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 90

Rival’s POVThe hall still hummed with the trainer’s death rattle when I dragged Thomas out by the arm. His weight was heavy, blood soaking his side, but his eyes were sharp. Alive.Outside, the world was chaos. Floodlights painted the grounds in blinding white, shadows twitching like demons as recruits swarmed from every corner. Gunfire cracked. Boots thundered. Shouts rose and fell like a war chant.Base Two wasn’t going down quiet.Thomas leaned into me, spitting red. “What now?”I jammed my knife back into its sheath, scanning the yards. “We burn it. Every building. Every bed. Every memory.”His grin was savage, teeth red. “Good. Fuck ‘em.”We moved fast. I dragged him toward the supply shed squatting near the firing range. Guards spotted us, raised rifles, but I was already running. My blade flashed, my gun roared, and they crumpled in streaks of blood and bone.Inside the shed, the smell hit me first. Gasoline. Oil. Explosives stacked high in crates marked with red X’s.Perfect.

Rival’s POVThe woods spat us out like chewed bones. Smoke still clung to my clothes, my throat raw from every breath. The treeline thinned into crumbling asphalt, and beyond it, the glow of the city stretched like a beast waiting with open jaws.Thomas stumbled beside me, his arm heavy across my shoulders. His weight dragged at me, but I wasn’t letting him drop. Not here. Not when the skyline meant we weren’t out of danger—only into a different kind of hell.“Finally,” he rasped, half-laugh, half-cough. “Civilization.”“Don’t get soft.” I scanned the street, broken lampposts flickering, dumpsters yawning shadows. “Civilization’s where the real monsters live.”We moved fast, weaving through alleys that reeked of piss and garbage, avoiding the main road. Sirens wailed somewhere distant, firetrucks howling toward the inferno we’d left behind. Good. Let them choke on the smoke and corpses. Base Two was gone.But that didn’t mean we were safe.Every headlight that swept too close made my

Rival’s POVThe room didn’t breathe after he dropped the threat. It just sat heavy with it, like smoke that wouldn’t clear.Thomas’s voice finally cut through, sharp, raw: “Nope....Absolutely not.”He was half-sitting on the mattress, one hand pressed against his ribs, the other wrapped tight around his pistol. Fever-slick and pale, but his glare burned straight through me.“wait, you’re not actually considering this, are you?”I didn’t answer, I mean not yet.The man — my old connection, my shadow from Sicily — leaned against the doorframe like he owned it. Calm. Patient. Too damn confident.He’d always been like that. Back then, it had pissed me off. Now it made my trigger finger itch.“I can see the wheels turning,” he said, grin curling like smoke. “You’ve always been practical, Rival. Always knew when the odds were shit but still winnable.”Thomas barked a laugh that turned into a cough. “Yeah? Funny, I don’t see much ‘winning’ in trusting a man who shows up in the dead of night

Rival’s POVThe warehouse smelled like sweat and gasoline.That mix you only get when men think they’re untouchable, when they stack crates of guns and powder and sit around laughing like they’re kings of the city.But kings burn just as fast as anyone else.I crouched behind a stack of barrels, my Molotov gripped tight, the rag already soaked and dangling. Beside me, Thomas steadied his pistol with both hands, sweat sliding down his temple. His breathing was shallow but sharp.“Four by the trucks. Two up high,” I whispered.He nodded, jaw clenched. “Call it.”My heart thudded like a war drum. For once, I didn’t hesitate.“Now.”We moved as one.Thomas broke left, silent but deadly, pistol snapping twice in quick succession. Two guards dropped before their laughter even died.I lit the rag with a match, fire licking to life, and hurled the bottle across the room.It smashed against a crate — and the whole corner of the warehouse bloomed in fire.The sound was biblical. Glass shatterin

Rival’s POVBy the time we shook the sirens, the city had stripped us down to smoke and silence.The streets behind us still glowed red and blue, sirens echoing faint through the maze of alleys. But here—two blocks past the river, tucked into a row of half-dead brownstones—things went quiet. Too quiet.I picked the lock on the third building with a bent nail, shoving Thomas through the door before my nerves had a chance to crack. The place smelled like mildew and old wood, floorboards sagging under our weight.It wasn’t safe. But it was empty. That was enough.Thomas collapsed into the nearest chair with a groan, his pistol clattering to the table. His head dropped back, sweat dripping into the collar of his soot-blackened shirt.“You’re welcome,” I muttered, dropping my pack on the floor.He cracked one eye open, smirking weak. “For what? Dragging me into a roach motel?”I shot him a look sharp enough to cut steel. “For keeping you alive.”“Alive is generous,” he said, wincing as he