Chapter 14 - The Final Reckoning
A lone mercenary—the leader of the sleeper cell, severely wounded but still clutching a high-explosive detonator trigger—stumbled out from behind the smoking server racks. His face was smeared with soot and blood, his eyes wild and manic as he slammed his thumb down onto the dead-man's switch circuit board.
"If we burn, the whole district burns with us!" the mercenary shrieked, laughing hysterically.
There was no time to draw a weapon. There was no time to think.
Rafe reacted purely on primal instinct. He threw his massive, six-foot-six frame forward, tackling the mercenary with bone-crushing force just as the explosive charge wired to the local gas line began to hiss and spark. The explosion tore through the far corner of the bunker, sending a shockwave of concussive force and flying concrete shards through the chamber.
Tessa was knocked backward against the concrete wall, the breath driven violently from her lungs. "Rafe!" she screamed into the billowing cloud of grey dust and smoke.
When the smoke cleared, the bunker was silent except for the crack of dying electrical fires. The mercenary lay motionless beneath a collapsed section of the concrete ceiling.
And right beside him, half-buried under heavy chunks of drywall and steel reinforcement beams, lay Rafe.
"Rafe!" Tessa scrambled forward, dropping her trauma pack onto the dusty floor, her hands trembling violently as she clawed at the heavy concrete debris weighing down his massive frame. With a surge of desperate, adrenaline-fueled strength, she managed to heave a steel beam off his torso.
Rafe groaned softly, his eyes fluttering open as he blinked through the thick dust. His dark coat was shredded at the shoulder, and a deep, angry crimson stain was rapidly spreading across his shirt from his reopened surgical wound, but he was breathing.
He slowly lifted his head, looking up at her with an expression of profound, aching tenderness that completely defied the devastation around them.
"I told you... I'm hard to kill," Rafe rasped, a weak, breathless chuckle rumbling in his chest as he reached up with a blood-stained, heavy hand to touch her cheek.
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"Shut up and save your breath," Tessa ordered, her voice choked with tears of overwhelming relief as she tore open her medical kit, pressing sterile gauze directly against his wound with shaking hands. "You are never, ever allowed to tackle an explosive detonator again, do you hear me? If you die on me, I will personally resurrect you just to kill you myself."
Malcolm rushed into the chamber seconds later, taking in the wreckage, the neutralized threat, and Rafe lying on the floor with Tessa tending to him. Malcolm exhaled a massive sigh of relief, shaking his head. "Well, Boss. Next time, maybe we just call the local police department."
