Chapter 229: The Picture Of A Happy Family

Zubair stepped through the splintered frame before the pieces hit the floor.

Elias moved right, his rifle up. Lachlan went left, his machete ready. Alexei slipped in last, cold on his skin, fog on his breath. Luci flowed between all four of them, a gray shadow with blood on his muzzle.

Sera was already inside.

She had come from the far hall, quiet and steady, the dark around her like a coat.

Blood streaked her forearms to the fingers. Her shirt clung to her ribs where the wounds had closed.

Her eyes were the same as they had been in the control room—flat, unreadable, fixed on the next problem.

Two guards had tried to anchor the lab. One on a rolling stool, one behind a tipped table.

They didn’t last.

Sera crossed the space and broke the first one’s neck with a single twist. No wasted motion. No sound except the snap. Luci hit the second low and tore into him. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

The body bucked once and went dead.

"Next," Elias said, a soft sigh on his lips as he stared at Sera for a moment too long.

They moved fast.

Room to room. Hall to hall.

A machine rolled past on its side, wheels still spinning slow. The floor was slick with water and blood. Broken glass stuck to boot soles and came away making a grit sound on tile.

A woman in a lab coat tried to run between doors. Lachlan’s machete took her legs under the knee. She hit the floor screaming. Elias ended it with a single round.

A technician crawled behind a bench. Sera reached over, gripped his ankle, and pulled him out. Zubair grabbed his collar and slammed him into the bench once. He stopped moving. Alexei leaned, touched the man’s face, and frost blew over it thin and fast. The body went stiff, quiet, done.

They didn’t talk much.

"Left."

"Clear."

"Door."

"Now."

They knew where each other would be without looking.

Zubair and Elias took point where the corridors narrowed. Lachlan hit flanks, fast and smiling that too-wide smile. Alexei watched the angles no one else had hands for, freezing triggers, feet, wrists.

Sera walked straight lines like she had drawn them already.

They reached a T-junction. Muffled voices bled through the right-hand door. Rifle safeties clicked. Someone breathed too loud.

Zubair held up one finger, then pointed at himself and the door. Elias nodded, moved opposite, and caught Lachlan’s eye. Alexei drifted back a step and set his palm toward the floor. Cold slid ahead under the door.

Sera put her hand on Luci’s ruff. The dire wolf leaned into it and waited.

Zubair went on three.

He hit the door with both hands.

The latch blew.

The panel slammed back into the man behind it, crushed him against the wall.

Elias went through the gap and fired twice—two helmets dropped. Lachlan jumped the table and cut the third man down as he tried to run. Alexei stepped in last, lifted both hands, and pulled cold up over the fourth and fifth soldiers like a sheet.

They froze mid-turn, eyes shocked wide, hands locked to rifles. Sera passed between them and snapped both throats with short, clean movements.

"Clear," Elias said.

Sera didn’t look around. She was already moving to the next door.

They found a side hall with offices. Most doors stood open or hung crooked. A body lay across a threshold, neck at a bad angle, shoes pointing away from each other like a broken compass.

Sera slowed once. Just once.

The office at the end had a nameplate still stuck to the wall.

A photo frame lay face down on the desk.

The air smelled like old coffee under the iron and smoke. Three bodies lay together behind the desk—a woman in a coat Sera recognized, a younger woman with the same eyes, a small child curled under the younger woman’s arm.

Sera stopped in the doorway, unable to go forward.

She was looking for the older woman, the one in the coat. She had questions that the human part of her needed answers to. But it looked like she would never get those answers.

For a moment, she was grateful that she wasn’t the one to have killed the small family of three.

Luci pressed close to her thigh, his massive head and shoulders filling the frame with her. His breath blew warm against her hip. Zubair halted at her shoulder, eyes flicking once to the bodies, then back to her face, waiting.

She watched them for five seconds. Ten. Her face did not change. Her hands did not shake. She didn’t reach for them. She didn’t touch the picture on the desk.

She breathed out once. It sounded like any other breath.

"Move," she said.

They moved.

Elias closed the door behind them on instinct. Lachlan said nothing. Alexei glanced at Sera as they turned the corner. She did not glance back.

Next lab: six techs and two guards trying to barricade a side door with a gurney.

Elias shot the guard who looked brave first. Zubair vaulted the gurney, took the second guard by the throat, and drove him into the wall until his legs stopped talking.

Lachlan went through the techs like weeds with the machete. Alexei froze the floor so no one got far. Sera finished the ones who still twitched without breaking stride.

They pushed deeper.

The facility had been a maze when it had power.

Without it, the maze felt smaller.

Their world reduced to boots, breath, the sound of things breaking under hands made to break them. Sera’s pace never changed. The men matched it without thinking about it.

A door at the end of the next corridor had a card reader and a sign that promised things would be worse behind it.

Zubair gripped the handle and pulled. It didn’t give. Alexei touched the exposed hinge pins with two fingers. Frost cracked them apart. Lachlan jammed the machete into the gap near the lock and levered.

Metal bent. Elias shoved his shoulder to it. The door opened with a torn-metal scream.

Inside: stainless tables, drains in the floor, cabinets that had once held tools worth money. Now the room held three people wearing plastic aprons and one with a pistol and bad aim.

The pistol snapped up. Elias fired first—two rounds into the forearm. The pistol hit the floor. Luci hit the man a breath later and dragged him out of the fight.

One apron ran left.

Lachlan met him there. One ran right. Zubair took him off his feet and bounced him once. The third tried to kneel and show his hands. Sera crossed to him and broke his neck. Done.

"Next," she said again.