They moved like ghosts through the hurricane — bodies low, boots slipping on wet concrete, breaths ragged against the wind. The rooftop was a battlefield of twisted metal and smoking vents; the chopper's silhouette bobbed a block over, rotors fighting the storm.
Sol checked the harness on the nearest winch and spat rain. "We go two at a time. Fast rope. No stops."
Takahara's face was a map of pain, but he smiled thinly. "I've done worse with less oxygen."
Masayoshi hauled Asahi forward. Blood darkened the front of his shirt where shrapnel had nicked him. Asahi's jaw was set; he kept blinking as if surprised he still could. "My hands won't slip," he said simply, as if on cue, and Sol let him make the climb.
Albert lingered behind the group, eyes fixed on the burning fourth floor. The embered memory of Raphael — the smirk, the fall — burned hotter than the blaze. He felt the old name like a brand under his skin, trying to pull him back.
A thin crackle came from his earpiece. It was faint, but it carried: the military comm channel, a frequency Sol had hijacked earlier during the assault. "—sweep clear. Deploying Helios teams. Coordinates locked. Target: rooftop ridge, sector nine. Authorised: lethal."
Sol's shoulders tightened. He met Albert's gaze and for a second — the two of them, old scars reflected in one another — the world narrowed to a single plane of decision.
"We'll board," Sol said. "You and I last."
Albert didn't argue. He strapped into the harness with hands that didn't tremble.
The first man went. The rope cut through the rain like a silver thread and the winch pulled him into the belly of the chopper. Then the second. Then Masayoshi and Takahara, coughing, bleeding, but moving.
When Asahi hooked himself to the last rope, his boot slipped on the edge. For an instant he hung, suspended between the fire behind and the void ahead. Albert didn't hesitate — he hooked to the edge, shoved off, and caught Asahi by the wrist, hauling him into the chopper with a single, brutal motion.
They were half inside when a shadow peeled out of the storm and took position between them and the city — a drone, different from the swarm they'd handicapped earlier. Sleek, black, autonomous. It opened its belly and the rotorwash changed; the chopper pitched.
"Hit it!" Sol barked.
Albert fired reflexively. Bullets rattled the drone's frame, and for a breath it shuddered. The chopper lurched, then righted. A new alarm wailed — not mechanical this time, but human: the guttural, practiced voice of a Helios operator cutting through the storm.
"This is Helios Team Four. Albert Vaughn — maximal force authorised. Disengage and surrender. Last warning."
Albert's jaw clenched until he tasted copper. He pushed himself deeper into the chopper, every muscle wound tight. Around him, the team coughed and spat smoke and rain. Sol swung the winch lever, feeding cable, desperate to get them out before the second drone could lock a firing solution.
Below, the burning floor heaved. The building's groan had become a series of cracks — the sound of a structure giving its secrets to heat and gravity.
The winch screamed. The cable slipped, stuck on the chopper's rim. Sol cursed and kicked the mechanism. On the ground a second, larger drone screamed across the rooftop, and this time it wasn't alone: black-ops exosuits dropped like shadows from the clouds, their magnetic boots slamming into metal to anchor them.
"Helios on the roof!" someone shouted.
Albert saw the exosuits forming a line — a living wall of state authority — and in front of them, a tall figure in a scarlet-trimmed coat unclipped a comm unit and spoke clear for all to hear.
"Albert Vaughn," the voice carried even through the storm, intimate as a confession. "You took what belonged to this nation. You will atone."
The name hit like a scaling blow. From somewhere, distantly, Albert heard the echo of the child they once had been — a boy trained to obey, to blend until he could be used. For a heartbeat he almost replied by reflex: yes, father, I am yours.
Instead he thought of Raphael — not as a son to the man on the screen, but as a person whose smirk had been real, whose fall was a thing they could not unmake. That thought steadied him more than years of conditioning ever had.
"Cut power to their link," he told Asahi, voice a rasp. "Give me three seconds."
Asahi's fingers flew. Rain sluiced down the instrument panel, and for a shivering moment Albert wondered if the world would simply dissolve into static. Then the link hiccuped. Red lights on the exosuits' visors blinked and went dark for the merest second — an eternity under fire.
Sol didn't waste the pause. He slammed the winch, tearing up cable, wrists straining until the chopper's belly dipped under them. The first two jumped clear and were hauled inside. Then Masayoshi. Then Takahara. The team thinned.
Albert felt the winch pull him like a magnet if he let it. He reached for the edge to climb; the rope came up empty. The last man on the rope yelped as a tracer stitched by — a precise shot from a stabilized platform — and the cable burned and snapped with a sound like a whip.
The chopper rocked and a line of flame licked along its side. The pilot shouted, hands hammering at controls. The rope's free end flailed away into the dark and finally vanished.
Sol looked at Albert — a single, unspoken question: go or stay?
On the roof below the exosuits tightened their formation, and the figure in scarlet stepped forward, a humanoid bullet-stopper between them and liberty.
Albert made his choice in an instant that didn't feel like a decision. He fought his way to the edge, hooked his fingers into a fractured drainpipe, and let go.
He hit the rooftop with a sound like a suppressed rifle. Pain lanced through his side where shrapnel had found purchase earlier, but he pushed up, rolling, and the exosuits moved to cut him off.