More than ten armed men faced me, and I had no choice but to trust Ashur. I flicked a glance at the open hatch in the ceiling and prayed he knew what he was doing.
As soon as I cleared the elevator, I hurled the doctor back inside and dove to the floor, clamping my hands over my head. Two guards burst from behind their shields, slammed me face-down, wrenching my arms behind me and planting a knee between my shoulder blades to keep me still. Five others sprinted for the unconscious doctor sprawled on the elevator floor.
Pinned there with a boot grinding into my back, I lifted my head toward the car and managed a pained smile.
The guards who bent to lift the doctor collapsed in a rapid stutter of gunfire—bleeding, crumpling, piling atop one another. Ashur lay in wait above the elevator ceiling, the muzzle of his gun poking through the hatch, firing down from the roof. He cut down all five so fast they never even raised a defense. For a moment the only sounds were shots and the clink of spent casings raining through the hatch.
The guards near me edged toward the elevator in a daze, all muzzles tilting up toward the roof. No one spoke. Their footsteps scraped through the haunted silence. Some still crouched behind shields. Breath held. The smell of fear everywhere.
With every step they took toward the car, it felt like they were stomping another piece of life out of me. I stared from the floor, praying Ashur could finish them. I tried to move; the man on my back crushed me harder, his knee digging in until it felt like my spine would split.
The elevator doors slid shut. The guards traded looks. A tall one jabbed the button to open them again, raised his weapon, and crept closer. The hall was horror-still; terror had frozen everyone in place, rifles locked on the elevator. Cordite, blood—above it all, the stink of death.
As the doors parted, a black canister rolled out, bumped to a stop—then a bloom of dark smoke swallowed the entry. A murky wall of cloud blotted out their sightlines. One guard eased inside with his rifle; another followed.
Silence stretched—then gunfire erupted. The guard at the threshold dropped where he stood. The rest, farther back, panicked and opened fire, but the car was a smoke-filled box—and that meant Ashur owned it. One by one, they went down.
Mouth open, I stared.
The five who'd been hosing the elevator with bullets were cut down in a tight burst from inside. Ashur had already looted the ammo from the bodies he'd stacked in the car; it kept him one step ahead. He lobbed a grenade toward the men hiding behind their huge shields; they screamed and scattered—only for nothing to happen. The pin wasn't even pulled. He just wanted them exposed.
The instant they realized the trick and started to rise, he fired through the smoke and left a mound of bodies behind.
My breath knotted in my chest; I didn't even blink. I couldn't believe the rumors about him—about the way he fought—were true.
He was everything they called him: a vicious predatory fish. A venomous viper. A machine made for killing.
The two guards on me stared at the elevator doors in horror. The one with his knee on my back yanked out his radio and, voice frayed with panic, rasped, "N-need backup—"
A shot cracked; red spilled down the part in his hair, the radio clattered from his hand, and he dropped to his knees right beside me.
I fixed my stunned gaze on the elevator. Ashur stepped out of the smoke like a wraith.