Chapter 11 : HOSTILE TAKEOVER
The soldier nearest May drew his weapon.
She was faster.
Her hand caught his wrist, twisted, and the gun discharged into the ceiling as she slammed her elbow into his throat. He dropped, choking, and she was already moving to the next threat.
I launched myself at the soldier by the lab door. He was turning, weapon coming up, finger finding the trigger—
My shoulder hit his midsection and we crashed to the floor. The gun went off next to my ear, the sound deafening, the round punching into the wall above us. I grabbed his wrist and slammed it against the deck until the weapon came free.
He was strong. Trained. His free hand found my throat and squeezed.
Stars exploded across my vision. I drove my knee into his side—once, twice, feeling ribs flex—and his grip loosened enough for me to pull free. My elbow came down on his face and he stopped moving.
The common area had become a war zone.
Ward fought two soldiers simultaneously, moving between their attacks like water, striking joints and pressure points with surgical precision. One of them got a hit in—Ward's head snapped back—but he redirected the momentum into a throw that sent the man crashing through a coffee table.
Skye had grabbed a fire extinguisher and swung it at the soldier near the galley. The impact was solid, meaty, and the man staggered. She swung again. He went down.
"That's for trying to hijack our plane!" she shouted.
Fitz and Simmons had retreated to the lab, barricading the door with whatever equipment they could grab. Smart. Stay out of the combat, protect the asset.
Coulson and Reyes were fighting in the cargo bay.
I could hear the impacts—flesh on flesh, grunts of exertion, the crash of bodies against metal. Coulson was good, but Reyes was military-trained and desperate.
The soldier I'd downed was starting to stir. I grabbed a length of cable from a ruptured panel and bound his wrists before he could recover.
"Jake!" Ward's voice. "Lab!"
I turned in time to see the fourth soldier—the one we'd lost track of—rushing the lab entrance. His gun was raised. FitzSimmons were directly in his line of fire.
I moved.
The enhanced reflexes engaged fully, pushing me faster than conscious thought. I crossed the distance in three strides, catching the soldier's arm as he fired. The round went wide, sparking off the ceiling. I redirected his momentum, using the same joint-lock technique that had materialized during the mugging—muscle memory I didn't remember acquiring.
His elbow hyperextended. He screamed. The gun clattered away.
I drove him face-first into the wall and he slumped, unconscious.
Pain flared in my ribs—I'd taken a hit at some point, a punch or a kick, I couldn't remember when. Didn't matter. Keep moving.
"Coulson needs help!" Skye shouted.
I grabbed the unconscious soldier's weapon and ran for the cargo bay.
---
Coulson was losing.
Reyes had gotten hold of a knife somewhere—military issue, wickedly sharp. She pressed her advantage with the viciousness of someone who knew she was running out of time. Coulson blocked, dodged, but he was on the defensive.
I leveled the weapon. "Drop it!"
Reyes spun, putting Coulson between us. Her knife pressed against his throat.
"Drop yours," she countered. "Or I open his artery."
Standoff.
The seconds stretched. I could hear the others behind me, the sounds of combat fading as the last soldiers were subdued. In a moment, May would arrive. Ward. The numbers would shift.
Reyes knew it too. Her eyes darted, calculating escape routes.
"There's nowhere to go," Coulson said calmly, despite the blade at his throat. "We're thirty thousand feet over the Pacific. Even if you kill me, you're not getting off this plane."
"Then I'll take the weapon and negotiate from a stronger position."
"The 0-8-4?" Coulson almost laughed. "That thing is a bomb waiting to go off. You'd die before you could use it."
"My government has scientists—"
The lab door burst open. Fitz stumbled out, face pale, shouting something I couldn't process.
"—it's active! The 0-8-4 is active!"
Blue light flooded the corridor behind him. The same glow I'd seen in the temple, but brighter now. Pulsing faster. Building toward something.
Reyes's grip on the knife loosened—just a fraction, just for a moment, her attention split between hostage and catastrophe.
Coulson moved.
His elbow drove into her solar plexus. The knife went wide. He caught her arm, twisted, and suddenly she was on the floor with her own blade at her throat.
"Everyone move!" he ordered. "The device—"
The 0-8-4 fired.
A beam of blue light punched through the wall of the lab, through the corridor, through the fuselage of the Bus itself. Wind screamed through the breach. Alarms blared. The pressure differential pulled at everything not bolted down.
I grabbed a cargo strap and held on as the world tried to tear itself apart.
Reyes slid toward the breach. Coulson lunged for her automatically—enemy or not, no one deserved to die that way—and caught her wrist.
Ward appeared beside me, bracing against the pull. "We need to seal that breach!"
"The emergency raft!" I remembered the show, the solution that had seemed absurd until it wasn't. "In the cargo bay locker! It'll inflate to fill the hole!"
He stared at me for a split second—how do you know that?—then ran.
The raft deployed with a pneumatic hiss, expanding to plug the breach. The screaming wind died. The pressure equalized. The alarms continued, but the immediate crisis was over.
I let go of the cargo strap and slid to the floor, every muscle trembling.
My ribs definitely had something wrong with them now. Every breath felt like broken glass. There was blood on my forehead—a cut I didn't remember getting—and my hands shook with the aftershocks of adrenaline.
But we were alive.
Coulson pulled Reyes to her feet, securing her wrists with zip ties. Her soldiers were subdued throughout the Bus, groaning but alive. The 0-8-4 had stopped glowing, apparently exhausted by its single devastating shot.
"Everyone okay?" Coulson called.
Check-ins came in. Bruises. Minor cuts. Nothing critical.
May's voice crackled over the intercom. "We've lost cabin pressure in three sections and the port engine is showing stress fractures. I can keep us airborne, but we need to land soon."
"Find us somewhere friendly. We'll figure the rest out."
The immediate crisis was over. We'd survived.
I sat against the cargo bay wall and tried to remember how to breathe without it hurting.
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