The world shattered into noise and movement.
The moment Hestia threw the bolt, the lead mercenary—call him "Silas," for the cold, silent efficiency with which he moved—didn't shoot her. He simply backhanded her aside with the stock of his rifle, sending the old woman crumpling to the floor, a final act of contempt. His eyes, flat and assessing, swept the great room. They locked on Elara.
"Primary target, alive. All others are noise," Silas barked to the three men who fanned out behind him.
Michael was already moving. He didn't shout a warning. He fired twice from behind the cover of a reinforced concrete column. The sharp crack-crack of his pistol was deafening in the enclosed space. One of the mercenaries grunted, his shoulder jerking back.
"Covering fire! To the nursery!" Michael yelled.
Daniel laid down a suppressing burst from his submachine gun, forcing Silas and his men to duck behind the island and the sofa. Splinters of marble and tufts of down filling filled the air.
Elara's body was a battleground of its own. A contraction, iron-hard and relentless, seized her. She gasped, doubling over, her vision spotting. Hannah was instantly at her side, an arm around her waist.
"Breathe, Elara. In through your nose. We have to move now."
"I… can't…" Elara panted, the pain stealing her strength, her focus.
Sophie screamed as a burst of automatic fire chewed into the wall above her head. Thomas yanked her down behind a heavy credenza. "Stay down!"
Through the haze of pain, Elara saw Silas gesture. One of his men peeled off, moving in a low crouch towards Michael's position. The other laid down fire, pinning Daniel. They were being flanked. They had seconds.
Her architect's mind, trained to see space and flow, cut through the agony. The safe room door was thirty feet away, across open ground. A killing field. The nursery was twelve feet. Through the archway, down a short hall. Its door was solid oak with a steel core. And behind the bookshelf…
Another pain, sharper, lower. The baby's coming.
She forced her head up, her voice emerging not as a shriek, but as a ragged, commanding roar. "FORGET THE SAFE ROOM! NURSERY! NOW! HANNAH, WITH ME! MICHAEL, DANIEL, COVER US!"
It was the voice of the warlady, and it snapped everyone into motion.
Hannah half-dragged, half-carried Elara towards the archway. Sophie scrambled from behind the credenza to grab Elara's other arm. "I've got you! Just move your feet!"
A mercenary rose to fire. Michael shifted his aim and fired. The man dropped. But the movement exposed him. The flanking mercenary fired. Michael jerked, a bloom of crimson erupting high on his chest. He didn't cry out. He slumped behind the column, his breath a wet, ragged sound.
"MICHAEL!" Hannah screamed, her step faltering.
"GO!" he snarled, clutching his chest, his face pale but determined. He fired again with his good arm, keeping their pursuer's head down.
They stumbled into the nursery, the room of soft colors and hidden steel. Elara collapsed against the changing table, her knees buckling. "The bookshelf… the middle section… push left then right…"
Thomas and Daniel backed into the room, firing into the hall. "They're coming!" Daniel shouted.
Sophie found the hidden seam. She pushed. Nothing. "It's not moving!"
"Harder! It's on a counterweight!" Elara cried, another wave of pressure building.
With a cry of effort, Sophie threw her weight against the polished oak. It gave an inch, then slid smoothly aside, revealing the stark steel door of the panic room.
"Get her in!" Thomas yelled, ejecting a spent magazine and slapping in a new one.
As Hannah and Sophie helped Elara towards the opening, a shadow filled the nursery doorway. Silas. He raised his rifle, not at Elara, but at Daniel, who was turned, ushering them forward.
"Daniel, down!" Thomas screamed.
But it was Hestia who moved.
No one saw her get up. She was just there, a small, broken figure streaking from the hallway with a primal cry, the carving knife from the block in her kitchen held high. It wasn't an attack; it was a sacrifice. She plunged the knife into the back of Silas's thigh, aiming for the hamstring.
Silas roared in surprised pain, his shot going wide, punching into the ceiling. He spun, swinging the butt of his rifle. It connected with Hestia's temple with a sickening thud. She fell like a stone.
But it was the delay Daniel needed. He turned and fired three rounds point-blank into Silas's chest. The mercenary leader staggered back, collapsing in the doorway.
"Hestia!" Sophie cried.
The old woman lay on the floor, her eyes already dimming. She found Sophie's gaze. Her lips moved, a faint whisper lost in the gunfire. Sophie, tears streaming, bent closer.
"Tell… my Maria…" Hestia breathed, a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth. "I chose… right."
Her eyes went still.
"NO!" The word was torn from Elara, a mix of grief and another overwhelming contraction. Her water hadn't just broken; the dam had burst. "They're coming… now!"
"Everyone in! NOW!" Daniel bellowed, dragging a weeping Sophie back from Hestia's body. He and Thomas fired a final volley down the hall, then dove through the opening.
Hannah pulled Elara the last few feet into the cold, bright light of the panic room. Thomas hit the interior control. The heavy bookshelf slid back into place with a solid thunk, followed by the hydraulic hiss of the steel door locking shut. The sounds of the firefight were reduced to a distant, muted thumping.
Silence, except for Elara's ragged panting.
The room was small, white, clinical. A medical bed, cabinets, monitors, a separate air supply. Hannah immediately went to work, helping Elara onto the bed, raising her legs.
"Status!" Daniel snapped, checking the room's external monitors, which showed the empty nursery and the hall beyond. Two heat signatures lay still in the nursery doorway. Three more were active in the great room.
"Michael's down, shot in the upper chest. Hestia… is gone," Thomas reported, his voice hollow with shock and fury. He was pressing a hand to a graze on his own bicep.
"The babies are coming," Hannah said, her voice terrifyingly calm as she pulled on sterile gloves from a wall dispenser. "Elara, I need you to listen to me. Look at me. We are safe in here. This room could withstand a direct rocket hit. You built it. Your children are going to be born in the safest place in this city. Do you understand me?"
Elara nodded, sweat pouring down her face, her fingers clawing at the sheets. "I understand."
"Good. Now, on the next contraction, I need you to push."
Outside, the thumping stopped. An eerie quiet fell.
Thomas, monitoring a separate console that tapped into security bands, frowned. He put on a headset, fiddling with the frequency dial. He caught a burst of static, then a voice—strained, pained. One of the wounded mercenaries.
"…primary objective failed. Targets secured in hardened room. Breach is… not viable with current kit."
A second voice, cold and authoritative, crackled back. "Acknowledged. Hold position. The package is secure. The secondary asset is in play. Proceed to diversionary exfil. Clean up the site."
Thomas's blood ran cold. "Secondary asset…" He whirled to Daniel. "They're not trying to get in anymore. This whole thing… the breach, the firefight… it was a distraction."
Daniel's face hardened. "For what? What's the 'package'?"
Before Thomas could answer, a new, heavier sound began outside. A low, mechanical drone. Then a rhythmic, metallic clack-clack-clack as something was mounted against the nursery door.
"They're planting breaching charges on the outside," Daniel said, watching a thermal imager outline the shapes. "They're not trying to get in. They're trying to make sure we can't get out."
Elara cried out, a deep, guttural sound of effort and pain. Hannah glanced at the monitor beside the bed. "I see the head! Elara, you're doing perfectly. Again! Push!"
Elara pushed, the sound swallowed by the sudden, wrenching CRACK of explosives detonating against the reinforced nursery door. The panic room didn't shake, but the camera feed for that hallway dissolved into static.
In the terrible, suspended moment between the explosion and the next contraction, Thomas's theory solidified with dreadful certainty. The siege, the violence, the danger—it was all theater. A spectacular, terrifying show to pull every resource, every thought, to this exact spot.
To leave something—or someone—else completely unprotected.
Elara gasped, gripping Hannah's hand. "Something's… wrong. The pressure… it's different."
Hannah looked at the monitor, then up, her professional calm fracturing for the first time. "The first baby is crowning. But the second… the second twin's heart rate is dropping. Elara, we need to get this baby out now."
The enemy was at the gates. The fortress was sealed. And inside, a tiny heart was faltering. The distraction was over. The real objective was in motion, and in the confines of the panic room, a new, more intimate battle for life had begun.