Chapter 6 - The Broken Mirror
"Run!" David roared.
He shoved me violently behind the steel wheel assembly of the freight car just as a burst of suppressed gunfire ripped through the air. The bullets struck the rusted iron with deafening, metallic clangs—*thwack-thwack-thwack*—sparks illuminating the dark gravel like deadly fireflies.
"They're not trying to arrest us, Madison!" David shouted over the chaos. "They're here to erase us!"
The tactical squad moved with ruthless military discipline. Two men advanced along the left flank, while two kept suppressive fire on our position. Through the glare of the spotlights, I recognized the man leading the assault: Marcus Vance, Julian’s personal bodyguard and former private military contractor.
"Marcus!" I screamed, leaning out from behind the wheel. "Stop! It's Madison! Call Julian right now!"
A bullet struck the concrete tie four inches from my foot, sending sharp stone shards into my cheek.
"He already answered to Julian, Miss Vance!" Marcus's cold, amplified voice echoed under the viaduct. "The orders are absolute. Clean sweep."
They weren't even pretending anymore. My brother had signed my death warrant the moment I walked out of that study.
"Down here!" David hissed, grabbing my wrist with surprising strength.
He dragged me toward an open drainage culvert that ran beneath the rail bed, a concrete pipe barely four feet wide slick with stagnant water and industrial slime.
"I can't fit in there!" I cried, looking at the black, putrid tunnel.
"Do you want to live?" David demanded, his gray eyes blazing with desperate fury. "Move!"
He shoved me inside first. I dropped onto my hands and knees into four inches of foul, freezing runoff. My designer clothes were instantly soaked, the stench of oil and decay filling my throat, but the primal urge to survive took over. Behind us, another burst of gunfire chewed through the entrance of the pipe, ricocheting violently off the curved concrete.
David scrambled in behind me, hauling a heavy iron grate across the pipe's mouth with a grunt of immense effort.
"Keep crawling!" he ordered, panting heavily. "It empties out into the flood basin near Industrial Boulevard. It's three hundred yards!"
We crawled through the suffocating dark, our knees scraping against jagged stones and broken glass. Every few seconds, the deep, bass thud of boots running across the tracks echoed above our heads.
By the time we tumbled out of the culvert's exit into the overgrown brush of the Trinity River greenbelt, my hands were bleeding, my face streaked with tears and soot, my breath coming in ragged, wheezing gasps.
Across the muddy levee, the glittering skyline of downtown Dallas mocked us. Billions of dollars in corporate glass and steel, towering into the starry sky, while the true heirs to that wealth crawled through sewage.
David collapsed onto his back in the tall weeds, clutching his right side.
"David?" I scrambled over to him, panic clutching my throat. "David, what's wrong?"
I pulled back his canvas jacket. A dark, sticky stain was spreading rapidly across his woolen shirt.
"It's just a graze," he lied through gritted teeth, his face turning an alarming shade of gray in the moonlight.
I pressed my hands against his ribs. Hot blood welled between my fingers. A bullet had torn through his side, leaving a ragged, three-inch furrow that was bleeding profusely.
"You're shot," I sobbed, tearing the hem of my cardigan to create a makeshift bandage. "You're bleeding out! We need a hospital—"
"No hospitals," David gasped, seizing my wrist with trembling, bloodstained fingers. "They own the private clinics. The ERs have automatic police notification for gunshot wounds. Julian’s people monitor the databases. You take me to a hospital, and we're dead on the gurney within twenty minutes."
"Then where do we go?" I wept, tying the wool tightly around his waist, my chest heaving with terror. "Where can we possibly hide from them?"
David looked up at the towering glass monolith of the Vance Tower, rising like a black dagger in the center of the city.
"Frank Miller," David whispered, his breathing growing shallower. "The head of security. He’s retiring next month. He lives on a small ranch outside Waxahachie. He kept the original drives, Madison. The real Aegis manifests."
"Why didn't you use them four years ago?"
"Because Frank was scared! He has a daughter! But he kept them as life insurance in case your father ever decided to clean house," David murmured, his head rolling to the side. "If Frank is still alive... he has the proof that can tear your family's empire down to the bedrock."
I looked at the bleeding, broken man who had thrown his life into a meat grinder just to keep me breathing. The naive, pampered girl who had lived inside my skin for thirty years died in that muddy ditch.
I stood up, wiping the blood and mud from my face with the back of my hand.
"Hold on, David," I whispered, setting my jaw. "Just hold on."
May you like
I hauled him to his feet, draping his heavy arm over my shoulders, and began the agonizing march toward the highway.
***
