Breed

Chapter Forty-eight

Linc never reconciled hoarding gear and weapons with who he wanted to be. He wasn't a soldier anymore. He wasn't a doomsday prepper, though you wouldn't know that looking in his basement. He wanted to be a teacher, a mentor, someone working to make a world that didn't need soldiers anymore.

But living through some of the worst days most people could imagine had turned him into a man who liked to be prepared. And as often as not, that preparation led to him holding a high-powered rifle, looking through a scope at a heavily fortified compound.

He was wearing civilian equivalents to the body armor he used in Afghanistan. He remembered telling Raphael why he did, when he could always undo getting shot. "Sometimes, the best outcome requires getting shot." It was true with Mayumi, and had been true half a dozen other times. He ejected the magazine on his rifle and checked. It was full, loaded with live rounds. He pushed it back into place, and took off the safety.

He kneeled to steady himself, and looked down the rifle's scope. The compound was still quiet, no alarms. He wondered if that meant Rox's power was working overtime to keep their ingress quiet.

He dragged the scope across the fence line. He needed to know where they entered to try and figure out where they were in the building. Otherwise, with a facility that size, he could very easily spend hours running around inside without bumping into them. There was a small strip of fence that curled up at the bottom. The fence wasn't six months old, so it wasn't natural warping. That had to be where they entered the facility.

He slung the rifle over his shoulder on a two-point harness, hoping he wouldn't have to put his finger anywhere near the trigger. These were government agents staffing this place, the good guys, even if maybe they were working on a program that was misguided.

That was when he heard a noise in the bushes behind him. He tensed. If it was a guard, if it was Irene, he might end up getting somebody hurt reacting too fast. But they were faster than he would have expected, faster than a person ought to be. He felt the press of a barrel against his head.

He'd never been shot in the head. Every wound and injury he'd come back from had always been in the trunk, or an extremity. He wondered idly in the back of his mind if he could come back from a gunshot in the head, as every muscle in his body coiled.

He dropped to one knee, rolling. A gunshot rang out over his head, deafening him. He twisted his body so his rifle came up and around. He managed to get it aimed at the dark figure, only for them to stomp it into the dirt as he fired. They had their gun raised already. "Fu-" Linc said, but was cut off by a gunshot.