Huang Yanyan's POV
The safehouse walls shook with the roar of boots outside, Zhao's strike team closing in—twenty men, armed heavy, their headlights slashing through the grimy windows like knives. My hands tightened around the rifle I'd snatched from the gear pile, the cold metal grounding me as my heart slammed against my ribs. Yang Wei groaned on the cot, blood seeping through the stitches Mom and I had patched, his face pale but his eyes flickering open—alive, barely. We were cornered, bleeding, and out of time, but I wasn't going down—not like this, not ever.
"Yanyan!" Haoyu's voice cut through, sharp and fierce, his knife glinting as he moved beside me, his bruised ribs not slowing him. "They're at the door—plan?"
"Fight," I said, my voice steel, my eyes meeting his—fear there, yes, but trust too, the kind that kept us alive through Shanghai, the boat, the citadel. "We hold this room—bottleneck them, thin them out."
