I'd be grateful for your monthly votes, recommendation votes, and continued readership. Thank you so much!
Vicky Davis's blonde hair was soaked in blood. A conspicuous bullet hole gaped between her brows and her pale forehead, and her unfocused eyes stared straight at them.
The older guard's hand rested on his holster. When he saw a figure moving inside the meeting room through the glass door, muscle memory overpowered reason.
He raised his sidearm and pulled the trigger. "Don't move!"
The crash of a bullet punching through the glass rang out at the same time as the younger guard's cry of alarm.
Beyond the bullet hole, Beta's figure lurched as the bullet struck his ballistic plate with a dull thud. The older guard kept his finger tight on the trigger, but the agile figure used the impact to execute a clean sideways roll across the conference table, vanishing behind it in an instant.
A semiautomatic pistol had to be fired in rhythm: pull the trigger, wait for the slide to return, then pull again.
But the older guard completely lost his composure in the sudden crisis. He treated his semiautomatic pistol as if it were a fully automatic weapon, clamping down on the trigger and refusing to let go. He held it down and frantically aimed at the conference table for a full two seconds, but not another bullet came out. Then a shot came from behind the table, knocking him to the floor and rendering him unconscious.
The younger guard drew his pistol and, shouting hysterically toward the meeting room, began pulling the trigger.
"Bang, bang, bang!" Fifteen bullets poured out in a panic, until the magazine was completely empty and the slide locked back with a click.
Yet his index finger kept pulling the trigger mechanically. The empty