The standoff on the Bridge felt like a wire stretched to the snapping point. The air was thick with the copper tang of blood, the ozone of discharged weapons, and the humid, raw heat of fifteen hundred men who had finally tasted the air of freedom.
Halloway and his North Block crew stood like a cornered animal, shotguns braced, eyes darting between Sarah's steady aim and the massive, looming presence of Lou and the South Block army. The physical Bridge didn't move, but the power dynamic was shifting beneath their feet like quicksand.
"Mendoza, Jenkins," Sarah commanded, her voice cutting through the low, predatory growl of the crowd. "Take the King. We're moving to the perimeter. Now!"
Mendoza reached for the handles of the gurney, but he didn't get to move it.
Donny's hand shot out, his fingers—still pale and trembling from the sepsis—gripping Mendoza's wrist with a strength that shouldn't have been there. He shook his head, a slow, pained movement that sent a spike of vertigo through his healing brain.
"No," Donny rasped.
"Donny, we have to go," Sarah hissed, her eyes never leaving Halloway. "The Warden is bolting. If we don't move now, we lose him, and the North turns this into a massacre the second the State Police show up."
"If we leave now," Donny said, his voice gaining a gravelly resonance that silenced the men closest to him, "this place burns. And the neighborhood burns with it."
With a grunt of pure, agonizing effort, Donny swung his legs over the side of the gurney. The movement was clumsy, his coordination hampered by the post-operative neurological fog, but his intent was absolute.
"Donny, stay down!" the nurse cried out, reaching for him. "Your intracranial pressure—"
"Help me up," Donny ordered, looking directly at Lou.
Lou hesitated for only a second before stepping forward. The massive man acted as a human pillar, sliding his arm under Donny's shoulder. On the other side, Donny grabbed the heavy chrome IV pole, using it as a makeshift staff. He stood, his body swaying like a mast in a storm, his hospital gown fluttering in the draft from the shattered glass.
A chorus of protests erupted. From the South, Johnny yelled for him to get back down. From the North, Halloway's men shifted nervously, their fingers tightening on triggers as the "Ghost" they tried to kill rose from the grave.
"Listen to me!" Donny roared. The effort cost him; he coughed, a spray of red spotting his lip, but he didn't buckle. He turned his head slowly, looking past Sarah, past the guns, straight at the North Block guards.
"Halloway! Riley! Look at me!" Donny pointed the IV pole toward the North line.
"You've spent ten years taking the Warden's 'Gold' to look the other way. You think you're soldiers? You're just janitors cleaning up a coward's mess! The Warden is at the gate right now. He's leaving you here to take the fall for the 'riot' he triggered!"
Halloway's face was a mask of sweat and indecision. "Shut up, 4492! We have orders!"
"Orders from a man who isn't here?" Donny countered. He took a staggering step forward, forcing Lou to move with him. He was now in the center of the Bridge, the literal and figurative bridge between two armies.
"Look at the men behind me," Donny gestured to the sea of orange and denim from the South. "They have every reason to tear you apart. And look at the people outside that gate," he pointed to the flickering orange glow of the neighborhood flares. "Those are your neighbors. Your families. You want to start a war today? You'll be fighting your own blood."
The Bridge went deathly silent. Even the helicopters seemed to hover with bated breath.
"I'm not asking for a surrender," Donny said, his voice dropping to a low, commanding thrum. "I'm asking for a truce. The 'Gold' is gone. The payroll is in Miller's hands. The only thing left to save is your lives. Peace... or we all die on this glass. Your choice."
Sarah watched the North Block guards. She saw the barrels of the shotguns slowly, almost imperceptibly, begin to dip. They weren't looking at Halloway anymore; they were looking at each other. They saw the truth in Donny's eyes—the clarity of a man who had seen the bottom and survived.
"He's right," a voice came from the back of the North line. It was Riley. He lowered his weapon completely. "The Warden bailed. I ain't dying for a guy who's halfway to the airport."
One by one, the North Block weapons clattered to the floor.
Donny exhaled, a long, shuddering breath that nearly took him to his knees. He leaned his forehead against the cool metal of the IV pole, his eyes meeting Sarah's.
"The Bridge held," he whispered.
"It held," Sarah replied, her hand finally moving away from her holster. She looked at the North, then the South. "Lou, Johnny—"
The tension on the Bridge didn't just break; it solidified into a single, lethal point of contact. While the other North Block guards let their shotguns clatter to the linoleum, Captain Halloway remained a jagged island of defiance. His face was flushed a deep, panicked purple, and his hands shook, but the barrel of his Remington was still leveled squarely at the center of Donny's chest.
"Donny, don't," Sarah warned, her voice a sharp intake of breath. She stepped forward, her own weapon half-raised, but the sea of South Block inmates behind her surged like a tide. Lou's hand was a heavy weight on Donny's shoulder, trying to anchor him, but the King was done being anchored.
Donny ignored the warnings. He ignored the vertigo that made the Bridge floor feel like the deck of a sinking ship. He shoved the IV pole forward like a lance, using it to vault himself toward Halloway. Every step was a battle against his own failing nervous system—a war of neuro-motor synapses firing through the fog of trauma.
He didn't stop until the cold, oily metal of Halloway's shotgun was pressed directly against the thin cotton of his hospital gown, right over the steady, thumping rhythm of his heart.
"Do it," Donny whispered. The sound was low, but in the sudden vacuum of the Bridge, it echoed like a thunderclap.
Halloway's finger whitened on the trigger. "Get back, 4492. I'll open you up. I swear to God, I'll finish the job."
"Then finish it," Donny growled, leaning his weight into the barrel, forcing Halloway to take a half-step back. "But look around you, Captain. Look at your 'army.' Riley's done. Jenkins is with Miller. You're standing on a glass bridge in the middle of a blackout, holding a weapon that only has enough shells for a few of us. There are fifteen hundred men behind me who haven't had a reason to hope in ten years. You give them a martyr, and they won't just kill you—they'll erase you."
Donny's eyes were locked on Halloway's, a predatory stare that didn't belong to a sick man. It was the look of the man who had survived the "Gold" wars, the man who had built an empire from nothing.
"You strike me," Donny continued, his voice a cold, rhythmic chant, "and my army puts you down before my body hits this floor. You put that weapon away, and you might live long enough to see a courtroom. Decide. Right now. Are you a soldier, or are you just a dead man holding a piece of lead?"
Halloway looked past Donny's shoulder. He saw Lou, whose shadow cast a monstrous shape across the spiderwebbed glass. He saw the inmates from the South—men with sharpened shivs and eyes full of a decade's worth of debt. He saw Sarah Miller, the "Shadow Warden," her face a mask of absolute, professional execution.
The Captain's chest heaved. The sweat from his forehead dripped onto the receiver of the shotgun. The silence stretched until it was agonizing, a physical pressure on the eardrums of everyone on the Bridge.
Then, the tension snapped.
Halloway's shoulders slumped. The Remington didn't just lower; it fell. It hit the floor with a heavy, hollow thud that signaled the total surrender of the North Block's corrupt regime.
"I was just following the Warden's lead," Halloway croaked, his voice breaking.
"The Warden isn't a leader," Donny said, finally letting go of the IV pole and slumping back into Lou's massive arms. "He's a ghost. And it's time we went hunting."
Sarah didn't waste a second. She stepped over the discarded shotgun, her hand already reaching for her zip-ties. "Mendoza, Jenkins—secure Halloway and Riley. Lou, Johnny—get your men to the perimeter, but keep the line. No one touches the gates until I say so. We do this by the book, or the book will be used to bury us."
She looked at Donny, who was gray-faced and shivering, the adrenaline finally deserting him. She reached out, her hand lingering on his cheek for a fraction of a second—a "No-Badge" moment that was witnessed by two thousand people and ignored by all of them.
"You stayed gold, Donny," she whispered.
"Get him, Sarah," Donny panted, his eyes closing as the exhaustion took him. "Get the Warden. End it."
Sarah stood up, her jaw set, her Sergeant's stripes gone but her authority absolute. "With me," she barked to her Clean Team. "We're going to the gate."