25. Daniil #2
Turning around, I see men rounding the corner, but they’re not ours. Different uniforms, different weapons. Mikhail grabs my shoulder and drags me backward, taking off with me towards Yulian. We reach a table against the wall, and he flips it over, pulling me down behind it for cover.
Bullets start flying, and everything turns to chaos. Yulian pulls out two handguns, starts shooting with one, and slides the other across the floor to Mikhail.
Mateo throws something down for cover and runs away.
Wood splinters fly everywhere as bullets punch through the furniture, raining debris.
Bullets slam into the table, the walls, glass shattering from picture frames.
One of the Nozares men goes down screaming, clutching his leg.
Another drops silently with a hole in his chest.
Mikhail picks up the gun and starts firing down the hallway. Mateo throws himself around the corner just in time, disappearing behind the wall a second before the bullets tear through where he’d been standing.
Yulian’s shooting at guards but then stops to shout at us. “Don’t kill him!” Then shoves a gun into my hand. “Just in case,” he says, not looking at me, and then he turns around and keeps firing without stopping, unloading round after round.
I hear Mateo shouting orders from the other side, but I can’t make out the words over the ringing in my ears. Then I see Mikhail jerk twice, blood blooming across his shoulder.
“Shit,” he mutters and slumps against the floor next to me, blood pouring from the wounds, soaking his shirt. His eyes find mine, wide and unfocused.
“Fuck, you got hit?” Yulian asks, breathing hard. Bullets keep hitting the table, chunks of wood exploding off the edges.
He’s going to die.
“You need to cover us, Daniil. You need to shoot.”
I stare at Yulian with my mouth open, unable to form a single word. He’s already pressing something hard against Mikhail’s shoulder wounds, his entire white shirt is crimson, after the stabbing and now getting shot.
Please don’t leave me…
“Where is the police and our guards?” Yulian shouts, pressing down harder on Mikhail. “Shoot. Now, before we all die here.”
My hands are shaking so badly I can barely hold the gun. I peek around the edge of the table and squeeze the trigger a few times, not even aiming, just firing. The recoil jerks my arms. I duck back behind cover as bullets slam into the wall right where my head was, plaster exploding in chunks.
More yelling echoes down the hall. Then more gunfire erupts behind them, different weapons, different voices.
Backup?
Peeking out from behind the table to see where the new round of gunfire’s coming from, something hits my chest multiple times like a sledgehammer.
The force of it knocks me completely off balance and sends me flying backward, my body slamming into the marble floor so hard the impact rattles through my bones and makes my skull bounce off the polished stone.
Everything goes quiet for a second. I don’t understand what just happened.
Why does it feel like this? Like someone reached inside and crushed my ribs with their bare hands?
I try to breathe, but my lungs refuse to work, won’t pull in air no matter how hard I fight for it. Panic starts creeping in at the edges as I keep trying and failing, my body betraying me in the worst possible way.
Then the pain hits. It doesn’t build gradually, it just detonates all at once and spreads outward in devastating waves. My back arches off the floor involuntarily, and I try to scream, but nothing comes out because I still can’t fucking breathe.
I force my head up just enough to look down at myself, and my entire hoodie is drenched in blood.
So much of it that the purple fabric looks black, clinging to my skin and spreading out beneath me on the white marble in a growing pool that reflects the dim emergency lighting.
My hand moves to press against my chest, and when I pull it away, my palm is completely covered, blood dripping down my wrist.
Oh…
I’ve been shot.
The panic fully sets in now, clawing up my throat as I keep trying and failing to pull in air.
My lungs are burning, useless, and every attempt feels like drowning.
I press both hands against the wound desperately, but I can feel hot blood pulsing out between my fingers with every frantic beat of my heart.
It won’t stop. No matter how hard I press, it just keeps coming.
Mikhail…
His name cuts through the panic more than anything else. I need to see him. Need to tell him something important, but my thoughts are scattering, fragmenting into pieces I can’t hold onto, but I can’t think past the pain or the desperate need for air that won’t come.
He suddenly grabs me, his eyes are completely wild. Panicked in a way I’ve never seen before. He’s trying to say something, mouth moving frantically, hands grabbing at me, but I can’t hear him. The ringing in my ears drowns out everything else.
The fighting moves further down the hallway, more gunfire erupting, glass shattering and raining down somewhere close, but it all sounds muffled and far away.
Black-and-white dots start crowding my vision, spreading fast across everything. Mikhail’s screaming something at me now. I can see his face contorted with terror, see his mouth forming words over and over, but the sound barely reaches me anymore.
Everything’s fading, getting quieter, darker, colder.
Yulian appears beside him and shoves Mikhail out of the way, pressing something hard against me. “I got you.”
Mikhail’s face is the last thing I see, twisted with terror and grief, before everything goes black.