Chapter 7 #2
We cross the courtyard in the path the previous occupants had cleared.
The next street is worse. A fireball has had its way with this block at some point, and the evidence is thorough.
Everything on both sides scorched, the road surface buckled from heat, and the shells of vehicles reduced to silhouettes.
The fires here are past their peak, burning low and settled into themselves, which makes the light strange. Orange and inconsistent, throwing shadows that move independently of the objects casting them. We move through it faster than I expect us to be able to.
I realize, somewhere in the second block, that we're moving as a unit in a way we weren't at the start. The rhythm has settled. I know roughly when he's about to change direction from the shift in his hand before the movement, and I adjust without being pulled.
He's slowed to my stride length without making it a discussion. The math of two people moving through the same obstacle course has become one calculation instead of two separate ones.
I note this.
"Where did you come from," I ask, because the silence has become conversational rather than tactical. I've been carrying the question since the facility.
"Before the contract?"
"Yes."
A pause.
"Military," he says, "different kind."
"Different kind, meaning?"
"The kind that doesn't exist on paper."
I absorb that.
"And then you ended up in a facility running experiments on omegas." Something in his jaw flutters.
"That fucking part wasn't in the briefing," he grits out.
"What was in the briefing?"
"Security contract. Controlled research environment. Standard containment protocols. That sort of stuff."
He moves us around a section of collapsed rebar.
"It was a more honest briefing than most I've worked from. Which tells you something about the industry."
"It tells me the bar is low."
"The bar is underground," he says.
We reach a wider avenue, or what was once, before the city decided to stop maintaining it.
The scale opens up here; more sky is visible, which means more smoke is visible.
The horizon is a gradient from dirty orange at ground level to something darker higher up, where the smoke has accumulated and settled in.
I keep looking at it. I know I should be scanning for threats. I am scanning for threats, but some part of my attention keeps returning to the sky, to the fact that it exists and I can see it, and nobody is going to come into my room and inject me while I'm doing it.
"Hey," Colt says. I realize I've slowed down.
"Sorry." I pick up the pace. He doesn't ask. He just adjusts, and we continue.
I take one more look at the smoke-stained sky and add it to the small, private collection of things that are already different from three hours ago. The roar comes again from behind us this time. It’s gaining on us.
Colt's assessment is immediate. I can feel it in how he moves, the recalculation happening at speed, the route options closing and opening in whatever map he's running in his head. He pulls us left into a covered passage between two buildings.
It’s narrow, dark, and the kind of space that requires single-file, his hand shifting to my shoulder again to navigate me through first.
"Straight through," he says quietly, "don't stop."
The passage is dark and tight and smells like the building has been sealing its own air for years. My shoulder brushes the wall once. I correct. Ahead, the exit rectangle is slightly brighter than the interior, the next street opening beyond it.
I come out the other side and move to the right to clear space. He follows in the same breath, and then we're both pressed against the wall of the exit. The roaring passes to the left of the passage and continues north and fades. He's very close, and I’m acutely aware of it.
The narrow exit doesn't leave a lot of options on that front.
"It's moving away," I say.
"Yes."
"Different direction than before."
"Yes."
"Which could mean it's not tracking us specifically. Could be the fire."
"Could be."
His eyes are on the street. Not on me. The professional focus of someone doing the thing they're supposed to be doing.
I'm also doing the thing I'm supposed to be doing. Both of us are definitely doing the things we're supposed to be doing.
"Colt," I ask.
"Mm."
"Earlier. When we were behind the beam." I pause, choosing the precision of the words, "you said something."
A moment goes by.
"I know what I said," he says.
"I'm not asking you to clarify it. I'm just noting that I heard it." His jaw works once.
"Noted," he says, and the word has the same feeling as don't read into it did forty minutes ago. A door is held at a specific angle, neither open nor closed.
We move off the wall and back into the street, and the city continues its ongoing process of being destroyed around us. His hand finds mine again with the same inevitability as before, and neither of us makes it a discussion.
"Defensible structure," I say, returning to the original objective, "northwest quadrant from here, based on what I saw from the third floor earlier, the building with the intact roof two blocks over. Good sightlines. Multiple exits from the fire escape assessment I did on the way up."
He glances at me.
"You were planning an exit route while you were standing at that window," he says.
"I'm always planning an exit route. It's a lifestyle at this point."
Something shifts in his expression. Moves through quickly. Lands somewhere I don't have full visibility on.
"Northwest," he says.
"Northwest," I confirm.
We head northwest, two people and a city on fire. Whatever the hell is roaring somewhere in the distance, and the smoke above us filters what remains of the light into something amber and strange. It’s almost beautiful if you don't think about what's making it.
I don't think about what's making it. I watch where we're going, and I stay close. I hold onto the thread of here and now with both hands, the way you hold onto things when you've been in a small room so long that the outside world is almost too large to look at directly.
One block.
Then another.
His grip is steady in mine.
The city is burning around us like it has nothing else to do.
To be continued.
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-Jenna Malice
Continue reading for a sneak peek at Book 1, Omega Protocol