Chapter 3 Kimberly
KIMBERLY
The impact knocks the breath out of me so hard my lungs forget what they’re for.
I slam into the stainless-steel prep counter with my right hip and shoulder at the same time, the metal ringing like a bell struck too close to my skull. For half a second the world goes white, then orange, then a sick, swimming gray that makes the floor tilt under my feet.
Pain detonates up my side, hot and electric.
I look down and see red spreading fast across the sleeve of my T-shirt, darkening the fabric like ink dropped into water.
“Oh—fuck,” I gasp.
Something sliced my arm on the way down. A shard of glass. A flying bolt. I don’t even know. I just know my skin is open and bleeding like it’s offended at me.
The alarms kick in overhead, shrill and animal and relentless, and the emergency strobes start pulsing red-white-red-white, turning the smoke into something alive and hostile that breathes around us.
“Kim!” Mara screams from somewhere to my left. “Kim, talk to me!”
“I’m up,” I choke out, even though I’m not all the way sure that’s true yet. “I’m up, I’m fine, I’m—”
Another explosion booms somewhere deeper in the building, closer to the kitchen entrance this time, and the floor jumps under my feet like it’s trying to buck me off.
The dining room dissolves into screaming.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
High-pitched panic shrieks. Deep, animal bellows. Someone sobbing the word no over and over like a prayer.
Smoke pours in through the blown-out kitchen doorway in rolling, chemical-thick waves that taste like burning plastic and gasoline and something metallic that coats my tongue and makes my eyes sting so hard tears pour down my face whether I want them to or not.
“Everybody up!” I shout, my voice coming out raw and hoarse and way louder than I know it can get. “Move! Front exit, now! Leave your shit, leave your bags, just go!”
A man in a suit stands frozen at table three, staring at his overturned water glass like it personally betrayed him.
I grab his arm and haul him to his feet.
“Move your ass!” I scream in his face. “You can have a breakdown on the sidewalk, not in my dining room!”
He stumbles toward the door, coughing, eyes wild.
Mara is dragging one of the servers—Lily, nineteen years old and shaking so hard her knees are knocking together—toward the front.
“I can’t see, I can’t see,” Lily sobs.
“I’ve got you, baby, I’ve got you,” Mara keeps saying, her voice low and fierce and steady in a way that makes my chest ache. “Eyes on me, just walk toward my voice.”
A couple of customers are on the floor, either knocked down by the blast wave or frozen by shock.
“Get up!” I shout. “Up, up, up, come on!”
Someone drops a tray behind me.
It shatters like a gunshot.
The sound punches straight into my nervous system and turns it into static.
Another wave of heat rolls through the room.
The lights flicker and die completely.
We are suddenly in smoke and red strobe and screaming and alarms and nothing else.
“Kim!” Ishaan’s voice roars out of the kitchen, distorted and panicked. “They are blocking the back!”
My stomach drops through the floor.
“What?” I shout.
“They are here!” he yells. “There are men with guns at the service door!”
Of course there are.
Of fucking course there are.
I spin toward the kitchen, heart slamming so hard it hurts.
Through the smoke and flashing red light, I see them.
Boots.
Heavy. Black. Armored.
Three pairs, planted just inside the kitchen service entrance like they grew out of the tile.
I can’t see their faces.
I don’t need to.
“Back exit is blocked!” I scream to the dining room. “Nobody goes that way!”
People surge toward the front door instead, panic compressing the room into a bottleneck.
Someone goes down.
Two people trip over them.
The screaming gets louder.
The smoke gets thicker.
I stagger toward the kitchen anyway, ignoring the hot, wet pull of blood down my forearm and the way my side feels like it’s been caved in with a bat.
“Ishaan!” I shout. “How many?”
“I don’t know!” he yells back. “Three I can see, maybe more behind them!”
One of the booted figures raises a gun.
Not at us.
At the ceiling.
He fires.
The crack is deafening.
Plaster rains down in choking white clouds.
“Everybody get the fuck back!” he roars, his voice filtered and distorted through a mask.
The customers closest to the kitchen scream and scatter backward.
A woman drops her purse and crawls away from it like it’s on fire.
“They’re not here to rob us,” Mara pants, appearing at my side again. Her eyes are huge. “Kim, they’re not here to rob us.”
“I know,” I say hoarsely.
My arm is slick with blood.
My fingers are starting to go numb.
“Front exit only!” I shout again. “Keep moving! Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop!”
Another explosion hits somewhere out in the alley.
The building shudders.
The emergency strobes stutter.
A couple of ceiling tiles drop like dead birds.
“Oh my God,” someone wails.
The smoke is so thick now I can barely see six feet in front of me.
I taste copper.
I don’t know if it’s blood or wiring or my own mouth.
I grab the shoulder of a guy frozen in the aisle, his eyes glassy, his mouth opening and closing without sound.
“Hey,” I snap, shaking him hard. “Hey! Look at me!”
He blinks at me.
“You’re leaving,” I tell him. “You’re leaving right now.”
“I—I can’t find my wife,” he stammers.
“What’s her name?”
“Janet.”
“What does she look like?”
“Red hair. Blue dress.”
I shout, “JANET!”
A woman sobs, “I’m here, I’m here!”
They collide into each other and cling like shipwreck survivors.
“Go!” I scream at them. “Now!”
They bolt for the door.
The alarms outside get louder.
Sirens.
Police. Fire. Ambulance. Maybe all of them.
Not fast enough.
Never fast enough.
Mara grabs my good arm.
“You’re bleeding,” she says, voice tight with terror.
“I don’t care,” I snap. “Get everyone out.”
Another blast booms.
The pressure wave slams into my back and throws me forward.
I hit the floor hard, the air whooshing out of my lungs in a helpless, humiliating grunt.
My head bounces off tile.
Stars explode behind my eyes.
For a horrifying second I can’t feel my legs.
Then sensation crashes back in all at once and I scream.
Not from fear.
From pain.
“Kim!” Mara shrieks.
Hands grab my shoulders.
I shove them away and force myself onto my knees, swaying.
“I’m fine,” I lie. “I’m fine, I’m fine—”
Something warm pours down my face.
Blood.
Mine again.
“Jesus Christ,” I whisper.
The front door finally bursts open and a wave of smoke pours out into the street.
Fresh air rushes in like salvation.
“Go!” I scream at the last handful of customers. “Go now!”
They run.
Mara and Ishaan drag Lily toward the exit.
“I’m not leaving you!” Mara shouts over her shoulder.
“Get her out!” I yell back. “That’s an order!”
Another shot cracks.
This one closer.
My ears ring.
The boots in the kitchen start moving forward.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Predatory.
My heart slams against my ribs so hard I think something might break.
Oh God.
Oh God.
Oh God.
I stagger backward, trying to put myself between them and the last of my staff.
“Ishaan, go!” I scream.
He hesitates.
“GO!” I roar.
He runs.
The enforcers step into the kitchen proper now, their silhouettes huge and wrong in the smoke and flashing red light.
One of them raises his weapon.
At me.
Time does something weird.
Everything stretches.
The strobe freezes his mask into a skull grin.
The smell of burning plastic gets stronger.
My arm throbs in slow, wet pulses.
I think, absurdly, of my parents.
Of my dad teaching me how to flip falafel without breaking it.
Of my mom yelling at suppliers in three languages.
Of Varek Glimner’s smile.
Oh.
So this is the “example.”
I square my shoulders and lift my chin, even though my knees are shaking so hard I don’t know how I’m still upright.
“Get the fuck out of my restaurant,” I rasp.
He fires.
Not at me.
At the gas line behind the grill.
The explosion is immediate and deafening.
Heat slams into me like a wall.
The world goes white-hot.
I am airborne.
I hit the floor again.
Harder.
This time my vision doesn’t come back clean.
It swims.
It tunnels.
The edges go dark.
The last thing I hear is the roar of fire and the crackle of burning wood and someone—maybe me—screaming.
Then everything starts to slide sideways into smoke and pain and ringing silence.
The world slides back into focus in violent, stuttering frames.
Heat first.
Not warmth. Not ambient kitchen heat. This is an invasive, suffocating wall of fire that presses against my skin and crawls into my lungs like it wants to live there.
My throat spasms around a breath that comes out as a wet, tearing cough, and my vision pinholes down to a narrow tunnel rimmed in pulsing gray.
I push myself upright.
Or try to.
My palms skid on tile slick with something hot and sticky, and my elbows buckle immediately, dumping me back onto my side with a helpless, undignified grunt.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
My ears are ringing so hard it feels like someone is driving needles into my skull from the inside. The alarms are still screaming overhead, but they sound distant now, warped and underwater, like they’re happening in a different building entirely.
Smoke rolls over me in greasy waves, thick enough to chew, and every breath tastes like burning plastic, scorched meat, and copper.
Blood.
Mine.
I drag one knee under myself and force my body upright inch by inch, teeth clenched so hard my jaw trembles. My side screams in protest, a deep, structural pain that feels like something inside me shifted into the wrong place and stayed there.
My vision tunnels.
In.
Out.
In.
The strobe lights are still pulsing red-white-red, turning the smoke into a nightmare kaleidoscope.
Through it—
Something moves.
Fast.
Too fast.