Fall Back

​POV Jarrah 

​My chest felt as though it were clamped in an iron vise. The burning weight of the oak beam pressed down across my ribs, threatening to snap bones if I shifted the wrong way. Pain burned through my side, but the fire inside my chest was far worse.

​Ten yards away, Alastair’s lead enforcer, a hulking brute known as Vane, stepped over the shattered marble, racking the slide of a heavy 12-gauge shotgun.

​"End of the line, Calaby," Vane growled through his tactical mask, raising the barrel straight toward my face.

​I reached for my sidearm, but it had slid three feet out of reach into the burning rubble. I braced myself to take the hit, flexing my muscles to hurl my upper body forward.

​THUD-THUD-THUD.

​Three high-velocity rounds tore through Vane’s shoulder and chest, spinning him around before he could touch his trigger. He spat blood, stumbling backward into the burning frame of the doorway.

​I looked up.

​Malia stood atop the smoking rubble of the grand staircase landing, holding a heavy tactical sniper rifle she had pulled from the armory rack near the hall. Her hair was pulled back, her face smeared with charcoal and sweat, her eyes burning with an intense, unyielding ferocity. She didn't look like a survivor anymore; she looked like an absolute predator.

​"Get up, Jarrah!" she screamed over the roar of the flames, cycling the bolt on the heavy rifle and taking down another incoming mercenary through the breach. "Move!"

​With a roar of agony, I pushed against the burning oak beam, heaving the weight off my chest and rolling out from under the debris. The air in the foyer was turning into a furnace; the wooden panelling on the upper walls was fully engulfed, sending embers falling like hot red snow.

​"Retreat to the secondary vault!" I roared into my tactical comms, pulling myself to my feet and grabbing a discarded assault rifle from the floor. "All units fall back through the east tunnel!"

​I looked up at Malia. "Malia, get down here! The roof is coming down!"

​Before she could move, Vane exploded out of the dust cloud. The heavy rounds had shattered his shoulder armor, but he was high on combat stimulants and fueled by pure rage. He tackled me around the waist, slamming me backward into the burning ruins of the dining hall archway.

​The rifle flew from my hands, scattering into the embers.

​Vane pinned me against the wall, driving a heavy tactical blade down toward my throat. I caught his wrists with both hands, my muscles straining to keep the serrated steel inches from my neck. The heat from the surrounding flames scorched the back of my neck, but all I could focus on was the lethal weight pressing down on me.

​"Alastair wants your head on a spike, bossman!" Vane snorted, pressing his full weight behind the blade.

​I slammed my forehead directly into his tactical helmet, cracking the visor. He grunted, his grip wavering for a fraction of a second. I used the opening to drive my knee violently into his groin, tearing myself free and spinning him around into the edge of a burning mahogany table.

​Vane swung wild with the knife, catching me across the forearm. Blood soaked through my sleeve, hot and slick, but I didn't feel the pain. I grabbed his outstretched arm, twisted his wrist until the bone popped, and slammed his head repeatedly into the heavy stone fireplace until he collapsed onto the burning floorboards, unconscious or dead.

​"Jarrah!"

​Malia’s voice cut through the roar of the fire. She reached the bottom of the ruined stairs, firing three quick suppressive shots behind us as more headlamps flashed through the front courtyard.

​I grabbed her hand, our fingers locking tight, sweat, blood, and ash smearing between our palms.

​"The vault," I rasped, dragging her down the narrow service corridor toward the rear of the estate. "We lock the steel doors and trigger the perimeter charges."

​We sprinted through the dark, concrete passageway as the structural beams of the main house groaned and caved in behind us. The iron-reinforced vault door stood open at the end of the hall, a six-inch-thick slab of solid steel designed to withstand a military siege.

​We threw ourselves through the threshold. I slammed my hand against the hydraulic lock panel. The heavy door groaned, slowly sliding shut on its tracks.

​Through the narrow six-inch gap before the vault completely sealed, I saw a shadow step into the corridor.

​It wasn't a mercenary.

​It was Alastair himself. He wore a tailored coat covered in a fine layer of dust, holding a heavy glass detonator device in his hand. He wasn't looking at me. His cold, calculating eyes were locked entirely on Malia.

​Alastair raised a hand, showing us the blinking red LED on the device. A remote override connected directly to the estate's primary gas lines under the vault foundation.

​He smiled at the slow, terrifying, victorious curve of his lips.

​"Did you really think the vault was a safehouse, Malia?" Alastair’s voice echoed thinly through the narrowing gap of the closing steel door. "It's an oven."

​He pressed the red button just as the heavy vault doors slammed shut with a deafening THUD, sealing us in complete, pitch-black darkness.

​A second later, a low, gut-wrenching hum began vibrating through the floorboards beneath our feet.

​How would you like to handle the survival strategy in the vault?