Their voices sounded too loud, the night too quiet. The shelling had stopped a few hours before, and now her team was being sent in, not to clear civilians or track down retreating insurgents, but to raid one of the larger houses, a known site of terrorist activity, and get whatever they could. Weapons. Intel.

“Rios,” she said, “in position.”

Position, in this case, was the side entrance of the house.

Three stories tall and still mostly intact, despite a week of heavy fire.

Intact, but empty. A drone had picked up the insurgents’ evacuation earlier that day.

The scope on her rifle cut through the dark as she nudged the door open, heard the mirroring steps of the other three soldiers cutting predetermined courses through the house.

Rios took the first floor, went from room to room, the camera in her helmet recording the remnants of maps tacked to walls, papers on a low

wood table. She’d nearly reached the end of the circuit when she heard the sound.

A whistle.

It split the air, getting louder, and louder. Rios knew what that noise meant, they all did.

“Down!” she shouted, the instant before the shell hit.

The world rocked, the force slamming Rios sideways, her ears ringing. She rolled onto her back—the explosion had sheared off the building’s top floor, sent pieces of the second crumbling down onto the first.

Onto her.

Rios was scrambling to her feet when the ceiling fell, stone and wood buckling. She threw herself under a table, felt the wood crack and then give, the weight of rock and rubble crushing her against the floor. For a long second, the world fell.

And then it stopped.

Rios tried to move, but she couldn’t. Her visor was cracked, her limbs pinned beneath the table, the table pinned beneath the wreckage.

Her ribs strained against the pressure on her chest. Rios tried to drag in breath, but the air was dust and debris, and she ended up coughing, retching. Her lungs strained. She felt like she was drowning.

Her ears stopped ringing, replaced by the white noise of static.

“Fallon, come in!” she gasped.

Nothing.

“Jackson!”

Nothing.

“Mendez?”

Nothing.

The building groaned. Shuddered. She had to get out. Had to get free before the rest of the place came down. But she couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

Through her broken visor, she saw the rubble shift, the stones slipping as the building swayed around her. Rios squeezed her eyes shut and pushed—pushed against the table, against the rubble, against the rock, willing it to move, begging it to let her out. She tried, with the last of her air, the last of her strength. But it wasn’t enough. The rocks didn’t move. The table didn’t shift. Her lungs screamed, and then even that pain faded, and she felt herself slipping. Felt the darkness closing over her.

And then—

Rios was falling.