“I’m in one piece,” Rain said, as he climbed to his feet. “What the hell happened? Who fucked up?”

“He got wind of us,” I said. I started to stand, then fell hard as pain jumped up my leg. In the gloom, I started to reach for my leggings, and pain ran up my arm.

I moved more gingerly, one eye on the building and the army I knew was in there. A deeper cut in my leg, that was starting to burn. A cut at my upper arm, shallow but long, from elbow to shoulder. Another deeper cut at my forearm, short but grave enough that I could have buried a pinky along its length. No burning there.

My boot had been bleached where the acid had struck, but it didn’t look like the material had been eaten through. The damage was seemingly worse with my breastplate, with corrosion clearly evident, the metal cracking into what looked like scales, flecking off.

The front doors of the building weren’t on a face that faced us, but were to our left, opening out in the direction of the road and where our group was. They swung open, an aperture I remembered was large enough to drive a truck through, and immediately, our reinforcements acted. I saw the orbs as fleeting images, shot at high speed, grown large and sailing in twos and threes to detonate on impact.

They were shooting out of the treeline.

Red’s splashes appeared. I was too far away to do anything about them. One appeared a few dozen feet from the building, small but bright. Then the second was two-thirds of the way to the treeline.

The third erupted, felling five or six trees all at once, tearing up the earth around them, in a threshing of lawnmower-like blades writ large.

It was pretty clearly telegraphed, but I wasn’t sure if they knew enough to read into that telegraphing.

My dad, at least, was okay. The glowing orbs returned, a fresh surge of fire that peppered the one face of the building.

Our opportunity to get clear.

I saw my mom get flung, much like the grenades were being flung in one direction, my mom was sent in the other.

Sveta didn’t follow though. She was still at the building, still looming over the hole in the roof. I felt nervous, seeing that. I heard the gunfire, automatic weapons firing in bursts, and I didn’t see her getting out of the way.

A part of me had been afraid that this was going to happen. It was always a danger, for anyone who struggled like I’d struggled, like Sveta struggled every day. Escapism was common, and there was a seductive, ever-present desire to escape for good, in both senses of the word ‘good’. To go out with glory. One of the boys at the group therapy sessions at the hospital had talked about it a lot.

I didn’t get the impression Sveta was doing that. Not consciously.