The choice crystallizes with brutal clarity: immediate casualties versus future ones. Known losses versus potential threats.
Command decisions. The kind that leaves scars whether you choose right or wrong.
"You have ten seconds to reconsider," she continues. "After that, this gets messy."
I study her face, looking for any sign of bluff or hesitation. Find none.
She means it. Every word.
Which means I need to decide what I'm willing to die for, and what I'm willing to kill for.
Ten seconds.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
Six.
Five.
The ground shudders beneath my boots like the earth itself objects to our standoff. Dust cascades from overhead beams with the sound of grinding stone.
Four.
A low rumble builds in the ruins, vibrating through bone and sinew. The sound that precedes avalanches and building collapses.
Three.
"What—" Ressa begins.
The western wall explodes inward.
Not metaphorically. Not gradually. The ancient stonework simply disintegrates in a thunderous cascade of limestone blocks and mortar dust. Where moments before stood a barrier twenty feet high and three feet thick, now gapes a wound bleeding rubble and choking clouds of pulverized rock.
I dive left as a chunk of masonry as a war-axe whistles past my head. Ressa rolls right, her soldiers scattering like startledravens. The careful positioning of our standoff dissolves into pure survival instinct.
Move. Think later.
Another section of wall tilts inward with the grinding inevitability of geological time compressed into seconds. Support beams crack like breaking bones. Overhead, the remaining roof structure sags under redistributed weight.
"The prisoner!" Ressa shouts over the growing roar of structural collapse.
Darian Thorne screams as debris rains around the interrogation post. A limestone block as large as a barrel crashes down three feet from where he's bound, sending up a geyser of dust and stone fragments.
Shit.
I sprint toward him through falling masonry, dodging chunks of architecture that would crush a skull like an egg. Behind me, Ressa moves with the same desperate efficiency, her blade clearing smaller debris from our path.
Enemy or not, we need him alive.
"Cut the restraints!" I bellow.
"Already on it!"
Her knife parts the ropes with surgical precision while I grab Thorne under both arms. The man weighs more than expected—too much rich food and not enough honest labor—but adrenaline makes us all stronger.
