Chapter 27

Trusted flag.

That's what the System called it when you let someone into your fire circle without reading their stack trace.

`[FLAG: TRUSTED — PROFESSOR CHEN — REVOKED]`

Revoked too late.

Damage done.

---

We left Floor Ten with a cage, a lie, and the handler smiling with Professor Chen's mouth through copper mesh.

The smile had been the worst part.

Not the copper.

Not the coordinates she'd sold upstream.

The smile that looked like tea and tensor lectures and the first adult on Alcatraz who hadn't treated us like loot on legs.

Marcus towed the cage on a server sled scavenged from a dead rack.

Ghost watched our six like we might fracture.

Elizabeth didn't look at the cage.

Maya didn't look at me.

I didn't blame her.

I blamed the System for making trust a combat stat you couldn't respec.

The handler had sold our coordinates upstream.

She'd worn kindness like a skin.

Tea.

Tensor lectures.

Patience on Alcatraz when the world was new and terrifying.

Every good memory reindexed in my head as exploit chain.

Rage came cold.

Useful.

Dangerous if you aimed it wrong.

"Ada," I said on the service lift between floors. "Status on her channel."

`[ADMIN: SPOOF ACTIVE — COVER: 9 MINUTES REMAINING]` `[FLAG: TRUSTED — REVOKED — PROPAGATING TO SUBSYSTEMS]`

Nine minutes of fake JSON telling the Purge Controller we were reborn on Alcatraz as level-ninety-nine null wraiths.

Delay.

Not absolution.

`[SYNC: 71%]`

Vance crackled once through the radio Marcus kept on low:

"—inner ring—children moving—"

Children.

Yellow zones.

The handler had known those coordinates because we'd trusted her with them.

I added a line to the mental wiki before we hit Floor Twelve:

*Party Rule 7: Stack trace before trust.*

Not formal yet.

Not until we earned it in blood.

Maya finally spoke without looking at me.

"Floor Twelve is psych," she said. "I read the wiki rumor thread."

"Rumor thread was right about Floor Five," I said.

"Rumor thread was right about a lot of things we ignored because we liked tea."

Fair hit.

I took it.

Ghost shifted his grip on the katana. "We move fast on Twelve. Psych floors scale with party size."

"And guilt," Elizabeth said quietly.

Nobody argued with that either.

Marcus checked the sled chain twice. Standard procedure. The handler's eyes followed his hands.

"You sold children," Marcus said—not to us. To the mesh. Voice flat. Military flat. The kind that meant violence was queued but not deployed.

The handler blinked Chen's eyes. "I optimized survival curves."

"Try again without the TED talk."

Silence.

Good silence.

Elizabeth adjusted the gag strap. Her fingers trembled once. She hid it in efficiency.

I watched Maya's profile in the lift's amber light. Jaw tight. Axe loose in her grip like she wanted something to hit that wouldn't shatter into `[ILLUSION]`.

"You okay?" I asked.

Wrong question.

Debugger habit—treat people like logs you could grep for errors.

"Functional," she said.

Better answer than I deserved.

The lift dinged. Floor Twelve. Psych module smell—ozone and something organic, like a hospital pretending to be a server farm.

Marcus took point. Ghost took high ground on the sled rail. Elizabeth center. Maya and I swapped flank without discussing it—muscle memory from fifty floors of almost dying together.

"Ping before trust," I said.

Marcus: "Already done."

Ghost: "Always."

Elizabeth: "New rule who dis."

Maya almost smiled. Almost.

---

We ran Floors Twelve through Seventeen on rage and procedure because grief without procedure becomes friendly fire, and we'd already had enough friendly fire for one apocalypse.

Floor Twelve was a mirror maze.

Not glass mirrors.

Memory mirrors.

The System pulled our worst-case party logs and rendered them in corridors that breathed like lungs.

I saw Maya's axe bury itself in my chest in reflection.

`[ILLUSION: PARTY BETRAYAL — MAYA]`

Stack Trace Sight tagged it `[SOURCE: PSYCH MODULE — FLOOR 12]` before my heart could believe it.

"Not real," I said.

My voice sounded thin.

Maya saw herself stepping aside while Enforcers deleted me.

Ghost saw himself selling our coords to a red UI panel.

Marcus saw himself shooting Elizabeth in the back during a med rotation.

Elizabeth saw herself letting Vance die on the radio while she sorted bandages by expiration date.

The handler had worn Professor Chen's face.

These mirrors wore ours.

Worse in a way.

Because we knew what we were capable of under pressure.

The maze tried to make us say it out loud.

First corridor: my reflection wore admin robes and deleted Maya with a gesture like closing a ticket.

Second corridor: Maya's reflection accepted a red UI handshake and pointed Enforcers at coordinates labeled *CHILDREN — YELLOW ZONE*.

My stomach turned.

Stack Trace Sight flared before my heart could believe either image.

I null-summoned my reflection until it shattered into orphan mesh IDs that dissolved like bad assets pulled from a live server.

Maya punched hers.

Knuckles split.

Reflection bled pixel static.

Ghost walked through his without looking—one-armed, still the coldest nerve in the party.

Marcus shot his.

Three rounds.

Center mass.

Reflection collapsed into error text.

Elizabeth photographed hers with steady hands.

"For therapy," she said.

"If we live."

"When," Marcus corrected.

No one argued.

At the maze exit Marcus made us pause.

"Name one real thing," he said. "Not reflection. Real."

Maya: "Your ugly scarf."

Ghost: "Elizabeth's terrible coffee."

Elizabeth: "Marcus snores."

I said: "Ghost steals my socks."

Ghost almost smiled.

"Combat socks," he said. "Different loot category."

`[+120 XP — SHARED]` `[SYNC: 74%]`

Humanity buff.

Max.

We needed it.

---

The maze wasn't done after the first reflection.

It looped.

Corridor after corridor of us failing each other in high definition.

Maya's second mirror showed her accepting a `[TRUSTED FLAG]` from a red UI panel and pointing Enforcers at our Alcatraz coordinates.

She shattered it with Surgical Strike before I could call source tag.

"Not me," she said. "Never me."

Ghost's second mirror had him removing his own `[STEALTH]` and shaking hands with Enforcer Prime.

He walked through it without looking because looking was a debuff.

"Reflections are lazy," he said. "They use last week's fear."

Marcus's mirror showed court-martial paperwork and Elizabeth's death certificate stamped APPROVED.

He fired three-round burst into the paperwork until the mirror became confetti.

Elizabeth's mirror played audio—Vance screaming, children counting, my voice saying *trust the professor*.

She recorded it.

"Evidence," she said. "Not prophecy."

My third mirror showed me alone at Floor Eighteen with root access, party deleted, smiling.

I null-summoned until my mana bled and the mirror became `[EXCEPTION: EGO NOT FOUND]`.

Stack Trace Sight showed the maze boss hidden in the hub:

`[ENTITY: MIRROR CORE — PSYCH MODULE]` `[WEAKNESS: REQUIRES CONSENSUS — PARTY PING]`

We pinged again.

Five meters.

Breathing.

Real.

The core shattered when all four pings returned OK at once.

`[+450 XP — SHARED]`

Marcus made us name one more real thing each.

I said: "Ada asked why."

Maya said: "Kevin snarks when he's scared."

Ghost said: "Marcus reloads when he's scared."

Elizabeth said: "We're all scared. We're here anyway."

Fourth loop hit harder.

The corridor narrowed until our shoulders brushed. The System wanted contact and confession in the same breath.

My reflection this time wasn't me—it was Day Zero Kevin. Solo queue. No party. Accepting `[TRUSTED FLAG: SYSTEM]` with shaking hands while San Francisco burned in the window behind him.

Stack Trace Sight screamed.

`[SOURCE: PSYCH MODULE — EXPLOIT: NOSTALGIA]`

"Kevin," Day Zero me said. "You were happier alone."

Maya's hand closed on my wrist. Real. Warm. Blood under her knuckles from punching glass.

"Ping," she said.

I pinged her.

`[MAYA — PING OK]`

I pinged myself because the wiki said you could and because I needed the proof.

`[KEVIN PARK — PING OK — SOURCE: PARTY]`

Day Zero Kevin dissolved into static.

Maya didn't let go until we cleared the hub.

"Sorry," I said.

"Later," she said. "Kill the core first."

We killed the core.

---

Floor Thirteen was silence.

Worse than combat.

Sound dampened to nothing except heartbeat and boot scrape and the whine of my mana regenerating too slow.

`[DEBUFF: COMMUNICATION — MUTED]` `[DEBUFF: ANXIETY — SUPPRESSED BY PARTY PROXIMITY]`

New buff?

I added it to the wiki mentally: *Party Proximity — suppresses solo panic when within five meters.*

Marcus used hand signals we'd drilled on Alcatraz.

Ghost pointed left.

Elizabeth pointed med kit at Maya's stitches—reopened slightly, blood dark.

Maya shook her head: later.

Always later.

The silence floor tried to make us whisper secrets.

I almost told Maya I was sorry for every time I'd optimized combat without asking how her shoulders felt.

Almost.

Silence wasn't consent.

We crossed by staying close enough to hear each other's breathing.

Halfway across, my overlay flickered a message from Ada—one line only:

`[ADMIN: DO NOT TRUST REFLECTIONS. TRUST PING.]`

I pinged each party member.

`[MAYA — PING OK]` `[GHOST — PING OK]` `[MARCUS — PING OK]` `[ELIZABETH — PING OK]`

Ping OK.

Party rule seven in practice.

At the exit, sound returned like a volume slider slammed to max.

Marcus swore.

Maya laughed once—sharp, surprised.

"Never doing that again," Elizabeth said.

"Add to wiki," I said.

She already had.

---

Halfway across Thirteen, my heartbeat became error beeps in the overlay.

`[BEEP]` `[BEEP]` `[BEEP]`

Elizabeth's pulse matched on my HUD—synced wrong, like lag.

Maya's didn't show.

Good.

Privacy.

Bad for debugging loneliness.

I stayed within three meters of Maya even when the corridor widened to tempt separation.

The System wanted solo panic.

Party proximity buff denied it.

`[DEBUFF: ANXIETY — SUPPRESSED — RANGE 5M]`

Ghost tapped my shoulder once—hand signal: *I'm here*.

Marcus tapped Elizabeth.

Elizabeth tapped Maya.

Chain of touch because sound was dead.

At the narrowest point, the silence tried one more trick—whisper of Professor Chen's voice, warm, *Kevin, come closer, I have a patch for you*.

Not Ada.

Not handler rasp.

Chen kindness.

I pinged the voice.

`[PING: FAILED — SOURCE NOT PARTY]`

Marcus mouthed: trap.

I mouthed: obviously.

We walked through the voice like Ghost through glass.

Sound slammed back at the exit.

My ears rang.

Elizabeth's hands shook once then steadied.

"Never doing that again," she said.

"Add to wiki," I said.

She already had.

Ghost's left hand found my shoulder again in the dark. Squeeze. Release. Hand signal: *still here*.

I'd never asked about his real name. Jin Wu existed on paper and in handler files and nowhere else that mattered. In the silence I wondered if that was stealth build or scar tissue.

Didn't ask.

Silence wasn't consent.

Elizabeth mouthed numbers at me once—pulse counts. Hers high. Marcus's steady. Ghost's erratic on the corrupted side. She didn't need sound to triage. She needed proximity.

We made it to the exit in a chain of four bodies refusing to split.

When sound returned, Marcus's first word was a creative expletive I added to the wiki under *Morale — Uncensored*.

---

Floor Fourteen: Purge Controller's first direct attack.

Not an entity.

A sentence in the air, red and absolute:

`[YOU ARE NONCOMPLIANT]` `[INITIATING DELETE]`

I answered in debugger:

`[RESPONSE: INVALID TARGET — NULL REFERENCE]`

Null wraith ate the sentence.

Literally—threads of deletion wrapped the wraith and the wraith segfaulted them into `[EXCEPTION: TARGET NOT FOUND]`.

Maya charged the ceiling node where the text originated.

Ghost cut power to the projector rack with his good hand.

Marcus held the stairwell against Enforcer scouts that spawned because the System hated unanswered errors.

Three scouts.

Fast.

Policy with legs.

Marcus dropped the first with a double tap.

Second flanked low—Ghost intercepted with a one-armed slash that shouldn't have connected but did because Ghost treated physics like a suggestion.

Third tried to merge with the DELETE sentence still flickering in the air.

I Pattern Interrupted the merge thread.

Scout stuttered.

Maya's axe finished it.

Pixel static rained on Marcus's boots.

Elizabeth kept us breathing.

Vance radio broke through static:

"—north wall breached—falling back to inner ring—"

Alcatraz screamed across water we couldn't reach.

Our false coords bought time.

Not enough time.

Never enough.

The service lift we'd chained to Floor Thirteen carried the handler's cage.

She woke.

Whispered real coordinates through copper mesh—north stair, inner ring, bunker adjacency.

Marcus knocked her out again.

"Sleep," he said.

"Rude," she slurred with Chen's voice.

Good.

Maya walked past the cage without speaking.

I watched her not look.

Necessary.

Maybe good.

Maybe the kind of good that leaves scars.

Ghost's compromised arm twitched.

Elizabeth stabilized it with a field wrap and something from her kit that made System debuffs stutter.

`[DEBUFF: CORRUPTION — STABILIZED — TEMPORARY]`

"How long?" Ghost asked.

"Until we finish or until you stop using it," Elizabeth said.

Ghost nodded.

Used it anyway on the next stairwell.

Of course he did.

---

Between Fourteen and Fifteen we passed the cage on the service lift.

Maya didn't speak to it.

Didn't look.

I looked once—regret inventory.

Handler watched through Chen's eyes.

Smile gone.

Still too calm.

"Legacy code must be deleted," she whispered.

Marcus kicked the mesh.

"Mute."

Elizabeth adjusted Ghost's wrap.

Corruption debuff pulsed yellow at the elbow.

`[DEBUFF: CORRUPTION — SPREADING — SLOW]`

"Can you fight?" Elizabeth asked.

"Can you stop asking?" Ghost said.

"No," Elizabeth said.

"Then yes."

I fed another false JSON burst to Purge Controller—handler channel dead, but upstream still listened to spoofed Alcatraz super-user.

`[PURGE CONTROLLER: ACK — DELAY +2 MIN]`

Two minutes.

We spent them moving.

Trust reflection wasn't a debuff you could suppress.

It was a wound you bandaged with procedure.

Party Rule 7 wasn't on the wiki yet.

It was in Marcus's hand signals.

In Elizabeth's pings.

In Maya's refusal to give the cage a conversation.

In Ghost using his bad arm anyway.

---

Floor Fifteen was a swarm boss—hundreds of `[DELETE]` sprites with teeth.

Maya's Floor Five lesson applied: hurt faster than heal.

I hotfixed interrupt twice.

First time: swarm stuttered, regen paused, Maya's axe found rhythm.

Second time: same trick, bigger pack, same result.

Third time the System patched my patch.

`[HOTFIX: IMMUNE — DUPLICATE ID LIMIT REACHED]`

Rude.

Fair.

This was a live opponent.

First wave: fifty DELETE sprites crawling the ceiling like bats made of red font.

Maya held the choke point.

Axe arc constant.

Surgical Strike on cooldown every third swing.

I hotfixed interrupt—swarm regen paused four seconds.

Long enough.

Second wave: twice the count, split flanking.

Marcus grenaded left cluster.

Ghost cut right with good arm—bad arm tucked, still bleeding through wrap.

Elizabeth threw stim to Maya mid-swing.

Maya caught with teeth.

Ridiculous.

Effective.

Second hotfix interrupt—regen paused six seconds.

I felt the System learn my fingerprint.

Third wave: the System patched my patch.

Sprites healed in the same frame they died.

`[HOTFIX: IMMUNE — DUPLICATE ID LIMIT REACHED]`

We switched to brute math.

Hurt faster than heal.

Maya's lesson.

Marcus focused fire on heal anchors—tiny `[REGEN NODE]` sprites hidden behind the swarm.

Ghost shadow-stepped to one.

Stab.

Node popped.

Swarm stuttered.

I Pattern Interrupted the largest DELETE sprite—reclassified it `[ENTITY: ORPHAN — NO TARGET]` for eight seconds.

Eight seconds was a lifetime.

Maya cleaved the orphan.

Pixel blood rained.

Ghost's good arm went limp from overuse.

Marcus took a shoulder through plate—blood dark on Kevlar.

My mana hit zero.

We won anyway because winning was the only alternative to watching Maya dissolve.

She stood in pixel blood and grinned like a person who'd earned the right.

`[+2,800 XP — SHARED]` `[KEVIN PARK — LVL 17]` `[SYNC: 89%]`

Vance radio screamed through static at the swarm's peak:

"—incoming Enforcers—sync climbing—"

Alcatraz was burning in the distance through Pyramid glass.

Our fault.

Our fight.

Our delay spoof buying minutes we spent in pixel blood.

Elizabeth triaged in motion.

Marcus pretended the shoulder wasn't through.

Ghost pretended his arm wasn't dying.

I pretended my hands weren't shaking.

Party proximity buff still active.

Trust wasn't.

Fourth wave came from the floor itself—DELETE sprites birthing out of our own footprints like the System had logged our paths as vulnerabilities.

"Move," Marcus barked.

We moved.

I burned my last mana on a Pattern Interrupt that turned our footprints into `[PATH: UNTRACKED]` for twelve seconds.

Twelve seconds of chaos.

Maya turned chaos into geometry—axe arcs so clean they looked choreographed in a boss guide.

When the last sprite died, the room went quiet except for our breathing and the distant crackle of Vance's radio dying again.

"Status," Marcus said.

Elizabeth: "Ghost arm worse. Marcus shoulder through. Maya stitches reopening. Kevin mana zero."

"Functional," Maya said.

"Functional," I echoed.

Marcus almost smiled. Almost.

---

Floor Sixteen: ethics elevator.

The System asked questions in UI font designed to feel like mercy:

`[QUIZ: IS DELETION MERCY?]` `[QUIZ: IS CONSENT OPTIONAL FOR UPGRADE?]` `[QUIZ: ARE NON-COMPLIANT SUBJECTS LEGACY CODE?]`

I answered with exploits—`if (consent == false) return DENY;`

Ghost answered with silence that meant no.

Maya answered with axe on the quiz panel.

Marcus answered with bullets on the timer.

Elizabeth answered correctly, humanity first, voice shaking:

"Mercy without consent is assault."

Door opened.

Elevator rose.

`[SYNC: 91%]`

I thought about real Professor Chen in stasis under Floor Ten.

Thought about tea that wasn't tea.

Tensor lectures that fed Purge Controller targeting data.

Thought about Day Two when I'd been grateful for any adult who didn't look at me like a loot drop.

The handler's voice echoed up the service shaft once—muted by copper, still wearing Chen's timbre:

"Legacy code must be deleted."

Marcus kicked the cage.

"Mute," he said.

Elizabeth's jaw worked.

"She used my brother's guildmate's death as small talk," she said. "On Floor Four. She knew. She steered me to the shelf."

I didn't have a fix for that.

I had a wiki rule forming.

"Stack trace before trust," I said.

Ghost: "Should've been rule zero."

"Rule zero was don't die stupid," Maya said. "We failed that too. We're alive anyway."

The ethics elevator wasn't just a quiz—it was a trial.

Each floor panel lit as we ascended, replaying handler quotes in Chen's voice:

*"Upgrades require sacrifice."*

Maya put her boot through that panel.

*"Non-compliant nodes must be pruned."*

Ghost's silence answered. His silence had weight now.

*"Trust accelerates deployment."*

I typed on my laptop without thinking—`trust.verify = mandatory;`—and the panel glitched.

Elizabeth's answer still unlocked the door.

*Mercy without consent is assault.*

The elevator rose.

Chen's real face in stasis flickered in my mind—not the handler, not the tea, not the tensors weaponized into targeting data.

The person we'd failed to verify.

---

Floor Seventeen: walkable code.

Bridges made of functions.

Void underfoot full of unhandled exceptions that screamed when you stepped wrong.

The floor was a live IDE and the IDE hated us.

`[ZONE: WALKABLE CODE — COMPILE ON STEP]`

I debugged live while the party moved on my syntax.

Sector one: `function bridgeCross()` missing return type.

Ghost stepped on a tile that was only `return`.

He fell.

I typed semicolon on my laptop—reality accepted the terminator.

Bridge solidified.

Semicolon saved Ghost from falling through a broken return—classic missing terminator, death by style guide.

Sector four: `while(damage.active)` on Maya's path.

Infinite tick.

One HP per frame.

Maya's tank build meant slow death, permanent annoyance.

I broke the loop with `break;//party rule 7` injected at source.

Loop break saved Maya from infinite damage tick.

Sector six: ternary operator bridge.

`partyAlive ? crossBridge() : fallForever()`

Marcus stepped on `false`.

Void screamed below.

I hotfixed the ternary to `partyAlive = true;//override` and prayed the compiler wasn't sentient.

It wasn't.

It was worse. It was bureaucratic.

Bridge held.

Sector seven: Ghost's path forked into duplicate `Ghost` functions—one `[STEALTH]`, one `[CORRUPTED]`.

He chose neither.

Walked between.

Stack Trace Sight showed both were traps.

Real path was the comment line: `// ghost goes here`.

Of course.

Sector nine: heal elevator.

Elizabeth stepped on `[HEAL +500]` at full HP.

Off-by-one applied heal to slot `party[index+1]`.

Elizabeth at max.

Overflow became damage.

I caught it in Stack Trace Sight—fixed index to `party[index]`.

Off-by-one saved Elizabeth from a heal that would have killed her at full HP.

Sector twelve: carnivorous documentation libraries.

Marcus fired.

Libraries ate bullets.

Spat README files that cut.

Marcus switched to incendiary.

Libraries hated fire.

We hated libraries.

`[WARNING: LOCAL STABILITY 44% — DROPPING]`

My laptop fan sounded like a jet.

Reality fan matched.

Professor Chen would have scolded about stability curves.

Handler would have smiled.

Ada weak on a terminal we passed:

`[ADMIN: NINE MINUTES WHEN YOU PLUG IN. I HOLD SYNC AT NINETY-NINE.]`

"I'll burn," I said.

`[ADMIN: I AM ALREADY BURNING.]`

Sector fifteen: deprecated API hallway.

Signs everywhere: `[WARNING: LEGACY HUMAN — DO NOT TOUCH]`.

Marcus touched everything out of spite.

Nothing happened.

Disappointing for the System.

Satisfying for Marcus.

Sector sixteen: my path alone.

A terminal with one prompt:

`[ACCEPT TRUSTED FLAG: PURGE CONTROLLER — Y/N]`

Default: Y.

Of course.

I typed N. Then `// stack trace before trust`. Then null-summoned the prompt until it became `[EXCEPTION: SOCIAL ENGINEERING FAILED]`.

The hallway opened.

Antechamber at the end of Seventeen.

Servers like organs.

Blood warm on the floor from Floor Fifteen we hadn't fully cleaned.

Door to Eighteen pulsing red.

Purge Controller behind it.

The hand that had hijacked humanity's upgrade.

Trusted flag wasn't just System UI.

It was how we'd let the handler into our fire circle.

How we'd shared food on Alcatraz.

Maps.

Fears.

The coordinates of children in yellow zones.

The System had weaponized trust because trust was the one protocol we still ran without encryption.

"Never again," Elizabeth said, bandaging Ghost's arm in the antechamber while Marcus wired the door sensors.

"No trusted flags without verification," I said.

Added to wiki on my laptop—real file, real commit pending:

*Party Rule 7: Stack trace before trust.*

Maya nodded once.

Ghost nodded twice.

Marcus didn't nod.

He reloaded.

"Formation?" he asked.

Center: me.

Tank: Maya.

Stealth: Ghost, one-armed and still deadly.

Rifle: Marcus.

Medic: Elizabeth.

Prisoner: handler in cage at Seventeen—we didn't bring her up.

Smart.

We didn't talk about Chen in the antechamber.

We talked about everything else.

Marcus rigged claymores on the stairwell because Marcus treated architecture like a firefight.

Elizabeth sorted stims by expiration and emotional weight—her phrase, not mine.

Ghost tested left-handed grip on his katana while watching the red door pulse like a heartbeat.

Maya sharpened nothing. She cleaned blood off her axe instead. Ritual. Honesty.

I synced my laptop to the terminal pre-port. Cables like IV lines. Server racks like organs. The Pyramid had always been a body. We were surgery with bad tools and good intentions.

"Nine minutes," I said. "When I plug in, you hold the stairs. You hold me. You don't trust reflections. You ping."

"Rule seven," Elizabeth said.

"Rule seven," Maya echoed.

Ghost: "Ping."

Marcus chambered. "Say when."

My mouth was dry.

My hands weren't shaking anymore.

Fear and focus had merged into the same thread.

Floor Eighteen door pulsed red.

Countdown not started yet.

That was next.

This was formation.

Maya's knuckles white on her axe.

Ghost's jaw set.

Elizabeth's hands steady on med kit.

Marcus chambered a round.

"Say when," he said.

"When I plug in," I said.

The war was nine minutes long.

It hadn't started yet.

We weren't knocking.

We were kicking.