September 28 — Night
The rooftop door swung shut behind her and she had maybe three seconds to read the space.
Not clean. Not empty. Stacks of wooden pallets along the far wall, some already catching from the fire climbing the fire escape below. Debris across the concrete — broken equipment, scattered lumber, a collapsed ventilation unit near the center. Footing was going to be a problem.
She was still reading it when the door came back open.
No pause. No buildup. The flamethrower came up immediately and the first burst hit the space to her left and she was already moving right, heat catching her shoulder and the left side of her neck as she went. Not full contact, but enough. She hit the ground behind the collapsed ventilation unit and stayed low and felt the burn settling into something that was going to be very loud in about thirty seconds when the adrenaline finished processing it.
She came up on one knee and fired the launcher.
Too fast. She hadn't set her feet and the round went wide, hitting the door frame instead of the weapon — the explosion tearing the door off its hinges and doing nothing useful.
It stepped through the smoke without slowing.
She moved.
The pallets were burning properly now, smoke building and cutting visibility. She used the ventilation unit as cover, circling toward the center of the roof.
It tracked her. The flame came around the side of the unit, cutting off the angle she'd been moving toward, forcing her back. She went the other way and the flame was already there — it had read the redirect before she committed.
She stopped.
Both directions cut off. The burning wall behind her. The collapsed unit in front.
"Not good," she said.
She went up — over the ventilation unit, hands and boots, the metal hot through her gloves — came down the other side and took the shotgun and fired at center mass from six feet.
The blast hit and it staggered. One step back. The first step back she'd gotten all night.
She moved into the space that created, cutting left toward the far side of the roof.
Her boot went through a section of weakened concrete.
Not far — ankle deep, mid-stride — but enough. She went down hard on her right side, the launcher skidding two feet away, her palm catching on a broken pallet. She was on her feet in under two seconds but two seconds was two seconds and when she looked up it was already closing, the flamethrower coming up.
She grabbed the launcher and ran.
No direction. Just away, using the debris as obstacles, smoke thickening, heat from the burning wall reaching across the whole roof. Eyes streaming. The burn on her neck finding its voice. The shoulder doing things she was choosing not to think about.
The flame cut off her right. She went left. It cut off her left. She went straight and the edge of the roof came through the smoke and she pulled up hard, toes at the concrete lip, forty feet of city below her.
Nowhere left.
She turned.
Ten feet away. The flamethrower adjusted.
And she saw it.
Not a plan — just perception. The tank on its back. The housing cracked along one seam from the shotgun blast, fuel visible along the rupture, a dark wet line catching the firelight.
She raised the launcher and fired.
The round hit at the wrong angle — glancing, not direct — and the rupture opened further but didn't go. Fuel sprayed across the concrete in a wide arc, soaking into the debris, and the flame dropped to half its reach.
Not enough. Not yet.
It stepped forward. The flame came out low and she jumped it and landed badly on the bad knee and went down again, palm slick with fuel.
Fuel.
She looked at the burning wall to her left. At the trail of leaked fuel running toward it.
She fired the last standard round into the base of the wall where the trail ended.
The fire followed the fuel back faster than she'd expected. She was already moving when it hit the cracked tank and the explosion was larger than she'd calculated — the pressure wave hit her from behind and she went over the edge.
Not a jump. Not a choice.
Just gone.
The structure below the roofline was partially collapsed — an old fire escape, half-detached, angled out over the alley at roughly forty-five degrees. She hit it on her back, the impact driving everything out of her, and she was sliding before she could do anything about it, hands grabbing for something to slow the descent and finding edges that cut rather than held.
She hit the alley floor on her side.
Lay there.
The city above was orange and loud and very far away.
She tried to breathe and her body declined. She waited. It came back — shallow first, then deeper, each one catching on the left side where the ribs had been making complaints for hours and were now filing formal grievances.
She lay there and breathed and didn't try to get up until she was reasonably sure it was going to work.
Then she got up.
The streets between the alley and the subway entrance were the quietest she'd seen all night. Not safe — just depleted, the city having spent most of what it had. She moved through it slowly, the launcher hanging from one hand, the other arm held slightly away from her body.
She didn't try the radio.
She just moved.
The subway entrance was lit. She went down the stairs one at a time and came out onto the platform where the train was waiting, doors open. Mikhail near the front. A few survivors along the carriage walls, not talking. Tyrell moving between the compartments, not looking for conversation.
Carlos was at the far end of the platform.
He saw her. Took a few steps.
Then stopped.
She reached him.
"Took you long enough."
"..." She leaned into the wall. "Fucker's gone."
He looked at her — the burn on her neck, the hand, the way she held her arm.
"Gone gone?"
"Gone enough." She pushed off the wall. "Train ready?"
"Has been."
She moved toward the carriage. Nikolai was near the door, arms crossed, watching her the way he always did — that flat appraisal that filed things away for purposes she still couldn't see.
"So," he said. "Still alive."
"Looks like it."
She went past him into the carriage.
Inside, she lowered the launcher for the first time since the rooftop and leaned against the wall and felt the full weight of the night arrive — shoulder, ribs, burn, knee, palm, all of it together now that there was nothing left to run from.
Mikhail was speaking quietly to Tyrell near the front.
"...heard something about a unit at the hospital," he was saying. "No contact."
Tyrell looked up. Said nothing. Went back to it.
Jill heard it. Looked at Mikhail for a moment.
He met her eyes briefly. Shook his head slightly — I don't know more than that — and looked away.
She let it go.
Carlos appeared at the carriage door.
"We're not getting on," he said. "Me and Tyrell. Something we need to check."
Jill looked at him.
"Hospital?"
"Something like that." He held her gaze. "You go ahead. We'll catch up."
A beat.
"Don't start anything without us," he said.
"You're the one staying behind."
Something close to a smile. He stepped back from the door.
"Move out," he called.
The doors slid shut. The train pulled forward and the tunnel came up around them, the platform gone, the entrance gone, and then the orange glow of the city visible for one last second through the windows before the dark took it.
Jill leaned her head back against the wall.
Let her eyes close.
Behind them, somewhere above the tunnel —
Something moved.
Not finished.