Ivan doesn't fight like an assigned partner; he fights like a man determined to survive.
"Kitchen window," he says. "Two."
I pivot.
The first man is visible through the shattered frame—partially sheltered, rifle braced. My shot snaps his head back.
The second man ducks.
I wait.
Not for long. People always think they can outlast you, but they can't. They flinch. They breathe wrong. They shift to look.
He shifts.
My bullet clips the space between the frame and his shoulder, finding flesh. He goes down screaming, the sound cutting through the ringing in my ears.
The front room is now a wreck.
Bodies lie sprawled, half in and half out. Blood spreads in dark, shiny pools across the floorboards. Furniture is overturned, shot through, reduced to splintered debris. The windows are blown out or shattered, and through the gaps, I see movement in the treeline—dark shapes shifting positions, rifles catching the light for fleeting moments.
They're not panicking.
That's the problem.
These aren't amateurs rushing in to die foolishly. They're controlling the pace, forcing us to expend ammo and breath inside a box they're gradually tightening.
"We can't stay," I say, my voice rough from smoke. "Too many angles."
Ivan ejects his magazine and slams in a fresh one. "Boat shed. If we can reach the dock?—"
Something arcs through the broken window.
A bottle. Glass. Liquid sloshing in the air. A rag burning bright at the mouth.
It hits the floor near the counter and shatters.
Fire erupts from it as if alive.
It spreads instantly across the wood, licking up cabinet faces, swallowing a towel, climbing a chair leg. The heat punches my face hard enough to make my eyes water. The smell shifts—sweet chemical burn, paint and varnish turning toxic.
They aren't trying to win clean.
They want the cabin to become a weapon.
Ivan swears under his breath and adjusts his stance, shielding his face from a wave of heat.
My eyes catch something on the counter just as the fire reaches it.
A device.
Not the phone he threw earlier. This is the small secure recorder he keeps with his go-bag—black, flat, ugly, the kind of thing you forget until you need it. It was recording the call automatically, the difference between our word and irrefutable proof.
Flame touches it.
Plastic warps. The casing begins to curl. The screen frosts and then splits with a sharp pop.
Smoke consumes the rest.
