The explosion is immediate and deafening.
Heat slams into me like a wall.
The world goes white-hot.
I am airborne.
I hit the floor again.
Harder.
This time my vision doesn’t come back clean.
It swims.
It tunnels.
The edges go dark.
The last thing I hear is the roar of fire and the crackle of burning wood and someone—maybe me—screaming.
Then everything starts to slide sideways into smoke and pain and ringing silence.
The world slides back into focus in violent, stuttering frames.
Heat first.
Not warmth. Not ambient kitchen heat. This is an invasive, suffocating wall of fire that presses against my skin and crawls into my lungs like it wants to live there. My throat spasms around a breath that comes out as a wet, tearing cough, and my vision pinholes down to a narrow tunnel rimmed in pulsing gray.
I push myself upright.
Or try to.
My palms skid on tile slick with something hot and sticky, and my elbows buckle immediately, dumping me back onto my side with a helpless, undignified grunt.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
My ears are ringing so hard it feels like someone is driving needles into my skull from the inside. The alarms are still screaming overhead, but they sound distant now, warped and underwater, like they’re happening in a different building entirely.
Smoke rolls over me in greasy waves, thick enough to chew, and every breath tastes like burning plastic, scorched meat, and copper.
Blood.
Mine.
I drag one knee under myself and force my body upright inch by inch, teeth clenched so hard my jaw trembles. My side screams in protest, a deep, structural pain that feels likesomething inside me shifted into the wrong place and stayed there.
My vision tunnels.
In.
Out.
In.
The strobe lights are still pulsing red-white-red, turning the smoke into a nightmare kaleidoscope.
Through it?—
