I bare my teeth at the empty air.
“Go fuck yourself.”
I turn and start running.
Not away from the chaos.
Through it.
I hit the mouth of the alley at a dead sprint just as a section of the restaurant’s outer wall finally gives up and collapses into the street behind me with a deafening, bone-rattling roar. A wave of heat and dust and burning debris punches me in the back hard enough to drive the air out of my lungs.
I twist my body sideways without thinking, hunching over her and taking the impact across my shoulder blades and spine.
Pain detonates down my back like someone just drove a crowbar between my vertebrae.
I grunt and keep moving.
I do not slow down.
Chunks of brick and flaming wood rain down around us, bouncing off the pavement and skidding across my boots. One piece glances off my ribs with a wet, cracking impact that sends a bright spike of agony straight into my sternum.
Good.
Stay in the pain.
Stay here.
Stay now.
The jalshagar howls anyway.
Claim.
Protect.
Kill anything that looks at her wrong.
My bone spurs twitch under my skin, pressing outward in reflex.
“No,” I snarl through clenched teeth. “Stay down. You don’t get to come out.”
I force them back with sheer, murderous will.
They retract.
Barely.
The drones scream overhead, engines whining louder as they accelerate to keep pace with me. Blue targeting grids ripple across my back, my arms, her legs.
I cut right, vaulting a stack of fallen scaffolding and nearly clipping my head on a dangling power cable that spits sparks into the smoke.
The street opens up into absolute chaos.
Fire trucks. Med units. Police skimmers hovering low over the intersection. Civilians screaming and running in every direction, some bleeding, some coughing, some filming with shaking hands.
Neon signage flickers through smoke plumes like dying stars.
Sirens layer over sirens until the sound becomes a physical pressure that hammers against my eardrums.
