The plasma fire is getting closer. Controlled bursts. Professional. They're advancing with the confidence of people who know their targets are trapped.
I should leave her. The math is simple. Two dead or one dead. Survival or sacrifice.
I start pulling her up instead.
We make it maybe five meters before the shot catches me.
The impact spins me. I'm on the deck, taste copper flooding my mouth where I bit my tongue. The pain comes second—white-hot fire spreading from my left side. Plasma scoring. Not a direct hit or I'd be dead. Close enough.
My rifle's gone. Skittered across the deck into shadows I can't reach.
Vasquez is screaming my name. Hands on me. Trying to pull me up, trying to?—
Another burst of fire. She jerks once. Goes still.
The corridor fills with enemy combatants. Professional. Efficient. They check Vasquez first, confirm the kill with two fingers to her throat. Then they're on me.
Rough hands. Weapons pressed to my skull. Someone's shouting in a dialect I don't speak, but the meaning's clear enough.
I'm down. I'm taken.
Through the pain, through the chaos, I turn my head. Look down the corridor toward extraction point alpha.
Thirty meters away. Might as well be thirty light-years.
Dexter is there. I can see him through the smoke and emergency lighting—seven feet of blue-skinned alien warrior, his marks blazing bright enough to light the corridor. His eyes find mine across the distance.
Ice-pale blue. Electric. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
Our eyes lock.
I watch him calculate.
I know him well enough by now—three months of missions, of learning how he thinks, how he moves, how his tactical mind processes faster than anyone I've ever served with. I can see it happen. The same way I've watched him assess a hundred battlefield decisions.
His marks flare brighter. He's feeling me. My terror. My pain. The desperate, animal hope that he'll come back.
Thirty meters.
I see his head turn. Looking at the extraction point. Looking at the clock. Looking at?—
"Torrence." My voice is rough. Blood in my mouth. "Don't?—"
He turns away.
Not fast. Not running. Just... turning.
Completing the extraction.
The asset is there—I can see them now, the high-value target we came for. Dexter's hands on their arm, pulling them toward the transport dock.
"Dexter—"
His voice cuts through comms. Professional. Distant. Like he's reporting weather conditions instead of abandoning me to whatever comes next.
"Venn is down. Unable to retrieve. Mission complete."
Unable to retrieve.
