“I told you to get the hell out of here!”
“Where are your manners?”
“Bear! There’s a bear!”
I spin, dropping my bag but holding onto the maul, both of my eyes stinging now and my throat choking itself with the fucking dust. Flour.
Tastes like flour,shit shit shit, why is this place booby-trapped?
Where’s the kitchen?
I need a sink.
What the fuck is in my eyes?
“Detonation in one minute,” a mechanical female voice says.
“You’re gonna regret the day you were born,” an older dude’s voice growls.
“What the fu—” I cut off my own question as I cough again, maul handle gripped tight, poised to attack if necessary, while I try to squint through the pain in my eyes.
This.
This is why my body aches.
Because I take assignments guarding people who do shit likebooby-trapping their own fucking homes.
“Decker?” I rasp.
And that’s the last thing I get out before a shadow looms in my peripheral vision and something thick and hard smacksme in the stomach as I’m twisting toward it, making me bend double.
“Get down,” a woman shrieks.
As if I have a choice.
Fuck me.
Can’t breathe.
Can’t see.
Can’t stop coughing, but also can’t breathe.
“Jesusfuck.” I grunt.
“Getdown,” she repeats, voice high with panic. “How do you know Decker?”
The other voices have stopped, and I realize this one’s different.
This one’shere.
The others were recordings.
Shit.
Shit.
I don’t get my days wrong.
