Page 30 of Cold Ignition

Air tore past him, dust and debris raining down as the structure collapsed in a violent cascade. For a split second, there was nothing but motion—no ground, no direction, no control.

Then impact. Hard. Brutal.

Rangi hit the lower-level shoulder first, the force knocking the breath from his lungs in a sharp, silent burst. Pain flared along his ribs, his back, his arm—everywhere at once—but he rolled with it, instinct taking over before thought could catch up.

He came up on one knee, coughing, vision blurring—

“Alexios!”

Nothing.

The silence that followed hit harder than the fall.

Rangi’s head snapped up, scanning the fractured space around him. The lower level was worse—far worse—than above. The collapse had torn through multiple floors, leaving a jagged crater of broken concrete and twisted steel. Dust choked the air, thick and suffocating, turning everything into shifting shadows.

No sign of him.

Rangi’s chest tightened. “Alexios!”

Still nothing. Fear hit then. Not sharp. Not panicked. But deep and it left him feeling so fucking cold. The kind that wrapped around his ribs and squeezed.

No. No! He would not accept anything less than survival.

He pushed to his feet, ignoring the way his body protested, forcing himself forward across unstable ground. Every step shifted under him, debris sliding, threatening to give way again.

He didn’t slow. Couldn’t.

“Alexios!”

A sound—faint, strained—cut through the dust.

Rangi turned toward it instantly.

There. Pinned.

Alexios was half-buried beneath a slab of concrete, one arm trapped, blood dark against the dust-coated fabric of his shirt. His head was tilted back against the rubble, jaw tight, breath uneven.

But he was alive. Thank God. Rangi closed the distance fast, dropping to his knees beside him.

“I’ve got you,” he said, already assessing, already calculating.

Alexios huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “You always do.”

Rangi didn’t answer. They didn’t have time.

He braced his hands against the slab, testing the weight.

Too heavy. Too unstable.

If he shifted it wrong—

“Don’t overthink it,” Alexios muttered, reading him like he always did. “Just do it.”

Rangi shot him a look. “You’re not helping.”

“Funnily enough, I was actually trying to help. I don’t exactly want to hang out here waiting for the next trigger hungry mother fucker to come in and shoot me.”

Even now. Even here. That was them.