The flesh is burning, the spirit is asding

  Sam ran out from around a stack of pallets and waved at Gradie to get down. In the blue light of his NVGs, her soft mouth stuck out of the dark rough texture of her battle gear in a drastic frown. An adorable softness out of p the apocalypse. He would have kissed it if she had given him time.

  “What the fuck are you doing? Did you find it?” She had ditched the Ultimax somewhere and sed behind him with her SIG Rattler.

  “No,” he said softly, not taking his eyes off her. “It’s in that office.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  Just fifty yards away, Luke’s MG screamed like it would never ruy, and her voice echoed in his ears, the earbuds taking milliseds to parse through the noise.

  “I just know,” he said. Her mouth hung open. She g the unbroken pallets behind him and snarled.

  “You didn’t even finish! God dammit, this pce is burning to the—”

  He swept his shin hard into the side of her knee and she went down with a squeak. He had his rifle up and firing before she hit the ground. Three taps to owo to the other, he dropped both as their bullets cracked past him. Like shooting pop-up targets in the clubhouse. They crumpled just ihe bay door oher side of the barrier pallet as the mae gun fire on the mezzanine reached a cresdo. He sed the staging area to make sure they were clear, then offered Sam a hand.

  “You’re wele,” he said. She grabbed his hand and pulled herself with a ya to pull his arm out of the socket.

  “Good job. e on!” She pushed past him towards the returns pallets. He watched her ass bounce for a bit then slinked away towards the back office.

  Another explosion in the ter of the warehouse rattled the ceiling. Out i, police lightbars fshed and spotlights swept the smoky air. He stepped quickly up to the office door and tried the ha turned easily, like it didn’t know there was a war on, aepped inside.

  The burni fuel had nearly engulfed the tral maze of pallet racks and the bze rolled out through the massive tear in the ceiling and lit up the warehouse like hellfire. A police helicopter spotlight shohrough bullet holes in the roof and lit up the smoke in glittering beams. One of the police vehicles i aimed a light that gred in the blown open bay doors and peeked in at the edges of the other ones like a UFO mid-abdu.

  Fire sprinklers had soaked everything that wasn’t burning. Water and blood pooled on the floor. Sirens and helicopter noise flowed around the building and bounced uhe roof like the trapped sounds were growing louder out of anger. It was all misty, steaming, smoky, hazy as a dream, but ohat was melting into a nightmare.

  Luke tried to get up and his hand slipped on the pool of water and blood. gs ked in the wake like brass jetsam. He got hold of the MG3 and saw he had somehow loaded a fresh ammo belt before passing out. He tried again and got up on one khis time, and immediately gu off all around him. Philip or Lindsey responded with a burst from the mezzanine, or maybe it was just the echoes and he was already alone. He stood up with a strength sn and distant it felt like being lifted, and shouldered the MG3.

  Three drone-illuminated men were moving up oher side of the veyor belts, hugging the mezzanine, with rifles fshing. He pulled the trigger and two of them died in an instant. The muzzle bst shook the bloody water and smoke in front of him into a blurry e and the recoil knocked him back slipping on his own blood. He came down hard just as the third gunman finished dying.

  Geysers of water and blood shot up around him as someone somewhere returned fire. He brought the gun around as he bounced up into a croud drew a crest of muzzle fsh in the wavering air. He felt two puo the chest and a few to the gut as he stood up, leaning into the recoil like a crutever letting off the trigger. He sprayed the crumpled pile of shelves and boxes aually the dark forms strobing under dronelight until the belt was empty, then he gave himself permission to die.

  Lindsey watched him, silhouetted against the fire, the fmes reflected mirror-like ier at his feet and even in the blood down his fad arms, throwing fire at his enemies. He looked like he had been made of fire ah all along, and now it was breaking out through his skin, ing him into nothing. The belt wey and he colpsed into the pool of blood, gs, and links at his feet. Everythi quiet, besides the fire’s rushing roar, blending into the noise of her own bloodflow. She sighed ahe blood fly off her lips.

  She turo scold Philip for dropping the fug ball, and found his eyes staring at her, empty. The armored ptform under him was dark with blood. For some god damned reason, like a breeze of sweet perfume intruding on aing room, she remembered his ughter.

  “God damn, I haven’t seen anything like that in years.”

  And a part of herself that she didn’t know how to speak to cried and wailed that all her friends were dead.

  “Okay, I must be fug losing it. I really—"

  “Truck office!” EP yelled in her ears. Two muzzles fshed in the square of bomb-bsted offid she felt a round fragment on her chest pte and slice up her face. She whipped the PKP around and fahe belt, and in the er of her eye, like razors moving in slowly, she saw twunmen moving toward the north side of the DC.

  The office was bizarrely calm and quiet. An L desk against the wall, two stag office chairs, file ets, mail baskets, boxes, all in a still darkhat smelled of paper and old carpet. After the jet fuel and gunsmoke smell of the warehouse, it felt like stepping into another world.

  Sam came in the door behind him and shut it softly.

  “Ok then mother fucker. Go get it.” She was crouched down in front of the window. Light gred in the warehouse behind her and twinkled in his NVGs. He the soft silhouette of her head and looked around the office.

  He knew noushing on a Hardworld didn’t feel like asking or praying. It felt like remembering. It felt like waking up. So he listened, he waited, looking for something to jog his memory.

  His gaze stopped on the desk, and a realization seeped in like dream knowledge.

  They had taken it in here. They had tried to think of a way to get it out, past all the metal detectors and security. Maybe they had even succeeded, but they had left something else behind. He opehe top drawer with a certainty he had never felt in his life.

  Just old pencils and post-it notes and pstic utensil packages and salt achup packets. His fear a rose up like bile as he rummaged through the drawer, his fingers g desperately, until—

  He looked down at the trash uhe desk. Wal-Mart bag filled with Styrofoam cups ay energy drink s. He dumped it out, and there was the pstic cmshell box fo-Pro Max and the quick-start guide. He found it taped to the third page of the guide with clear packaging tape.

  There was something nostalgic about it. A dull quarter. Nothing worth killing over for anyone in this world, but for him…

  He held it up to let Sam see behind him.

  “Holy fuck.”

  He smiled at her then looked back at the quarter, and his smile dissolved as a question crawled across his mind. What if the guy had taken the camera with him case-and-all? Would they have all died for nothing? How could he have been sure that hadn’t happened? How had he known? What if it really had been i two pallets?

  His mind inning so fast around a tral axis of broken causality that he felt on the verge of vomiting. This was not like remembering. No matter how he looked at it, he felt that reality had buckled uhe force of his mind, and rather than being a triumphant feeling, he felt disected, vulnerable, like the whole world was about to drop out from beh his feet and leave him floating forever in—

  “Ok get going!” Sam hissed.

  “What?”

  “Are you serious?” EP screamed suddenly in his ears. “Drop out! Did you fet how to take it with you?!” She sounded on the edge of tears. Gradie exhaled and reached for the drop-out pouder his magazihen the window exploded.

  “Fuck!” Sam shot up and opened fire, spraying shells into the filing et. IR sers moved through the air and bullets followed their path. One caught her in the neck, and she threw herself backward into the wall. Gradie brought his rifle up with one hand and started firing, but the shooters fell behind cover like phantoms.

  “Get out!” Sam hissed at him between ched teeth as blood pooled in her mouth.

  “Ahe out now!” EP screamed. Sam’s eyes went wide as she gred at him. He let the rifle drop and rolled away from the window, fighting a nearly crippling urge to run to her. He got the syri and fumbled with the cap.

  Sam flicked the selector to full auto. Blood was streaming down her chest and she knew she would be out soon. The world outside the window bloomed in her eyes as one of the police spotlights beamed in through the broken bay door. She saw the gunmen clear as day as two of them advanced from behind cover. Her Rattler took the first one full in the chest and head, theepped forward and fired four rounds over the unman’s head before she brought her hand off of her ned down to the frip, steadying her fire. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. Somewhere out of sight, she was sure Philip was watg her, and it all felt like the breeziest run of the killhouse.

  Gradie watched her die as he pluhe propofol into his vein. She was an angel. Beautiful, radiant, overflowing with death. Bright blood sprayed out of her neck as the gun rocked her body. Shells glittered in the spotlight like gss tears. She moved the gun from target tet and he knew without even looking outside that they were dying like flies. In a few seds it was over, her bolt locked open, smoking like cathedral inse. The st thing he saw was a bullet sparking off her gun as she fell to the ground, wingless, her task pleted.

  As he slipped into darkness, he squeezed the in his hand and khat he would take it with him.

  We may think we would way to bend to our will, but without it's unyielding structure to support us, would we not go insane? ime, would you build the manda, knowing it was doomed to be ed away? episode, What we owe our Selfs.