Page 1 of Flint’s Strike

Prologue

Seven Years Ago

Eliot

The building talks. All of them do. Especially when they’re dying. Pops and groans and metal grating against itself in a way that sounds…feral. I aim the spray over the mezzanine rail, Tanner keeping the hose steady a dozen feet behind me just inside the window we busted to get in here.

Another screech of metal—this one harsh enough I feel it in my chest. It’s all around me. But loudest⁠—

Fuck!

The mezzanine drops out from under me, the grating folding like paper. The hose is ripped from my hands, and something hits my left thigh with a crack that sends pure agony driving into my spine.

My mask hits metal, then my hands. Heat rolls over me from below.

“Everyone out! Now!” Captain Felton barks over the radio. “We’re losing it!”

“Flint!” Tanner’s voice sounds too far away. I twist, and the scream ripped from my chest doesn’t sound human. I can’t see him. Can’t see the window. The ladder. The hose is too far away for me to reach.

“Go! Get the fuck out of here!” I wave my right hand—the left is pinned along with my leg—and trust he’ll follow orders.

Gritting my teeth against the pain, I hook my fingers in the grating in front of me and pull. Hard. Then harder. My vision goes white, the roar of the fire competing with the sound of my heartbeat in my ears.

When the stars fade away, all I can see is the orange beast below. The inferno pulses, licks up the walls, micro-explosions flaring every few seconds as it eats everything in its path.

“Flint!” Felton’s in my ear now, the IC channel crackling with the distance. “Sit-rep!”

“Pinned. Mezzanine. North side. Leg’s busted,” I grit out. “Fire’s moving toward me. Got five, maybe seven minutes. Where’s…McNulty?”

Zack’s voice breaks through the static. “South side. I can’t get to you, Flint. The floor”—he stops for a coughing fit— “the floor’s gone between us.”

Shit. His voice is steadier than it has any right to be. He’s barely twenty-two, but has some of the best damn instincts I’ve seen.

“McNulty, get out of there,” Felton orders. “Can you get to the stairwell?”

“It’s thirty feet away. Maybe.” He grunts, then adds, “Got to punch through this section of wall to get there.”

“Do it,” Felton orders.

I can hear Zack working over the radio. The hollow bang of his axe, another grunt, a wheezing breath. The radio won’t let you hide. Not in here.

“Flint, sending a team your way.” Felton’s voice has lost the thread of calm he displays in the worst of conditions. Fuck. That ain’t good.

Below me, the fire’s crossed the east wall. It rolls over the support beams, almost liquid in its intensity. Twenty feet. Fifteen maybe.

As waves of heat hit my face shield, sweat drips into my eyes. I can’t wipe it away. Not with the respirator. The sting fades with a blink. Then another.

An ember the size of my fist drops from the ceiling, smoke trailing in the updraft, and lands where the grating tore my suit open at the knee. “Fuck!” I shout, and for a moment, the world collapses into nothing.

“Almost there.” McNulty is panting now. “Ten feet.” Another swing of the axe—I think—and he swears under his breath. “Goddammit! Stairwell’s partially blocked. Metal’s groanin’ like a sombitch. Need another minu⁠—”

A loud crack overhead turns into a roar that vibrates my teeth and the back of my skull, and turns my broken leg into a fucking tuning fork of agony. Debris hits my left side, and a pressure wave punches through my suit like the air itself has turned into a weapon.

Static hisses in my ear over the radio. It’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard…until the building folds in on itself. Metal shrieks against metal, the structure becoming a living, breathing animal, writhing in the throes of death.

Then…silence.

“McNulty.” My voice sounds far away. “Zack. Report!”