CHAPTER 48: THROUGH THE INDUSTRIAL BLOCKS [2]

"Stop".

Holt’s hand went up.

They froze under a corrugated canopy and listened.

Then, they heard it... the hollow clank of chain. Not just that, they heard the whisper of something feathered dragging across a roof, and the far-off pop of gunfire that wasn’t aimed at them.

"Pike," Holt said with a dark look on his face.

Pike’s men were somewhere else, for now.

Ethan let out a breath he hadn’t meant to hold and felt Shadowstep hum in response, an instinct ready to unspool across a fence.

With it and his grapple launcher, he could have used it to jump over the rooftop and watched to see them, but he saved it.

They pushed.

The last warehouse in the run had lost an entire side. Through the ragged mouth, Ethan saw the river for the first time in days.

The water ran sullen and dark under a sky that didn’t know how to be blue anymore. Across it, west, a smudge of land and the skeleton of a suburb burned into empty outlines.

Between here and there, spanning the river’s shoulders, rose their final target... the Bridge of Cinders.

It had once been a clean flyover of steel, concrete, and lanes picked out in paint. Now it stood like the charred bones of something that had been punished, its girders black and glossy where Rift fire had licked.

Its deck buckled and fused in places where heat had forced steel to remember it was slag. The bridge’s shadow cut the river into two griefs.

Kara’s let out a deep exhale as she stared, slightly excited. "There," she said, and the word was not a cheer but a dare.

Mira stepped closer to the broken wall and stared at the span as if it might choose to vanish if they looked too long. "We can cross," she whispered, like a secret. "We can actually cross!"

Feeling their excitement, Reid’s mouth twitched toward a smile and failed. "If the deck holds and the wind doesn’t push, and nothing big nests under there," he swallowed. "Maybe we can cross, If Pike hasn’t..."

"...planned for exactly this," Holt finished the sentence for him in a monotone tone. He already lifted his rifle, eyes narrowing. "Eyes up."

"We’re not safe until we’re over the bridge".

They finally skirted the last warehouse and came out onto the cracked approach road. It was a half-collapsed interchange choked with burned-out cars and warped signage.

There, the air tasted metallic, like the bridge’s girder had rusted into dust. For a heartbeat, Ethan let himself see a line from their feet across that span to the west, a straight shot into maybe.

But then, movement peeled from the shadows.

Figures stepped into view across the approach... first four, then eight, then the shape of a formation that had been practiced in cleaner times.

Their helmets were dull with grit, and their vests had seen better days. They had their Rifles with a firmness that said they won’t miss a third time. They were spread with the tenderness of wolves around prey.

"...!"

For a moment, they froze; no one could move.

Major Harlan Pike walked the line like a man concluding a sermon. He stopped at the center, boots planted at the foot of the bridge as if he had rooted there, and lifted his head to regard them down the broken road.

His steel-gray eyes were cold and full of indifference, his jaw like a step. A scar at his cheekbone stood out white and mean in the light.

Pike smirked.

"You rabbits ran well," he called, his voice carrying as if the bridge renewed it. "But this is where the hunt ends".

"You think I wouldn’t know where you were going? Naïve fools".

Holt’s breath left him in a slow thread as the realization settled.

He had a bitter look on his face. "He beat us to our exit," he said, as if naming it could make it less true.

Kara took a half-step in front of Reid without asking permission and set her spear at a slant, the way she did when a charge would cost too much but retreat would cost everything.

Only one thought rang in her mind. ’It’s now or never!’

Jonas? He didn’t react much, he just rolled his shoulders like a man remembering a bell as he prepared for Round 3, maybe his final round but he didn’t care. He would go down fighting.

Travis drew himself up despite the tremor in his arms.

As for Mira, her hands hovered near air that wanted orders. Ethan felt the Wheel wake like a struck match, not spinning yet, not stopping either, just paying attention to his needs.

Behind Pike, his cohort settled into their lanes with military boredom.

There were no taunts, no fidgeting, just stone-cold military discipline. They had loaded their rifles with obedience and were ready to spend.

Pike’s mouth thinned. "Weapons down and hands where I can see them. Do that, and I’ll make it quick," he inclined his head. "But force my hand, and I’ll take you apart slowly enough to count the drops as they fall".

"Not a negotiator, is he?" Jonas chuckled.

"Not a poet either," Travis said, voice dry. "Thank God."

Ethan took another breath and stepped forward one pace until his boots kissed the line where shadow ended and sunlight revealed every bad choice.

He lifted his chin.

The bridge loomed behind Pike like a verdict... it was their path to freedom.

They were close enough that he could count the bolts in the nearest girder, yet far enough that every bolt could be the last thing he saw.

Ethen hesitated, then...

"Major," he called, as if the man could be softened with a word, but then the cold realization set in and he let the syllables harden. "You don’t want this fight".

Major Pike smiled.

"I want only one thing," Pike said, and his smile had the charity of a razor. "To prove the system right. The Rift rewards the strong and the organized. In the apocalypse, the only purpose of the weak is to feed the strong".

"You don’t belong on my bridge".

Holt’s whispered from the corner of his mouth loud enough for only his companions to hear. "He’ll shape a crossfire in three, two..."

Then, motion.

Pike’s squads peeled to either side, their rifles angling in the old dance of death lanes overlapping to corner and smother prey.

Above, a pair took to the ruined ramps, finding perches that would make any advance fall in thirds. They were ready to shoot on sight.

Silence.

The city exhaled and waited for blood.

There was no denying it anymore at this point, this was the reality.

Ethan’s palm tingled as his gaze hardened. The Wheel lowered into his sight like a coin about to be called. Kara’s shoulder brushed his, and he could feel the coiled spring of her decision.

"Ethan," Mira said softly, wind carving a slow circle in front of her hands like a shield that wanted to be born. "Tell me there’s a trick left".

"There’s always a trick left," he said, and tried to make it sound like more faith than mathematics, but no one was humored.

Pike lifted a hand, his fingers poised to drop.

The air crackled with tension.

BADUMP!

Ethan could hear the rapid rhythm of his heartbeat.

Beside him, he heard Reid’s breathe hitch. He heard Holt’s safety click; he heard the river move under all that metal and remember that it had cut through rock before men named it.

He did not hear mercy, all he heard was doom.

Then, Pike’s hand began to fall.