CHAPTER 72: LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

One moment, Jonas collapsed, and the next moment?

"Jonas!" Travis was already there as he called, sliding on torn jeans, hands blazing gold as he pressed both palms to the worst of the damage, contact immediately igniting Vital Surgeas he poured himself out.

Jonas’s flesh started knitting back in frantic strands as the bleeding slowed from sheets to rivulets. The power dragged a groan out of him, back bowing as the Rift drank his reserves.

"Keep..." Jonas swallowed a mouthful of air and finally found words. "Keep everyone... moving".

"Shut up," Travis snapped, his voice hoarse, eyes wet and furious. "Try not dying every single time you insufferable bastard, it ruins the vibe!"

Jonas chuckled.

Kara dropped to one knee at Jonas’s head, her free hand bracing his shoulder while her other gripped the spear slick with Ravager gore. "You stubborn Ox," she grinned, hitting him playfully by the side.

Maybe they didn’t have the luxury for this, but they did deserve it. With the death of the Ravager, and with the help from the wall, the danger level of the Kill Road diminished significantly.

Reid stood a half step back, rifle lowered, his eyes never fully leaving the lanes. "Status," he said to the world at large, then to Holt specifically.

"Our flanks are clear," Holt replied. "For the moment".

Holt’s gaze flicked to the Shieldbearers; they were still intact. Their leader lifted his manifest shield in a curt salute across the lanes in acknowledgment.

He respected the feat they just achieved.

As for the Scavenger Pack, they lurked beyond the edge of floodlight, diminished and mean-eyed. One of them spat, then thought better of trying for trophies and melted back into the smoke.

They ignored them.

Ethan finally pushed himself up, his lungs scraping as the Gauntlet dissolved off his hand in a sting of cooling nerves.

He looked at Jonas and felt a complicated swell of pride, fear, and something like brotherhood that had survived being set on fire. "You held a scrapyard’s mouth open," he said, voice low. "You’re a f*cking legend man!"

Jonas grinned. "I’m the strongest Avenger," he whispered, smug even in collapse. "Told ya".

The wall thundered again, reminding them that victory here meant only less death, not safety.

A siren whooped twice, and the floodlights once again shifted a fraction.

Reid checked his watch. "We have three minutes, move".

"Can he...?" Mira began.

"I’ll move too," Jonas answered and tried to stand, but his legs betrayed him. He glared at them like they were disobedient recruits. "F*cking traitors!"

Travis dragged air into his lungs and shoved more healing through his palms until he felt dizzy. "Okay," he rasped. "He moves with help. Don’t argue, big man. If you do, I will gut you in front of the apocalypse".

Jonas stared at him with an incredulous gaze, but then he shrugged.

Kara slung Jonas’s arm over her shoulders, and Ethan took the other as they helped him to his feet. Jonas hissed but set his feet.

Holt swept the lane ahead with his rifle. "The path’s clean to the next marker. After that, it’s the unknown".

The Shieldbearers began to move again, keeping pace to the right.

The leader met Ethan’s eyes across the distance and gave the smallest nod. No words were needed, no time.

"Go," Reid said.

And they went.

The Kill Road didn’t stop trying to kill them just because a giant had fallen.

Stragglers poured from the edges, Pack Snarlers with glass in their fur, Creeper Eels slapping wet from split seams.

Holt clipped what he could, and Reid picked the ones Holt couldn’t.

Kara’s spear darted, hard and precise when needed and Mira’s gusts turned leaps into falls. Ethan saved Shadowstep for the stumbles that would have become deaths, making small miracles instead of flashy ones.

He was the backbone of the team, the contingency plan when things go wrong. His special ability embodied it.

Travis staggered, pale and stubborn, one hand welded to Jonas as if proximity alone could keep him together.

Every thirty steps he slammed another lunging surge of healing in, gold spilling through his forearm. "You owe me, man," he muttered. "Do you have any idea how much juice it takes to keep a brick wall ambulatory?"

Jonas grunted. "My ribs feel like a choir of forks." He grinned without humor. "But it’s still better than a coffin".

"Damn right".

"Two minutes," Reid called again.

The wall grew, looming like a continent of steel and poured rock.

Turrets raked the far lanes, Awakened still active on the parapets as they helped clear the Kill Road for the survivors. Somewhere to their left, a gate sally cracked open to swallow back a strike team dragging one of their own.

And then, the loudspeaker coughed to life again.

"Approach window closing in two minutes. Survivors, maintain lanes and do not stop. Do not look back

".

They did not look back.

The Ravager’s corpse smoked behind them, a collapsed cathedral of bone-glass and dead magnetism.

The Shieldbearers advanced on a line parallel and slightly behind, their formation a moving citadel around the two civilians whose faces had gone past fear into something like shell.

The Scavenger Pack ghosted at the ragged edge of light, counting the seconds like coins. They were two fewer than before, eyes narrower, hope meaner.

They crossed a painted line where asphalt gave way to a strip of chewed concrete laced with buried beams, pre-Rift engineers’ last attempt at permanence. The floodlights here were brighter, the turrets were angrier too.

"One minute," Reid said.

The wall’s shadow finally swallowed them.

The world compressed to noise and heat and the slick terror of acceleration.

A final knot of F Ranks boiled from a culvert, Ash Threshers with maces for tails and eyes like stove doors.

They made short work of them.

"Thirty seconds," Reid said. His voice wasn’t a voice anymore, it was a metronome counting the distance between living and not.

The gate tower directly ahead moved.

An inner slab rose with a hydraulic scream, and a second slid left. Between them, a throat of steel yawned and a ramp extended.

Shapes massed inside with rifles, shields, and the matte bulk of a suppression rig. A line of soldiers took one step forward in unison, faces impassive in helmet shadows.

"Team Gamma," a voice barked from inside the gate with amplification. "On me. Clear approach!"

The turrets shifted and for a heartbeat, the guns above them stopped.

Ethan’s skin crawled. The silence was worse than thunder.

"Go!" The voice at the gate snapped. "Now, now, now!"

Gamma Squad surged out with shields locking, rifles barking in overhand arcs that tore fur off snarling Skulls.

"Window closing in twenty seconds!" The loudspeaker declared, calm as a clock announcing noon.

Travis sagged. Ethan hooked an elbow under him without breaking stride; Kara and Jonas shifted as one. Holt moved ahead, eyes dead-flat, creating a run of quiet for the next ten meters with clinical shots.

And then, they hit the ramp.

"Fifteen!" Reid said as he dragged them over with the authority that made men do impossible things because time had to agree.

Mira’s wind caught Jonas’s back, giving him the small push he needed to continue.

The Shieldbearers came in on their right, matching with cadence as their leader’s manifest pane bowed and held strong as something big and ugly hammered it from outside.

"Ten seconds!" The loudspeaker said.

Ethan glanced up into the gate’s throat where he saw the floodlight glare, and the silhouettes of men and women who had not slept enough in a week.

He noticed the tremble in a loader’s hands as he slammed a magazine home and pretended no one saw it.

He looked left and saw the Scavenger Pack break into a sprint.

He didn’t look back.

"Five!" The loudspeaker intoned.

Then finally, they crossed into the throat of Fort Aegis.

The Gamma Squad parted like a hinge and closed behind them, the ramp’s lip grinding as it began to rise. A final Ash Thresher hurled itself under the closing plate and met a shield that snapped down like a guillotine.

"Window closed!"

The voice said again, and the outer guns roared back to life.

Ethan staggered two steps into the tunnel’s cool and stopped because stopping was the only action left in his tired bones.

Jonas sagged and laughed a broken sound, while Travis sat abruptly and stared at his shaking hands.

Kara leaned her forehead against the spear shaft and let out one breath like it was the sweetest thing in the world. Holt finally let his rifle muzzle touch the floor.

Mira? She closed her eyes as the wind circled once, twice, then lay down like a tired dog.

Reid remained standing, barely, his eyes tracking even in victory.

He looked to Ethan. Ethan met his gaze and managed a nod that said what none of them had breath to waste on, "we did not die".

Beyond the inner gate, the quarantine’s deeper machinery thumped, and boots pounded toward them as commands snapped and medics shouted.

The fortress got ready to judge, triage and to make room for new pieces in its machine.

Ethan looked back once at the slit of light shrinking behind them. For an instant, he saw the Kill Road as a vein feeding a beating heart of war, and the Ravager a clot broken and gone.

The wall would live another day, so would they.

Finally, the inner gate started to rise.

"On your feet!" A voice called from within, stern but wrapped in fatigue. "If you can stand, stand. If you can’t, someone will stand you. Fort Aegis doesn’t like people lying down".

Ethan set his shoulders and moved forward with his people into the light he had chased across half a ruined world.

The Kill Road held its breath behind them, already gathering a new storm for the next window.

END OF VOLUME 1.

[Hope you enjoyed the story so far. If you do, please do well to leave a review for me, it means a lot. And if you can, drop a gift too, it’ll motivate me to write even more Chapters.]