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There was a window with daylight beyond it. A route of escape.
But it was barred on the outside.
Bryn screamed in fury. She grabbed a chair from one of the tables pushed against the wall; it was heavier than the cheap plastic ones melting right now in the reception area, and she swung it hard into the glass. The window shattered halfway down, and two more hits disintegrated the rest of the panes…but the sudden breeze sucked into the room made her realize she’d just screwed herself, hard.
The fire roared into the open room, sucked in by the rush of oxygen, and it leaped from carpet to walls to ceiling, licking everything as it went. Plastic-wrapped bodies began to smoke and sizzle.
There was no quick-release on the bars outside. They were fastened in hard. She wrapped her bloody hand around one and tugged. No leverage.
“Bryn!” she heard Joe’s voice in her earpiece, and it sounded taut with stress. “You have to get those bars off. It’s your only way out. ”
“I’m not the fucking Bionic Woman!” she yelled back. “How do I do that?”
“Find a lever!”
Lever. God. What the hell was she supposed to use? Something metal, something strong…
The chair. It had metal legs. She battered it in panic against the wall and floor until the plastic split, and one of the legs fell free with a rattle. Her lungs were burning, and her eyes; she coughed, gasped, and choked on a mouthful of rancid black air. The bonfire clawed at her back—no, that was just the heat, the heat.
She smelled meat cooking, but that was the dead people, not her, not yet.
She threaded the metal between the side of the window and the bars, and threw all her weight into it.
The leg bent. Not the bars.
Goddamnit!
“Fuck it. Get down!” Joe shouted in her ear, and she did, pressing her face flat to the floor.
Gunfire slammed into the outside of the building, a continuous rattle of firepower, and when it stopped, she scrambled up and took hold of the bars. He’d concentrated his fire into the brick on two corners of the window—beautiful and precision aiming—and the bars were loosened. She pulled and yanked and twisted, and they swung suddenly free. The whole grate came loose from the building and fell in a spiral down to clang and bounce on the street below. The air was being sucked in through the window, and as Bryn climbed up onto the sill, she realized that it was a straight drop. No fire escape. Nothing to break her fall. Just the merciless, remorseless concrete.
“Oh God,” Joe said in her ear. “Bryn, don’t, don’t do that. Christ—”
She didn’t have a choice. The fabric on the back of her jacket was burning now, and she could feel her skin starting to sizzle.
I’m not burning to death.
The jump was a vivid, conscious decision, and as she stepped off, she felt a sudden, absurd regret that she’d worn a skirt as it blew up around her waist. The last sensation she had was of panic, of the wind pulling through her hair and clothes, and then…
The landing, she supposed. But that, at least, she didn’t feel. Everything just went from hyperbright and chaotic to…black.
When she did feel something again, it was, of course, total bloody agony.
She tried not to shriek. Someone was holding her hand. She couldn’t see—Blind, oh God I’m blind—and then dim shapes began to ghost through the dark.
She made out Joe Fideli’s face as he loomed over her. He had a hand over her mouth. “Easy,” he said softly. “Easy, kid. I’ve got you. Had to move you. Cops are already here; so is the fire department. Couldn’t let you be found where you landed. You’re healing. I know it hurts, but you can’t scream, understand? You can’t attract attention. ”
She understood that, but it was a lot harder to control. She stopped trying to claw Joe’s hand free and instead pressed her broken fingers over his straight ones to keep the gag in place.
And she let the scream burn itself out against his muffling palm.
“Jesus,” he whispered, clearly shaken. “Okay. Okay, relax, relax. Let it go. …” His other hand stroked her hair. He didn’t say anything else. When she felt steady enough, she nodded, and he raised his hand, cautiously.
“Bones healing,” she whispered. “Help me. ”
“Uh…how?”
“Pull them in line. ”
