Gunfire exploded below. The stairwell became a funnel in his head. One way in. One way out. Too many civilians.
He changed course immediately and pointed down the opposite corridor with his rifle. “Other way.”
The women pivoted with him as he headed down the parallel corridor. Old classroom doors stood open on either side, their interiors stripped to broken desks and stacked mattresses.
Behind him, Harper kept the women together. She spoke in Russian, giving simple instructions.No shouting. Keep moving. Help her. Don’t look.
She wasn’t waiting to be saved. She never had been.
A guard burst from a classroom twenty feet ahead, his rifle still coming up.
Pav fired once.
The shot punched the man back into the doorframe, and before the body hit the floor, Pav was stepping past him, scanning left, right, above. The women cried out behind him, ragged, involuntary whimpers that died almost immediately beneath Harper’s voice.
“Keep moving,” she said. “Don’t stop.”
Even now, she was thinking about everyone else. His jaw locked, pain blazing along the hinge.
The stairs down were half-blocked by a collapsed shelving unit someone had dragged across the landing, maybe years ago, maybe ten minutes ago. Pav hooked a hand through the metal frame and hauled it aside far enough to create a gap. Pain took his shoulder joint apart for one hot second. He bulldozed through it.
“Eyes on me.” He beckoned for them to follow through the gap.
On the other side, he waited until all the women were through. They were on the ground floor now.
A breeze threaded through the smoke from somewhere ahead, carrying snow and diesel and the metallic promise of outside.
Hope moved through the group like a dangerous thing. Shoulders rising. Breaths catching. One woman muttered something that might have been a prayer. Another began to cry again, but softer now, as if her body had decided tears were possible because the world might contain more than concrete and locks.
Pav hated hope in active zones. It made people faster than their judgment. Made them lift their heads too early, break formation, and run toward light before the threat was over.
Hope got people killed.
“Slow.” He made a dampening motion with one hand.
The women obeyed, and for that he was grateful. The service corridor opened ahead.
Beyond it, through the broken pane in the rear exit door, the yard stretched white beneath the moon. Trodden snow. A line of vehicles near the loading bay. The outer wall beyond.
Almost there.
Fox came over Pav’s earpiece. “South route clear. Gate control in ninety.”
“Extraction profile changed. Multiple civilians,” Pav said.
“Always adopting strays, Morozov? Copy that. Fox out.”
Ninety seconds was doable. And yet the hair on his forearms lifted. Training, not instinct—his body reading what his brain hadn’t caught up to yet. The yard was wrong. Too quiet. Too empty where there should have been chaos.
Angry shouts came from behind in the corridor. Men were converging; the pursuit was closing. Forward carried risk. Back guaranteed contact.
He waved the women through. “Move.”
Harper’s hand brushed the back of his jacket as she helped Lena over scattered chairs. The brief touch did more damage than the firefight. He locked it away as he reached the exit and cracked the door.
Left. Right. Blind angle by the service wall. No movement on the south side. Fox had done his job. Zak’s route was open.
A generator thudded unevenly somewhere behind them, coughing through the compound’s failing power. The yard stretched, bathed in moonlight, the guard tower empty.
