Page 3 of Fall Before Her Throne

“Are you fucking serious?” Ryu complained before I shot him a death glare.

“Wynn?” I gritted my teeth and willed calm into my voice. “Any update from Willow? What do we do?”

We needed our own fucking doctor in this group with how often we got hurt.

Wynn rushed through the kitchen and into the living room, carrying our first aid kit. “Willow said field triage first. I’ll call her back once we’re safe.”

He dropped to his knees in front of Max and began rifling through the kit for bandages and gauze. If we could get him bandaged up, we could all get out of here.

“They’re approaching our floor,” Ciel said, watching the TV for a second before he ran to the last kitchen cabinet on the left, right above the switches that triggered our alarms and lowered the steel shutters.

“What are our defense measures?” I asked. “We go out there, guns blazing?”

That sounded like a great way to die.

Ryuji grinned. “Just watch.”

My eyes stayed glued to the TV while the camera angle switched to our hallway, showing a view of the entrance to the stairwell as well as our front door, which was now covered by a metal slab.

“The door is already reinforced, but that’s a bonus blast door,” Ryu said smugly as he saw me scoff. “Came from the ceiling. Cool, right?”

“The penthouse has turned into a bomb shelter,” I murmured. And Ciel still didn’t think we’d last against explosives?

The door to the stairwell burst open, but before the seven assailants could even step out, the first three fell one by one. Pop. Pop. Pop. Bodies piled on top of one another. The living men scrambled back inside, hiding behind the door. As it slammed shut, I watched their forms press against the walls as if they were trying to dodge something.

My eyebrows furrowed. “Did they get shot? By who?”

Ciel grinned and held up a controller with a screen attached. “We have a g—we have a gun hidden in the wall across from the stairwell door. There’s one across from the elevator, too.”

“A remote-controlled gun? With a video game controller?”

“Neat, right? I made it myself.”

I snorted. “Yeah, that’s pretty neat, Ciel.”

He was about to say something else when we watched one man lean forward to shoot.

“Mierda.” Ciel tossed the controller back onto the counter. “Lucky shot. The gun is out.”

Four men hurried from the stairwell, automatic guns on their shoulders. We watched on the cameras as they got closer and closer to our door.

“What else?” I asked.

“The gun from the elevator?” Cas asked.

Ciel shook his head. “The angle is off.”

Two of the men crouched in front of the door and began pulling blocks of something from their backpacks. The other two provided backup cover, swiveling their guns between the door and then back to the elevator and the stairwell.

With a displeased sigh, Obi left the room, and I could hear his footsteps disappear inside the weapons closet, but my eyes were fixed on how they attached the blocks to the blast door, one by one.

“What are they doing?”

“That’s called C4, hanii,” Ryu said as he grabbed my shoulders and steered me to the other side of the couch. “It’s super fun.”

“They’re going to blow the fucking door open,” Cas grumbled.

“Yep.”