Two Weeks' Notice

left side stubbornly refused to open. Screw it. She took the thumb drive and stuffed it into her bra.

“One more door to go,” she said, and went out and down the hall.

She knew the second that she opened it that something was wrong; it just felt wrong. In one sense it was the same as the others…emptied-out desk, missing computer, no personal effects.

But there was a square, dark shape sitting on the desk, just a dim outline in the flickering fluorescents.

It had a blinking red light that sped up as she stared.

“Get out!” Joe’s voice exploded in her ear, and her own instincts screamed it a half second later.

She was out the door and in the hall when the bomb went off with a violence that threw her ten feet, limp as a rag doll. Fire rolled overhead, and the fact that she’d fallen flat was all that saved her from the ball bearing antipersonnel shrapnel that shredded the walls at waist level. It was a Wrath of God explosion, shaking the building, blowing out glass, shattering walls, and she was buried in a fall of brick and drywall.

No time for a damage assessment of her body; she clawed her way free of the debris and saw that there was a murderously hot wall of burning rubble behind her, and a mound of burning debris that totally blocked the way to the reception room.

“I think we’ve got a magenta situation here,” Bryn said, and had the wild impulse to laugh. Shock. She had blood in her mouth and spit it out in a vivid red rush; something was broken inside, but that would heal. She got up, but her legs wouldn’t hold. Something broken there, too. She crawled instead, heading for the far end where the fire wasn’t yet taking hold. The smoke—black, thick, terrifying—billowed out and up. In seconds it had formed a thick layer over her head, and the stench of plastics melting made her retch up more blood as she crawled. Keep going, she told herself. You’ve had worse.

Not really. Magenta, magenta, magenta…She was back in Iraq, with her supply convoy under heavy attack. IED, we hit an IED, the truck rolled.…She’d survived that, survived with only minor injuries. She could survive this.

Hell, she couldn’t die.…

No, she could. She could burn.

The fire terrified her, and the fear forced her to keep crawling even as the nanites rushed to the injuries and began the cattle-prod pain of repair. Joe was two minutes out, he’d said—he might be even closer.…

He can’t get to you, said a cold little logical voice. You have to get out by yourself. Now, before it’s too late. The smoke was lowering, thickening to the consistency of black water. She’d drown in it, pass out, and then the fire…She might be alive and aware for that part of it. The nanites would struggle to keep her going, even while she was burning.

“Bryn! Talk to me—tell me what you want to do!”

There was a white-hot snap of agony somewhere deep in her back, and she jerked and convulsed with it. When it subsided two breaths later, she felt pins and needles stabbing into her skin, and then she felt her legs moving.

Whatever had gone wrong in her spine, it was fixed now.

“Bryn, I’m coming up!”

“No,” she said raggedly. “No, you can’t. Stay down there, Joe. You can’t help.” She scrambled up to her hands and knees. Her legs weren’t working well, but they moved, and she moved drunkenly toward the end of the hallway. Even then, the air felt thick and toxic, the smoke swirling as heavy as fabric around her face.

The break room was the last door. She slammed the entrance open and braced herself for the smell, but the stench of the fire had overwhelmed everything else. The plastic-wrapped bodies still lay in an orderly row, but the coffeepot had given up its struggle; electricity had shorted out. Fires burned at the outlets. This room would go up in minutes, and there was no safety here.

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.”