The world didn't end with a bang; it ended with the sound of grinding teeth—the screech of steel girders screaming against their concrete sockets as the Sterling Tower succumbed to gravity. I was falling, a chaotic tumble into a void of drywall dust and severed electrical cables. My stomach lurched, not just from the drop, but from the instinctive, primal need to protect the life inside me.
"Grace!"
The voice was a jagged tear in the roar of the collapse. A hand, rough and calloused, slammed into my wrist, nearly dislocating my shoulder. I swung violently, my feet dangling over a jagged pit where the server room floor used to be.
I looked up through the haze of gray powder.
It was Ethan. His face was a map of fresh lacerations, his eyes bloodshot and wild. He was anchored to a structur
