DAY ZERO

Don't be reckless

The inside of the facility smelled like a building that had been sealed too long. Recycled air and metal and something underneath both of those things that David had learned, in recent weeks, to recognise immediately.

Blinkers had been here.

They moved quietly. Lia behind his left shoulder, close enough that he could hear her breathing — measured, controlled, the kind of breathing you practice rather than the kind that comes naturally when you're walking through a dark military facility with one gun between you.

The weapons bay was on the map. Straight corridor, left turn, down a level. Simple enough in theory.

They found the problem at the end of the straight corridor.

David put his fist up and they both stopped. Pressed against the wall. He leaned forward just enough to see around the corner and then leaned back.

Twelve.

Spread across the lower floor of the weapons bay, moving in that slow directionless way blinkers moved when they hadn't fixed on a target yet. Some standing. Some dragging themselves between the aisles of equipment. Military personnel, by what remained of the uniforms.

He pulled back. Looked at Lia. She looked at him.

How many? she mouthed.

He held up both hands. Twelve.

She closed her eyes briefly. Opened them. Back to business.

He leaned close to her ear and kept his voice at almost nothing.

"How far from the weapons?"

She angled her head carefully around the corner and back. "Other side of the room. Maybe thirty metres past them."

"How fast can you run?"

She thought about it. Genuinely considered the question like she was running a calculation. "Fast enough," she said.

He nodded. "You remember what I taught you about attachments?"

"Yes."

"Silencer?"

"Yes David."

"Okay." He glanced around the corner once more, clocking the layout — the space between the blinkers, the path along the left wall that stayed mostly clear, the weapons racks on the far side. "Here's what happens. I go out first. I make noise — I pull them toward me, I keep them moving. You go left, stay low, stay quiet. Get to the weapons. Find a silencer, attach it, signal me when you're ready." He looked at her. "Then I come back to you and you take them out."

She was nodding slowly, processing. Then she looked at him directly.

"Roger," she said.

She said it cleanly. Professionally. Like the plan was solid and she was fully in it.

Then she grabbed his hand.

He looked down. Looked up. Her eyes were doing something that her voice wasn't — something that had nothing to do with tactics or silencers or the twelve blinkers around the corner.

"Be careful," she said.

He looked at her for a moment. At the worry she wasn't quite hiding, the way it sat in those brown eyes like light in water.

"I will," he said.

She nodded once and let go.

He went around the corner.

"HEY."

His voice hit the room like a stone hitting still water. Every head turned simultaneously — that horrible unified motion, twelve pairs of empty eyes finding him at the same instant.

"Yeah. I'm right here. Come on then—"

He moved.

They moved.

He heard Lia go left behind him — one soft sound of movement and then nothing, she was good, she was already gone — and he focused entirely on what was in front of him. Keeping them interested. Keeping them following. Not running fast enough to lose them but not slow enough to be caught, which was a very specific speed that he was calculating in real time.

He looped around the back of the room. Drew them into a loose cluster. Kept moving.

Then he heard it.

A whistle. Short and clean from the left side of the room.

He ran.

Properly this time — full speed, straight toward the sound of her, toward the weapons rack where she was kneeling with the gun raised and the silencer attached and her eyes already tracking past him at what was coming behind.

He was almost there.

The shot came from his right. One of them had gone wide — flanked without him noticing — and it caught him in the left arm and the pain was immediate and total and his legs nearly went from under him but he kept running, kept pushing, his arm screaming at him, almost there, almost—

He made it to her side and dropped into a crouch and looked at his arm and then looked up at her.

Her hands were shaking.

She was staring at the wound with an expression he had never seen on her face before — something had cracked open in it, something that the professional composure she usually wore like armour wasn't quite covering.

"Lia." His voice was steady. "Go for it."

"David I—"

"They're still coming. Go."

She looked at the approaching blinkers. Back at him. Her hands steadied.

She shot.

The silencer made it almost quiet — a series of muffled cracks, precise and fast. One dropped. Two. Three. She moved her aim smoothly, no hesitation now, Brian's trick working exactly the way Brian had said it would, the gap between heartbeats, the controlled exhale—

Something hit David from the side.

Hard.

He went into the wall shoulder first and the blinker was on him immediately — former soldier, heavy, and the smell of it was something he genuinely could not prepare for no matter how many times he encountered it. Up close it was overwhelming, thick and sweet and wrong in a way that tried to shut his brain down.

He punched it.

His left arm screamed. He used his right. Again. Kept it back long enough to look sideways—

"Keep shooting," he said through his teeth. "The rest — I've got this one—"

He looked around. Grabbed the first thing his hand found — a mop leaning against the wall, old, wooden handled. He snapped it across his knee. The break was clean, both halves jagged at the ends.

The blinker lunged again.

David drove the sharpened end into its eye.

It stopped.

One shot from Lia and it stayed stopped.

Then silence.

Real silence. The kind that fills a room after something loud.

David stood breathing. Counted. Looked around. Nothing moving. Nothing left.

He looked at Lia.

She was already crossing the room toward him, bag off her shoulder, kneeling in front of him before he'd finished sitting down, her hands moving to his arm with a focus so intense it was almost frightening.

Almost. Because underneath the focus was something else. He could see it in the set of her jaw. The slight pull at the corner of her mouth.

"Let me see it," she said.

"It's fine—"

"David."

He let her see it.

She worked fast and quietly. Opened the bag, found what she needed, pressed two fingers around the wound in a way that made his vision white at the edges for a second.

"Pain killers," she said, and before he could respond she had them out and was pressing them into his free hand. "Take them."

He took them.

The relief wasn't immediate or total but it was something — like the pain moved a step back rather than disappearing entirely. He watched her work. The way her hands moved — precise, practiced, the same steadiness she brought to everything.

Except they had been shaking five minutes ago.

He didn't say anything about that.

She found the bullet. He squinted. She said nothing, just worked, and he bit down on the sound that wanted to come out and gave her a jaw instead of a wince which probably didn't fool her for a second.

She stitched the wound. Bandaged it. Pressed the bandage down at the edges to seal it properly. All of it done in silence.

Then she sat back on her heels.

And her eyes filled.

She didn't make a sound. It wasn't dramatic. It was just — there, suddenly, the wetness in her eyes, and she looked at his bandaged arm and pressed her lips together like she was trying to keep something contained.

"You better not have been bitten," she said. "Or scratched. By any of them." Her voice was completely even. Which somehow made it worse. "Because if you were—" She stopped.

"I wasn't," he said.

"If you were I would never—" She stopped again. Looked at her hands. "I shot you."

"You didn't mean to—"

"I should have been the distraction," she said. Flat and certain, like something she'd already decided. "I should have been the one running. You should have been at the weapons." She finally looked at him. "If you die out here — if something happens to you because of me—" She shook her head. "Your mother is out there waiting. She doesn't even know you're coming. She's been in that house for three years not knowing, and if you die before you get to her—"

He reached up and touched her cheek.

She went still.

He wiped the tear that had made it out with his thumb, slow and careful, and looked at her in the low light of the empty weapons bay with twelve blinkers on the floor around them and a bandage on his arm and pain killers doing half a job.

"I'm okay," he said. "Look at me. I'm right here, I'm okay."

She looked at him.

"Don't worry about me," he said. Quietly. "Alright?"

She held his gaze for a long moment. Then she did something she probably hadn't planned to do — she leaned forward and hugged him. Arms around his shoulders, her face against his neck, quick and fierce and real.

"Don't be reckless," she said into his shoulder.

He sat very still. Let his good arm come up around her back.

"I'll try," he said.

She pulled back. Composed herself with that remarkable speed she had, the armour back in place, the professional back in the room. She stood up and began refilling her bag. He watched her for a second.

Then he stood too. Tested the arm. It hurt but it held.

"Take it easy on that side," she said without looking up.

"Yes ma'am."

"I mean it."

"I know you mean it."

She glanced at him. Something in her face that she let him see for exactly one second before it was gone.

Then she handed him the supply bag.

"Weapons," she said. "Let's finish what we came here for."

He took the bag.

They went deeper into the facility together, moving quieter now, closer than before, and David kept his bad arm close to his body and thought about nothing except what was in front of him.

Mostly.