The floorboards didn't just break. They dissolved.
Two hundred and fifty pounds of tactical armor crashed into the dirt foundation below. The heavy, metallic groan of the building's skeletal plumbing shifted under the impact.
For two seconds, there was absolute silence.
Then, the floor exploded.
Trapped in the dirt, the machine's logic reverted to brute force. A suppressed automatic rifle opened fire, shooting straight up through the subfloor.
The bullets didn't punch clean holes. They shredded the century old wood. Razor-sharp splinters erupted into the pitch black room. Muzzle flashes strobed chemical yellow through the dust, illuminating the peeling wallpaper.
Risay didn't hesitate. He lunged toward the bed, keeping his chest flat against the linoleum. The sonic crack of a bullet snapped the air an inch above his ear. He hit the mattress and scrambled up.
"Mom," Risay choked out.
Amira was a ghost in the dark. Her breathing was a shallow, wet rattle. Her hands blindly searched for him, finding the canvas of his coat. Her cold fingers slipped on the soaking wet sleeve of his ruined right arm.
She froze. Even in the freezing dark, she knew what that heat was. The fear in her eyes shifted instantly from the gunfire below to the boy in front of her.
"Risay," she breathed, her voice breaking. "You're bleeding to death for me."
"I'm surviving," Risay said, gripping her thin shoulder. "We have to go."
She couldn't walk. Muscle atrophy and the violent shock of the freezing air had paralyzed her legs.
Below them, the gunfire abruptly stopped. A heavy thud echoed from the crater. The enforcer was climbing back up.
Risay slid his good left arm under her back, wrapping it tightly around her waist. "Hold onto my neck. Do not let go."
Amira locked her thin arms around his collar. Risay braced his boots against the floorboards and pulled.
The cost was immediate.
Beneath his heavy coat, the crude stitches in his right arm violently tore open. The muscle sheared. A fresh, sickening wave of hot blood flooded down his wrist and pattered onto the cracked linoleum.
The gravity of blood was absolute. It was the physical weight draining his life onto the floorboards, and it was the agonizing weight of his mother in his arms the only anchor heavy enough to make him stand when his body demanded he collapse.
He locked his knees. He absorbed her weight just as a tactical boot kicked up through the splintered edge of the crater.
Risay dragged her toward the door. He threw his momentum against the rusted deadbolt, kicking the wood directly above the lock.
The frame splintered. The door flew open.
They spilled out into the hallway of Building 402.
It was a blind panic box. Doors were thrown wide open. Flashlights and lit matches cut erratic arcs through the freezing corridor. Neighbors screamed and shoved past each other, completely blind to the war in Apartment 1B.
Camouflage.
Risay let the panic swallow them. He angled his body, shielding Amira from the crush, letting the physical momentum of the terrified residents carry them toward the rear fire escape.
Behind them, the door to Apartment 1B was kicked entirely off its hinges.
The enforcer stood in the threshold. The blue thermal visor glowed like a predatory eye.
But the corridor was packed with fifty terrified, screaming people. Fifty overlapping, erratic heat signatures. The algorithm choked. The enforcer's gun jerked left, then right, the targeting software violently overcorrecting against a shifting wall of organic noise. It couldn't isolate them in the crowd.
Risay hit the end of the hall and kicked the emergency exit open.
The brutal winter wind hit them like a physical blow. Risay carried her out into the storm, leaving a fresh, glowing trail of crimson drops in the snow behind them.