Page 87 of Beyond Redemption

A round struck the barrier inches from my head, concrete spraying across my shoulder and face. I didn’t pull back, instead adjusting and firing again.

Naomi held to my left, tightening her coverage. Ibarra adjusted on the right, maintaining the cross angle despite the damage to the line. We were still holding, but the game had significantly changed.

I risked a glance toward the south tower, but the smoke had drifted just enough between my position and hers to reduce everything up there to silhouettes and muzzle flashes. When it finally cleared, I clocked steady suppressive fire cutting down into the approach and sighed in relief. Liis was still in position.

I listened for the timing of her shots, knowing that if she was firing, she was alive. That should have been enough to focus on the war happening right in front of me, but it wasn’t.

I knew what she could do. I’d seen it. I’d trusted her experience enough to put her there in the first place, not that she’d have settled for waiting in the bunker. But knowing what she was capable of didn’t stop the calculations running through my mind—the distance between us, the time it would take to reach her if the line broke beneath that tower, the angles I couldn’t cover from here or at any point along the way. I thought about every day from the moment I met her until this one, wishing I’d taken more time, another minute, an extra kiss, just in case our goodbye at Command was the last time for either of us.

Another burst snapped past my position and forced my attention back to the Carlisi men steadily trickling in through the gap, but I purposefully positioned myself to keep my wife in my peripheral, her survival fixed in the background of every decision.

It was the third time I made a quick visual check when I saw it—movement below the tower, and inside a distance the line should’ve held.

“Naomi?” I called. “Does Command have eyes on the tower?”

“Stand by,” she responded, her hand reaching for the radio clipped to her chest.

A single crack carried from that direction.

“Naomi!” I demanded.

She listened, fingers pressed to the radio, eyes fixed past the line. “South quad compromised. Possible infiltrator, base of the tower.”

“Does Tower have eyes on him?” I asked, impatient.

She paused, holding up a finger while catching more traffic.

“Does Tower have eyes on him, Naomi?” I yelled.

She shook her head. “Command is redistributing pressure toward that sector. Hostiles are being pushed in that direction. Heavier weapons coming through... Shit, Thomas, they should—”

I left my post and broke into a sprint, clearing the broken edge of the barrier and cutting into the open before my brain had time to argue with the decision.

“South tower, you’ve got incoming!” I barked into my radio.

The ground was more than just uneven from the blast. Chunks of concrete and twisted metal scattered across the yard, forcing my stride to adjust without slowing. I vaulted a bent section of fencing, hit hard on the other side and kept moving, the tower fixed in front of me through the shifting smoke.

Gunfire snapped across my path, close enough to feel in the air, the sharp crack followed by the hiss of rounds tearing past. I cut left around a disabled vehicle, using what cover it offered without breaking stride, then pushed forward again into open ground. The air was thick and metallic, layered with burning fuel and dust that I could feel grinding in my teeth. A man wentdown ten feet in front of me, dragged back by two others who continued without missing a step. Someone shouted for a medic. Another voice cut over it, directing traffic, a futile attempt to insert order into a warzone.

A high-pitched buzzing grew louder as it sailed to the South Tower. I slowed down a bit, threading my fingers into my hair. “No!No!” I yelled.

The round fell short of the tower but decimated the fences.

“Shit!” I said, pushing myself back to a sprint.

I pushed past a cluster of militia holding a fractured section of fence, past a man on one knee reloading next to another slumped against a barrier with blood running down his sleeve, trying to stay in the fight with his rifle in his one remaining good arm.

The roar of another fire grew louder as I approached, this one large enough to rival every other sound in the sector. A steady, consuming rumble under the gunfire, flames stretching like a living thing, claws climbing the structure and crawling along the ground toward the next. From the other side, water hit in bursts, steam rising and drifting low across the yard. I caught Zeke and my brothers in my peripheral as I passed, yelling at soldiers to stay back, driving the hose forward, forcing the flames back just enough to keep another structure from being reduced to ash.

I could’ve helped, but I couldn’t stop.

The tower loomed in front of me, rising out of the smoke in broken pieces, the platform cutting a hard line against the sky. I tracked it as I ran, assessing distance without meaning to, measuring how much ground I still had to cover. Every second stretched against the same thought I couldn’t avoid. If the last one wasn’t a mistake, if they’d decided to blow the high ground instead of fight for it, if the tower took a direct hit, the only thing I could do is watch it burn and crumble.

Another crack came from the tower, this one sounding less like shooting and more like a pro golfer connecting on a line drive. I’d seen what a vehicle explosion could do to reinforced structure, and the tower was just some well-placed beams and bolts.

I pushed harder, lungs burning now, legs driving through resistance I didn’t acknowledge, cutting across the north quad at an angle that shaved seconds without exposing more than I had to. The tower’s ladder took shape in front of me, a body at the bottom. For half a second, I nearly lost it, but as I got closer, I saw that it was a man sprawled on the dirt. Blood was oozing from the back of his head, nose, and ears.

“Fuck!” I hissed, looking up.