Two guards. Coming up the stairs. I've got maybe ten seconds.

  The room has one entrance - the door I came through. No windows, no second exit. Filing cabinets, desk, corkboard full of maps. Nowhere to hide that isn't obvious. So the solution is obvious - it comes fully formed in my mind. Not hiding.

  I position myself behind the desk, crouch low, smoke bomb in one hand. The other hand I keep loose, ready. Gas building under my skin, that familiar pressure. Not igniting yet. Not until I need it. It hisses out in a slow trickle, building up near the ceiling.

  Footsteps on the metal stairs. Heavy. Not trying to be quiet - they don't know what they're walking into, just that someone called and said check upstairs.

  "--probably nothing," one of them is saying. "Rats or some shit."

  "Rats don't open filing cabinets."

  "You don't know that. Smart rats."

  "Rats don't smell like lighter fluid either, smartass."

  They're at the top of the stairs now. I can hear them in the hallway. The door's still open - I left it open when I came in, stupid, should've closed it, too late now.

  A shape appears in the doorway. Fills it, actually - guy's got shoulders like a refrigerator. He's got a pistol in his hand, held low but ready. Behind him, a second guy, leaner, also armed.

  Refrigerator sees the room. Sees the open filing cabinets, the papers I moved, the maps I photographed. Sees me crouched behind the desk like an idiot.

  "Don't move."

  I don't move.

  He steps into the room. Gun comes up, not quite pointing at me but close. His eyes flick to my chest - the vest, visible under my jacket. He clocks it.

  "Don't move," he says again, "or you're getting one in the chest."

  It's not a bluff. He knows what he's looking at. Vest means I'll live. Vest means he can shoot me and it's not murder, just pain. Everyone in this room understands the math.

  "Hands where I can see them," the lean guy says from behind him. He's hanging back, covering, which is smarter than I'd like.

  I raise my hands. Slowly. Smoke bomb palmed in my left, invisible from their angle.

  "Who sent you?" Refrigerator asks. He's advancing now, steady, keeping the gun trained on my center mass. Professional. More professional than I expected. "You with the Titans? That bitch from the Music Hall?"

  I don't answer. I'm calculating. Distance. Timing. How fast I can move, how fast he can pull the trigger.

  "Asked you a question." He's close now. Maybe eight feet. "Who. Sent. You."

  I move.

  The smoke bomb hits the ground between us, cracks open, starts spewing grey. I'm already twisting sideways, trying to get behind the desk--

  BANG!

  The shot is loud.

  I don't hear it so much as feel it - a punch to the gut that lifts me off my feet and drops me flat on my back. All the air leaves my lungs at once. My ribs feel like someone hit them with a sledgehammer. For a second I can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything except lie there and wonder if I'm dying.

  I'm not dying. Vest caught it. I know this intellectually. But my body doesn't believe it yet.

  "Stay down," Refrigerator's voice, somewhere above me in the smoke. He's advancing. I can hear his footsteps. "I said stay down--"

  I roll.

  "Shut your eyes, now," I warn him, shutting my own. "And look away from me,"

  I don't give him time to process it. I don't give him a full second. I just throw everything I've got into my right hand and squeeze.

  Here's what happens. There's a lot of gas floating around the roof - not enough to explode the place, but enough to ignite like a candle wick. And when that meets a bright white, plasma torch flame, it carries the plasma with it. White surrounded by a corona of red, orange, blue, and yellow - everything but green, really. My eyes are shut and shaded in a helmet and I can still feel it in my retinas, more than I can see it. It's over in a fraction of a second.

  Someone yells. The second shot goes off - I feel it hit the floor near my hip, splinters of concrete peppering my leg, but it's wide, he's firing blind. A third shot scrapes through my outer thigh, a fourth I hear going wide and catching me in the upper arm. Two thick gashes explode through my skin in a way that feels like it's delayed, like they're waiting for the right dramatic moment. Like a samurai drawing a sword. Sploosh! Kaboom.

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  I force myself up. Everything hurts. My chest is a solid block of pain, my ribs grinding against each other with every breath. But I'm up.

  Refrigerator is staggering, one hand over his eyes, gun waving at nothing. Tears streaming down his face. The lean guy behind him is in better shape - he wasn't looking directly at me when I flared - but he's blinking hard, trying to track me through the afterimages.

  I close the distance before Refrigerator can recover. Grab his gun hand, twist, strip the weapon. Some kind of pistol. I don't know. Guns is guns. Magazine release, slide lock, scatter the bullets across the floor.

  "Fifty-two pickup," I manage. It comes out wheezed. Breathing is bad.

  Refrigerator swings at me blindly. I duck it - barely - and shove him back into the lean guy. They tangle, stumble. I'm already moving to the lean guy's gun, the one he's still holding but can't aim because his buddy's in the way.

  Another strip. Another scatter. The bullets ping off the filing cabinets like expensive rain.

  "Tell your boss," I say, and God it hurts to talk, "Hellhound says hi."

  Refrigerator is on his knees, still rubbing his eyes. The lean guy is staring at me - or staring at where he thinks I am, his vision still swimming. He's scared. I can see it in his face. This wasn't what he signed up for.

  "I've got more firepower where that came from," I warn Lean, flaring an orange flame out of all five fingers of my right hand, splaying them out like a claw. "And I can do that flashbang trick again and again. Go. While you still have functioning eyeballs. Make sure he goes to see a doctor,"

  "That's right," I hear Sam murmur - hot mic? Or did she want me to hear that?

  He grabs Refrigerator by the wrist, the two of them cussing indeterminate nothings towards me. You know. Gangster threats. This isn't overs and things of that nature. I let them slide over me like a sheet of ice off warm roofing.

  I hear their footsteps pounding down the stairs, out through the warehouse, gone. Probably going to call someone. Probably going to bring heat down on this location. That's fine. That's the point. I want them to know someone was here. I want them to know someone's fighting back.

  But I need to move. Now. I stagger toward the door. Every step sends a spike through my chest. Cracked rib. Has to be. Maybe two.

  "Sam," I gasp. "Guards handled. I need--"

  "I heard." Her voice is tight. Controlled. "Are you hit?"

  "Vest caught it. Ribs are..." I trail off, lean against the doorframe. "Not great. Two shots went wide and cut me, left upper thigh, left upper arm, but they look skin deep, not muscle. Just sharp. I'm moving."

  Every word takes more effort than the last. "Get out of there," Sam orders.

  "What about the records?" I ask.

  "What about them? You have pictures, right?" she replies.

  I turn my body sideways, split between the doorframe of the hall and the room. The smoke from my smoke bomb is getting sucked away by the HVAC system. I look back at the room. Filing cabinets full of paper. Maps on the wall. All of it documentation of Kingdom's operation, all of it evidence.

  "Yeah," I say. "Give me thirty seconds."

  "Hellhound," Sam warns me.

  I don't have thirty seconds. I have whatever time it takes for the lean guy to make a phone call and for backup to arrive. But I'm not leaving without finishing the job.

  I limp back to the filing cabinets. Each breath is a knife between my ribs. I press my palm against the nearest stack of papers and let the gas flow. This time I don't focus it tight - I let it spread, let it build, and then I light it with the weakest spark I can manage.

  Fwoomfh.

  The papers catch instantly. Yellow flame spreading across payment ledgers, route schedules, business lists. I move to the next cabinet. Same process. Then the maps on the corkboard - those go up fast, the corkboard itself starting to smolder.

  "That's enough," Sam says. "Get out."

  "Almost--"

  "Now, Aitch. Lighthouse just saw something."

  I freeze. "What kind of something?"

  Tasha's voice cuts in, and she sounds... wrong. Not scared exactly. Worse than scared. Resigned.

  "Taxi just pulled up half a block away. Someone's getting out. Big guy. Wrapped in bandages."

  "What, like a mummy?" I joke. But nobody else seems to be laughing.

  "Garbage Day." Sam's voice is flat. "Alex, get out of there. Right now."

  I don't know who Garbage Day is. But I know that tone. I've never heard Sam sound like that before.

  Alright, Alex, buddy. Time to move. Time to run. What I actually do is limp very fast down the stairs, one arm pressed against my ribs, the other hand on the railing to keep myself from falling. The warehouse floor stretches out below me, all those stolen goods, all that evidence I photographed. There's smoke starting to drift down from upstairs now. The records are burning. I did that. I did something.

  "He's moving toward the building," Tasha says. "He's... Sam, he just ripped the security door off. Like it was cardboard."

  "East exit," Sam says. "The one you came in. Go now."

  I hit the ground floor, stumble through the rows of shelving. My chest is screaming. The east exit is ahead of me - I can see it, the door I melted through, still hanging open.

  "He's inside," Tasha says.

  I freeze.

  "Ground floor. West entrance. He's... looking around. Sam, I think he heard something."

  I'm in the middle of the warehouse. Shelving units on all sides. The east exit is maybe fifty feet away. And somewhere behind me, through all those rows of stolen goods, there's a guy who can rip doors off hinges.

  "Don't move," Sam whispers. "Don't breathe. Let him pass."

  I crouch behind a shelf full of electronics. Try to control my breathing, which is hard because my ribs hate me and my lungs want more air than I can quietly give them. The smoke is getting thicker now, drifting down from the stairs. The fire's spreading. Good for destroying evidence. Bad for staying hidden.

  Footsteps. Heavy. Not like the guards - these are deliberate, confident. Someone who knows they're the scariest thing in any room.

  "Hello?" A voice. Deep, almost friendly. "Someone's been busy up there. You want to come out, or do I have to come find you?"

  I don't answer. Don't move. My hand is pressed against my mouth to muffle my breathing.

  The footsteps get closer.

  "I can taste you, you know." The voice is conversational. "Hide all you want. I'm not gonna kill you, but my boss does need you to know that we don't tolerate interruptions lightly. You're not leaving here without two broken wrists. It's just business, nothing personal."

  What the fuck. What the fuck.

  "Sam," I breathe. Barely a whisper.

  "East exit. When I say go, you run. Don't look back."

  The footsteps stop. He's maybe two rows away. I can see a shadow through the gaps in the shelving - big, broad, wrapped in what looks like bandages or gauze. Standing there. Listening. Smoke is pooling on the ceiling now. The fire alarm should be going off but isn't - probably disabled. The air is getting hazy.

  He turns to look directly at me. Even through the gauze, I can see the corners of his cheeks turn up towards his ears. "Gotcha,"