I pull the mag out for there is but one in the chamber. Sliding back the first one, I keeps a mental note of the 6 rounds left.

  The stair down's steep as brittle, the collective steps ain't much quieter than the corpse slung down but we're way past caring. I take the lead, Nikto follows with lines in his iris breaking but he's keeping the gun up. As much as one can ask him in this state.

  The stress after rush ain't going to get easier. It'd just become more frequent.

  I turn my wrist to check the timer as the last blade of light ends at the sixth step. The time's unsurprisingly up as the longer hands of my watch cross the tip on its third whirl.

  Ragged breathes in a gnarled path down as we both lean into the wall with wooden pickets running along the frame. Here is the mold and smell of paint against the powder and chemicals outside.

  Right where the dead rest its head, the last door to the basement but a white-washed wooden placket at best, a brass knob on the left looking as secure as a half-turned screw. No peephole, no camera, only an ill line of orange illumination under the door's seam.

  The smell of chemical burn fades off on the first approach of the stairway but reincarnated at the end of this door. But not quite the same, this is...drier.

  A hand on the frame, first layer's rooted by bugs. Tracing down the line of flimsy cracks where the plant curled in soft. My finger grazes the handle before turning back to Nikto gesturing him with a push in the air. Not taking any chances at the last moment.

  A stair up I extend my aim at the knob. Two trigger squeezes of 45 ACP open most types of wooden doors. But I was more interested in the reaction of the other side and one Mississippi and two Mississippi and... Nikto squeezes over to the right as he bumps into the door on his leap from the stairs. The door cracks open as he stumbles in there with my gun still held vertically by his eyes.

  Extreme concentrated lights almost blinded us, I curse under my breath as rushing in with my sight clouded in purple as if being sucker punched.

  I can only tell the outlines by my half-shut eyes, while the mute's rushing towards a well-built short Qin in a loose shirts and covered in sweat, a flash of shade crawls at the bottom left.

  Two blinks, I raise the aim along the movement and quickly gain on him as he crawls under a table amidst the confined interior.

  I grab his left leg and with a drought pull, the guy's torso slides back out on the slick concrete floor. Hands clawing the pistol off the duck tape as it drags the table off its leg despite the gun barrel still stuck on tape. His eyes move to mine distorted vision at the last second like standing over a cliff. A trigger squeeze feels like clicking a staple or stamping a paper while aiming down. Four walls and the ground send the shot's echo back instantly as if the round was spiked.

  Turning around the blaring light caught me instantly as I turn away from my own shadow. Raising a palm above my eyebrows to see Nikto repeatedly slamming the butt of my gun down the guy's mouth like a broken roadblock.

  I raise my aim higher with my palm still above my brows, aiming at the brighter spot hanging on the center of the ceiling which is just around 40 centimeters above my height. As I squint my eye till a tear jerked, rolling down the balaclava.

  I put the gun down since it would be futile. The whole bloody ceiling's striped in HPS sodium lights the size of baseball bats in four columns, cables slithering the space between and blocking out the original infrastructure. Whatever the hell that was must be very fireproofed.

  And the smell. It's.... it's close to the whiff of chemical burn from the hallway but not quite. If it was cutting iron outside, here are burning pipes and neither are pleasant.

  I circle along the wall that envelopes the staircase down. I can faintly observe that's where all the lines lead.

  A hand on the frame of primitively bounded straps of cables moving up and down with sharp rings of stainless steel, bracket rod. The sound of murmuring grazes my already overwhelmed mind as I make my way past the crowded space blocked by table after table of.... empty trays and scrubs...

  Through the corner and then, right under the hollowed stairs there are three sets of power switches wrapped amongst a hornet's nest of grey cables the size of my forearm.

  Left to be electrified, right to risk going blind. I pick the lever to the left and force it down with my left forearm sending a burning sensation.

  The ceiling blooms in my vision like a sea of inverted violet plain before extinguishing into oblivion. The basement's almost pitch black save for camping lamps there for emergencies as they shine alone the planks of the corner where they were nailed. Painting the violet sea over my iris still a few gold spouses of rose.

  "Что это за место?? " And now I can properly hear the murmuring. "Говори!

  Ты блядь! Speak!" Walking along the wall, I almost trip myself over a shorter table under another one that reaches to my waist covered in empty steel trays and brown scrubs in close appearance to amber or balls of mud.

  The sound of steel clocking the feeble layer between bones and noise starts following each inquiry. The rusting of bones and the barrel against the slide sounded like a wet dog walking into a slaughterhouse.

  I saw a few bill counter on top of folded push carts, one of them still got some local marks as well as the opened craters in the back and plastic bags on the floor. These are good enough indicators for me to stop asking questions. The place functions above laundering and now's as empty as a gutted trout. Shit, maybe those SUVs outside really are here for the monthly collect but either way, what's to be done here is apparent.

  Taking out the thermal, I cling my thumb in the pin as I make my way back to the front.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Nikto, it's done. Pop the burners and let's get out of here." The kid ain't answering me, he's back's against me while the chink in full body ink is against the table leaning backward by the 10th street over him. I squint at his strained posture and skip two steps further across the only open space in the B1 in front of the door. "kid! For the love of Saint Peter are you...."

  On the northeast corner hangs a smaller set of concentrated light that's round like a headgear. It swings a little on the mute's left, whose right eye is bulging in the shadow as he sticks the pistol muzzle into the bloody mouth of the Qin. Those aren't just bloodshot, not even a crackhead on his last hit before animosity takes him would look like that. It's a mix of all the worst emotion in the world; fear, exquisite hatred, a raucous wane, and most of all confusion. It's a state absolute that eats the rest and leaves you somewhere between perpetually like this or for a very long time.

  "Какого черта ты здесь делал?" He whispers like a snake poking out its forked tail. The lower half of his balaclava's a wet mess across the lamp framing him a halo in his worst self....

  Raising the colt chamber in 45 to the temple of the bloody mess. Clutching the piece so tight that its grip safety squeaks, from raise to aim to the bullet ignited in the machinery to euthanasia less than a counted second.

  The side of the skull cracks open as the bullet goes through and out into the wooden plank five inches beside the headgear light. The kinetic impact shattered and raises the bone around the hole like a crown before its body loses all strength and slumps off to the side, torso bumps into the nearest table while the flopping arm knocks a tray off the ground after the barrel leaves its sunken mouth. In a louder nuisance than the gunshot itself.

  Sticking the pistol back on my waist, I stride a step forward and clutch the slide of the Pardini while the other goes for his throat.

  "Didn't I tell you not to rough it up?"

  "Я помню этот запах...."

  "Lad..."

  "I know the..." My left thumb pressed in.

  "I'm going to drop the grenade right where you stand in three seconds...." Now my eyes are as wide like his as the minor inconvenience of suffocation made him squint and frown in question of his place and the thoughts that went over his head. "Whatever you think you know

  I do not care. I do, however, care about the four maybe five trucks of Qins, of pigs, of other cunts coming our way in any second."

  I point my piece at the red riding hood on the ground. "Save your doubts for quiet nights. We're almost done." I keep my stare and the grip on his vocal cords as his lopsided brown irises slowly return to the realm of tangible. A few glues of milky white float on the ridge as it expands and narrows by his ragged breath under wet mask.

  Letting go of both the pistol slide and his moving throat. I pull the cylindrical grenade out right in front of him.

  "Are we clear?" I raise it to his eye level, pulling the pin right between them as I drop the ring while my pinky's on the clip.

  "Yes."

  "Good." Slinging the canister off to the other side of the room, the clip detaches four steps away, the grenade hits the wall and hurls into the dark amidst the tables stacked together as metal chime of half-full tin can. The sight of sparks spewing out the pluck of the cap as the noise of thermal sizzling in a place rigged in cables and high-functioning lamps could bring most sane men back to panic. And thankfully, the mute seems about pissing his pants by the raise of his eyelids.

  I grab his shoulder before we're on the same pace as none are in faith in Igor's ability to tune fuzes. On the second breath across the blasted basement door, the loud sizzling arouses into a small explosion as you can practically hear the incendiary fall onto the ground, wall, ceiling, green-yellow bills, and the equipment before bouncing off to another until all the chemical burns and overheated incandescent's smell be devoured by the simple purity of acrid burning. Nitrogelatine burner can reach around 4000 degrees Celsius. I'd say this building can't withstand 150.

  ***

  I can feel just as clearly as I hear the whiplashes of cables combusting within accelerating heat at the rate of a radio switch.

  We can't feel the temperature rising yet but a dryness doubles on each step we climb. My shirt's soaked in cold sweat.

  We rush past the half-closed iron door as the mute takes the lead bumping the door open with his shoulder while another 20-some jumps of electric failure result in high-pitched bangs like the first note of a strip of firecrackers. The lamps hanging down the ceiling blinks.

  Running past the kitchen door and storage room, the first whiff of smoke catches up. Nikto hooks his left palm at the turn to pass the corner and keeps running at full speed. The kid almost trip over by the big guy's corpse sloped on the corridor.

  "сука!"

  The mute pulls his left foot off between the corpse's neck and the floor, skipping two steps before resume hurling through the narrow passage. I jump over the bastard with a gnaw on his neck as the lamps above blink again and shut off for a straight second while everything but the outline printed in your vision disappears before coming back on. The two other levers....for the love of god, you lots can have some sense of fire regulation.

  Nikto stops in front of the double door back to the lobby as he turn a quick glance at me bypassing the first room to the left before practically knocking it open with both arms.

  "черт возьми!"

  He stuck his head out a second before turning back as I stop two paces beside him.

  "What?"

  "They're not here!" Eye whites almost glisten under the ectropion. Nikto mask heaves in his gasping.

  "Fuck!"

  He unknowingly turns to the stairs at the right end leading up to the second while I gaze at the open exit at the other end of lobby through the door window.

  "They might be back in the car no?"

  He laughs a bitter one as the first whiff of smoke made him choke on it.

  "Budimir said to regroup at the lobby. The idiot would be here waiting even if the building got bombed." The lighting shines against the shake of his head.

  I want to scream into laughing and bail into the night but Nikto had turned away from the double door as he strides to the stairs.

  "Nikto." I take a step forth before a loud and hollow snap happens on the other side of door.

  "Nikto stop."

  Two steps forward I grip his shoulder again but he just shrugs it off as he pulls my gun back out of his jacket pocket.

  "Kid they're dead you know it."

  "I don't. You neither."

  He responds plainly and tries to move on.

  "Nikto. Listen, listen for fuck sake," I run past him and put an arm up his chest and a foot back to stop him, he ain't taller than me but sure weights more but now, his look is the splitting image of some damned son of a gun 7 years ago. Shit, everything down to self-doubt and the hypnotic nature of his false determination is identical.

  Ain't it the worst? Professing a will or admitting fear while none changes the outcome.

  A smirk moves an itch on my cheek dragging the muscle around my eye sockets. I let go of him and show my empty palms up.

  "If you go up that stairs I'll walk right out and tell Alek to leave immediately. I'll tell him all of ya'll are dead..."

  There's the excuse to live with yourself.

  "You son of..." He tried to raise mine fucking gun in his right palm, the muzzle purposely lowered as he's more hinging the iron sight forward as I grip it by the barrel as my right forearm sends to his joint, bending his right forearm inward pressing the gun against his chest.

  "Or instead, you walk out of that door and get in the van. I'll go fetch them." I state the alternative evidently and ever-cheerfully. His eyes drop simultaneously widen in despair.

  And here's someone to blame but yourself.

  I removed he's point of purpose just found as well as the sense of assuredness. His eyes seemingly narrowed horizontally in a squint, touch of brown swirls like a confused man. I'd never imagine the silent kid at the last bench would be the unfeigned one. Encouragingly, I pulled the gun away. Accordingly, he let go.

  Now you can do what I didn’t.

  I mop the blood on the muzzle off on the boxing wrap tied to my forearm, still stings but the bleeding stopped. The right corner of my vision lies a corpse in suit leaning by the open area of what I assume to be a staff room and Nikto was still standing still like....the other 10th street kid in the alley.

  I opened my mouth to say some, and I did, but the biggest explosion yet came three walls and a floor away blocked it. Every single soul in this compound heard it. Last thing I saw was through the tiny round window to the lobby, waving gray smoke are now perceptible at the edge of the west wall connecting the ceiling, slipping through the red veils. Last thing I heard was a scream about fire in Chinese from other side of the double door. Before the lamps and bulbs beam one last blink to signal the complete darkness sweeping in.

  "Run!" I shout in the dark as I urge Nikto to move with a forceful push before turning towards the second floor.

  ————————————————————

  The entire album’s so consistent on its flow and sound design that I hardly notice the next one’s up. Regardless of that being a good or bad thing, this is my favorite in that album.