A breath was wasted as I tried to comprehend what just happened.

  Before the sensible parts of my brain took control again. Thumb brushes the safety to release the slide and stick it back on my waist. Crawling to the piece on the ground as I return my aim on both exits of rooms on the left while I pull myself to Budimir's side just a meter away.

  Turning him over made me grit my teeth. I'm carved up badly but all seems laughable compared to the kid.

  The 10th Street's clothes are soaked in red. As I do so, a murmuring whimper in high pitch escapes his mouth sounding like his body's response instead of his. There's a dagger buried to the hilt into his belly, and half a dozen cuts across his thigh, wrist, chest, collarbone just under his neck it's a miracle in itself that his blue Iris is still moving with his silent, chipped lips trembling as if in hyperthermia. Eyes half shut, lids extracting and loosening as the pupil sinks and floats.

  Son of a.....

  Moving a person with a knife in the stomach is going to kill him an excruciating death. Each bump, stretch, and twist is going to cut his intestines into smaller bits till all the blood in his body is lost internally if he doesn't die of sheer pain first. And pulling that thing out will just speed up the process of drainage.

  By my mandatory medical knowings from the other end of a needle I say there isn't a fucking stretcher I could use in here. The boxing wrap on my arm's already soaked in blood like a sponge. The best-case scenario is him waking up and walks down the stairs with the knife out, or I have to drag the fucker down...

  "Aye, kid...Budimir can you hear me?" Stained thumb and index took some effort to pry open the baby blues bewildered like a motionless raindrop between space but he's still half-conscious.

  "Oh for fuck sake." I tab his face, then slap him with my left palm, the neck rigidly turning along the cheek smeared in my blood. My right's still fixed on the dark few paces away, whatever the beast's waiting for I don't intend to find out. Finding his palm under the rag, I pinch the center of it until his pupils are dilated to a full. Then I slap him again.

  "Wake up. There's a fire downstairs, we are leaving." And by the rising smoke starting to blur the emergency sign vague, it had spread to the second corner of the corridor.

  By miracle or pain, the kid's left palm slowly raises like embracing the coming of the end yearning as his chest heaves rapidly in short breaths, lips trembling but the sight's still off focus. I round my palm at the back of his head as to lift his gaze at the fracturing green light. His pupil traces in, narrowing to the abnormal in his serenity and I lower my head to his ears.

  "I can hold you, but I can't drag you down the stairs." The breaths lengthened into seedy drags of a silent yearn of mouth like each inhale's a scream. With no better option around, I fold the Qin blazer thrice into a rough patch of square. Lucky enough it's made of wool, not polyester.

  "Budimir, if you think you can walk. Blink twice." The kid's fighting it, I can see it in his shimmering iris diming the hue of tears. There's an end at the bottom of green LED in his sight. There's an end to the ambiguity, torment, knife wounds sewed and digging leads. Somewhere through the needle hold, an old man's fishing by a Siberian lake of white and there's a flaming gate next to the snow clearing, some might be waving in the dark, some might be smiling across the line.

  Devil's greatest trick is projecting millions dying to give up for the facade your brain conjures at the last breath, that there's more than a spoon scooping off your soul and toss it down the next poor bastard for you have sinned and he will sin. Convincing, that beyond endless darkness there's a backdoor to heaven, the truth is you were comforting yourself in pity of your meager life and everything you never gained.

  And Budimir blinks.

  When the eyelids open, the pupils are trained on me. I stick the Pardini in the holster and grip his palm in the air as hard as I can until there's a response to his.

  "Get ready."

  A snuck, a loose.

  The knife's out, the first spill splattered up my neck as he screeches and howls in low and shrift of a dry throat. Repulsively, Budimir rises as his entire body tries to retract as tight as possible to keep the pressure from pumping his blood out. I toss the dagger away and apply the patch of cloth on the gush as fast as possible while guiding his grip down to the abdomen,

  "Hold it as tight as you sucked your mother's tits." A few very short breaths came out of his mouth as the pain surged, he got through the initial shock and didn't pass out.

  With haste, and while he's still in a sitting position, I shoulder his right arm over me like operating a machine. Crouched in one knee, right arm securing his on my shoulder, left arm under his armpit, I stand up with as that's left.

  And a shiver runs down my shoulder. Reflexes come and pull my arm off the wounded for the pistol out in a hip fire position.

  At the end of the hall, it stands. Mask cracked with a corner opened and a silver line on its forehead. Behind the streetlight shyly emanating through the window now opened, throwing its shadow further as the hilts of all kinds of blades poke out the bulletproof vest, it stands like a shapeless ghost of very tangible violence.

  An arm tagged as it hangs in grip of a new blade, left shoulder carrying a...if you could call that a person. A scrawny old man, in crimson red mandarin of frivolous embroidery around the buttons but the wearer's clearly unconscious with an unsettling grin on a delirious smile..... over the face of someone that's almost the spitting image of the son of a bitch. Same, subtle hook nose over a sunken side...But he's not the emperor, the Qin will not put himself in any situation as defenseless and as undignified as a crackhead and the person on the back of yakshini simply resembles all yet none at all.

  Its stygian gazer aims straight at me. I could take the shot from here. Her vest had taken a shot the fibers had lost the edge. And by the looks of it, the killer ain't trying to run or fight. It places its left foot half a step forward and to the side, itself blocking any trajectory to the junkee. And I know.

  It's the younger brother of Qin Cunhua, Qin Yen's uncle and a known addict.

  Casus belli.

  I holster the 9mm and replace my arm around Budimir's waist. Yakshini tilts ever so discreetly, the void where eyes reside shiftlessly.

  Bleeding right arm goes behind the junkie's knees as the killer held its employer up with both hands and thrashes it out the narrow gap window like a mailman stuffing package through the seam, followed by the sound of a scream and coughing as the sound of impact on the G wagon's top torn the momentary silence apart as it continues.

  Before I could conjure what was that— the Yakshini turns swiftly with both hands on the window frame pulls its legs up in a leap and a pull, jumping out the window.

  What is that thing made of?

  I don't have the luxury of contemplating. The kid's hand on the wound is loosening as the sleeve of blazer starts slipping off. I pull his right arm down with my neck as the anchor to keep him from falling I turn back to the stairs where smoke is emanating visible.

  Budimir frowns and coughs in reflexes as his saliva drips down the corner of mouth onto the first level of staircase. The balaclava does less than more in filtering.

  ***

  A step at a time, a tremble at the expanse of both of our lives. Budimir's semi-conscious state was brought to a stop by the coughing smoke making him uncontrollably squint and squirt.

  Two stairs down, a leg on the lower level while maintaining the balance from titling into the fall. Both of my hands are now on his shoulder as I slowly guide him down, when his weight's been put against me, I'd lean forward to stop it, when it's numb and still, I'll have to give him a pull as if teaching a pitbull to dance.

  Sweat covers my skin like there's a cold flame burning inside despite the heat's yet to reach this corner. The kid's relatively getting better as he tries to force the last few steps to the landings on his own, which failed as I had to catch and prop him with my shoulder again. His breath became ragged as soon as I steadied myself as tears started to form on the blood-smudged face of the oblivious youth.

  The smoke's getting worse as I can hardly open my eyelids as well.......Naive couldn't adjust how faulty I was once we made the turn on the landing.

  I can't see the end of the hall, fire surges and roars with the sound of cracking wooden interior

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  like an amber eye turning red at the sight of us, its iris expanding like a lantern in the blacken shroud of its sclera laughing vilely. At the center of a vague figure, I can see the big guy's corpse is now a bonfire that in some way, slowed the spread of fire by his grease and blood and flesh and tissue and soon enough, bones. To be dust and ash if not mine along with them.

  "Hold your breath.” I growl in Budimir's ear and pull him forward. We have less than 20 seconds.

  For the last six levels, I ignore his groans and quiet hisses that come to a stop at violent coughs the rest of the way. The burning eye races me to the middle of the hallway where the exit to the lobby resides. With each move, it taunts a speed of threefold while the blinks of red become more and more tangible as it cracks. Leaking like a thrown of gravel, a broken egg. The fire whipped itself up the ceiling, the paintings on the wall took less than a second as it blackened into aflame and curled in the air like an incomplete petal that turns to ash after an arc in the dense and accumulated soot of acrid, the floor, as the spread of fire made it past the corner.

  Budimir trembles a step but hooks my left arm upon his armpit and forces him to keep moving as the last of my adrenaline burns everything inside like it's also in a race with the fire. I couldn't see anything, and the wall on the left felt worm as I made a prob, each attempt of breathing was a cycle of violent coughs that consumed more smoke that shut my brain from processing, and by some miracle Budimir's no better but still on his feet.

  I try to hold my breath but the smoke still finds its way in. Torture of the finest craft, 12 meters is an endless climb as I wish to tear my face off along the fucking mask. Every inch of my skin crawls with an unbearable itch as I cough till my eyes water and blur the last seam between my swollen eyelids and the residues beside them.

  Few meters, just a few... the eye becomes a gushing tear of something primeval and lopsided, as the first there is when it all started this world. The fangs of a beast behind its breaths hiding the redness gnaws of its swallow... I can feel the heat wash over me as real as a throw of stone, especially when I'm half blind at this point.... Come on...

  The last of their cry stays behind as I kick the botched door they locked. The fire issues behind me as I carry him further, just a bit further, don't look back, don't look back, the fire brightens their faces, don't look...

  Budimir's weight starts gaining on my shoulder while his legs are giving up by the mingled brain of cyanide, carbon dioxide, pain. My hand probs his belly to make sure his still holding the blazer. Fucking hell, it's already soaked. I pull him by the waist as I push him forward just a bit further, I know this path even in the dark. I recognize pain and denial even in the blind. And so does the gazing sun roaring in front of us, I can feel its warm malevolent creeping up my torn skin of machete slashes and bullets missed... laugh you son of a bitch! Laugh to your lung's and heart's content. I am here! He's here besides as always! Lord above can go fuck himself as well, I am still here! I'm still...

  The setting sun made brick pavement shine like ambers. The whole street was gleaming an unusual sight with the peddles catching glimpses of the fire.

  I can't raise my head, the Russian bastard's arm on my nape drags me down. All I see is the orange glimmer of the sun and fire rounding up the oval pieces on the ground. I screamed but the street was empty, so I crossed another step forward and there was...noise between the ever-shouting interior creaking and the wooden interior snapping.

  A clean tab on the shoulder but audible perceptive and another among my next steps. Standing on the abyss I turned to the left and found something of a different color above the kid's hanging head, different than the grey and the red of shoreline horizon at sunset.

  They're black-like mistakes, with shards of broken pieces connecting to cracks of grey and seams pieced by a stolen yellow on the rim by the accelerating heat. I'm here.

  My body shifts to the left nudging Budimir to lose his footing as both of us fall through the swinging double door. The fire consumes what's left. The seam on the upper door frame seeps smoke before the flame declares it as the ebony color quickly turns grey and shrinks into the vertical flame that climbs through the bursted windows in a reach like a claw to the prey or a cry for help as the smoke finds a different outlet to drown, the heat is especially immediate since the little air locked in the lobby engulfs it into a greater blazer.

  I turn around to check Budimir only to find him lying still on the ground with left loosely upon the piece of rag falling off the wound. The lad gasps for air as his eyes search the red veils on the ceiling turning brighter with each breath. His body either went into shock or breathed too much smoke inducing into his wheezing state. Dizziness is setting in by his systems desperately gasping for oxygen while the smoke's emanating in front of us at a terrifying speed clouding the mists of red veils hung over the walls and ceiling as fire will soon catch up. His body's being convinced that he's in a safe space to recover.

  "Kid...afch! Budimir don't close your eyes we're not there yet.. arch!" Each word is a race and a bargain as I pull him by the armpit half a meter away from the burning door now creaking ominously as my regained sight starts going blur again and Budimir lets go of the blazer.

  "Fuck!"

  I crawl forward and press my thumb upon the soft under his chin where his throat connects...

  One......

  One two.......

  One.......

  He's still there.

  Pulling off the bandage on my upper arm, I grab the blazer to fix it by his leaking belly. Around the waist, over the abdomen. A triple knot on top as the rest hangs loosely like the bloody intestines had already got out. Despite my best effort by the time I'm down, the smoke had filled the better portion of the lobby and I can hear the coughs.....fuck me, there are abundant of them. By the bed, rolled on the ground, halfway to the front, hanging by the stools with scrawny arms intertwined over the mid rails, curving the corner of lips on the soiled sheets.

  "Kid.....just keep your eyes open... I'll do the rest." My upper arms under his armpit hooking back as I raise his numb torso by force as I drag him, with all that's left of me. Fresh blood trails down by the contracting of muscle, the parts that are settling in as brittle pieces of a different skin. Only when I hold my arms up to carry him do I realize how bad it was, my left arm's already covered as the seams are breathing in the toxin in the air, opening and closing like a gentle welcoming. I couldn't feel pain, I couldn't feel anything physical no matter how hard my eyes squint at the mess.

  My vision tilts between Budimir and over my shoulder checking if there's any furniture or dying junkies in the way. With each turn, the fire eats off another part of the view in front of those two windows as the anchor point, the entire north wall is getting chewed out by swirling flames that circle through the planks, first through the seams as smoke irrupts then the fire arrives, closing in on the space in between like an defeating chase. Each turn, each step in this crouching posture puzzles me more. The limited oxygen depleting and the carbon dioxide poisoning my neural systems are as if materializing two different worlds with contradicting answers.

  Why am I here....

  Smoldering through every single corner of my view, I can feel the coarse and itch repulsing at the bottom of my throat again.

  "What happened to my voice...."

  It took me a second to realize that sentence was in Chinese and another to recognize the elderly with mud-grained pupils questioning me. They're strained to a bulge unbeknownst to the flame ensuing behind him until the smolders and ashen smoke covered the voice, the hand was in the air till the last. I cough out something.

  He's not the only one, either choked by smoke or waken by my trudge. More and more patrons are waking up in puzzled glances at the flame, on me, on the unconscious man dragging a trail of blood on the floor like a mop, a paintbrush, an animal.

  Some of them are quietly starring at me, some are looking for something on the ground until they lay back down but eyes still trained on me as I trot by, and some with their mind still intact get off the beds and start running past me towards the exits in hilarious fashion of crooked legs. All the while the veils or sheets or whatever that are hanging across the ceiling in arcs finally caught on fire as they're broken into a drape falling with a burning end swinging in the air like fuses. The west wall was finally ignited as well, the point of origin at the southwestern corner of the stairs down the basement had breached the layers between.

  Tables, beds held up by stools and poles, desks, clothes, jackets, bodies, junkees, each turn as I bump into something I witness another lost soul or a nuisance on the path and soon enough I stop distinguishing them through my violent coughs as I can taste the corrosiveness at the end. With each turn, I see the fire consume more of the world in front, my iris glassy and illuminated glaring down at them lying around. It's a carousel through purgatory. And a reminiscent one.

  The motionless body on their last breath watching the flame caught up on them as you escaped. Run, clutch, fight, kill, push, and forward.

  Don't look back.

  Staring at the hellscape crawling its way forward I simply stop distinguishing the differences, or rather I can't no more.

  The toxin in the air invaded my neurons and forced open the memory lanes locked in the cellar under the rug.

  Someone's palm reached my right shoulder from behind. I spare a hand to snap the thumb outward to the center of my palm, I can't hear the cracking of bones but I can feel it in the hand tremble in my grasp and a scream of sharpened stack inserted. The face of no differentiation to a hollowed skull falls on my arm pulling back off its bony arms circled my arm in a tight grip as it screams through inward-folded lips and sunken sockets, protruding eyeballs.

  "I don't want it anymore! I want more. But I don't want this anymore. Please...." Please.... brother stay with...... the spare hand unholster the gun to pull the trigger at its left eye. Most of the blood left in the feeble woman spills through the back of her head as the chain-like arms fall off me along with its head dribbling downward the rest of her body onto the ground, some painted the muzzle red. But the voice didn't stop.

  Please, stay with me brother. Don't go off.....

  "Fuck off!"

  I shout into the cough as the smoke surrounds me, killing the visibility as it surges towards the open gate. Every single whiff of them flowing in my direction...

  Come on... Ivan... Budimir... whoever the fuck I'm trudging.... I think I'm about done.

  There's the bleeding horizontal at the vague far we aim. The sparks of blood trails along where we've been and where we're heading, all paved in gold by the setting sun.

  On peddle or steel, I can no longer see.

  Through countless bodies, I drag us both through until I can't avoid stepping on them. Their eyes are the same dullness chiming in grey ready to dissolve, I keep telling myself that but I can't avoid them. They wouldn't let me, the shiver kept running down my spine despite my mind slipping away through the open wounds rinsed by blood.

  The dizziness is setting things tilted like my closing lids, each blink swatted with tears forced out my swollen eyes and the voices keep luring me off balance. My mind is a twining knot, threads of past and present and forewarns and regrets tangle and bundle into thick hemp ropes round and round on each other till the knot squeezes them together. Past, present, hopes, and reality rub shoulders with each infested piece but two constantly anchored my mind.

  I had nothing.

  Everything gained, has a due.

  Therefore, to those that give notwithstanding. I will never forget.

  What was left of my senses twisted my mind in the last breath of survival instinct into me believing what I was carrying was someone else at a place I never allow myself to even project into existence.

  And it did.

  I drag the person in my arm with a raging fit and he moans out in pain. A stride, a pull. Rummaging through whatever I bump into in this senseless smoke like a bull in thorn snarling in pain. The faces are losing their strength as well as the howls and cries and teary eyes finally close when the smoke filled their lungs as mine, choked into oblivion while I burn the last of myself through the light that contradicts the sea of fire buried under obscurity. This one glimpse of a quiet bluish hue renders into a cleaner white than the smoke erupting through it like a great flood.

  "You will live. I owe you a life that meant nothing to me, brother."

  Through the halo that warms me in its blind illuminating every particle in air none differentiated, me included.

  Beaten, bloodied, and covered in ash, strings of white smoke hooked its trail to the edge of our souls like the ones that ran away from the place of no light. Ghosts clawing their pale, weightless twig-like arms on me. Weightless yet so tiring. Some came back with rigorous resolve for hate, some just continued existing, and some left without a touch, much like every other night. And the first breath of fresh air came into my lungs.

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  This chapter is hard to write for me since a lot of sequences, like the chapter before, needs to be done in one sitting otherwise it just doesn’t feel right. And trying to have that moment of trance is especially troublesome since I’m currently dealing with some personal bullshit which is not time consuming but it makes it very hard to focus, which is one of the reasons why it took so long for this chapter to come out.

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