The impact wasn’t just pain; it was a total, blinding sensory whiteout.
The heavy industrial cart slammed into the loading dock asphalt with a deafening, metallic shriek. The steel frame crumpled instantly, violently ejecting its payload. Wool blankets exploded upward in a tangled cloud as one of the heavy casters sheared off, pinging wildly across the parking lot like shrapnel.
Brice hit the ground hard. He rolled across the unforgiving grit of the asphalt, his shoulder taking the brunt of the kinetic shock before he finally skidded to a halt in the shadows of the loading dock.
For ten agonizing seconds, the only sound in his ears was the high-pitched ring of his own adrenaline.
He spat a mouthful of copper-tasting saliva onto the pavement. A long, ragged groan forced its way out of his chest. “…Ow.”
A few yards away, a pile of bent steel and tangled wool shifted. Brian pushed himself up, resting on his hands and knees. He took one deep breath, tried to plant his foot, and immediately collapsed back onto the asphalt with a sharp hiss.
“Okay,” Brian wheezed, clutching his side. “Note to self. My new superpower definitely still lets me feel blunt-force trauma.”
Brice planted his palms on the frozen ground and slowly levered himself to one knee. The moment he put weight on his left leg, his ankle screamed in hot, blinding protest. He gritted his teeth, testing the joint. It didn’t feel like pulverized bone, but the sprain was deep and furious.
He forced himself to stand anyway. Every step sent a jolt of fire up his shin, dropping him into a heavy, dragging limp.
Brian looked up from the pavement, wiping a streak of grease and blood from his forehead. “You good?”
Brice forced a tight, breathless grin. “I’ve been promoted.”
“From what?”
“Walking. To limping.”
Brian let out a sudden, barking laugh, then immediately curled inward, wrapping both arms tightly around his ribs. “…Don’t make me laugh, man. Seriously. It feels like I swallowed broken glass.”
Brice hobbled over, offering a hand. He pulled his friend upright, taking a hard look at him in the dim light. Brian’s hospital scrubs were torn to shreds. Dark, blooming bruises painted his forearms, and fresh streaks of red ran down his shoulder where a bullet had managed to break the skin just milliseconds before his Steel Skin had hardened.
“You don’t look much better,” Brice said, wrapping Brian’s arm over his shoulder to steady him.
Brian gave a weak shrug. “I’ve looked worse.”
“You literally look like you got hit by a truck.”
Brian glanced back at the mangled, smoking wreckage of the laundry cart. “I think, technically speaking… it was the truck that got hit by us.”
Brice couldn’t help it. A breathless, aching laugh escaped his lungs. It was absurd. They were bleeding, broken, and standing in the shadow of a nightmare, but they were alive.
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A massive, concussive boom violently shattered the quiet moment.
The Genesis building behind them belched a thick, oily plume of black smoke into the night sky. Across the upper floors, reinforced windows spiderwebbed and blew outward, showering the compound in glittering rain. The emergency sirens, temporarily muffled by the fall, suddenly surged back to life, echoing for miles across the empty industrial park.
Brian stared up at the burning facility, the orange glow reflecting in his exhausted eyes. “…You think they’re mad?”
Brice glanced over his shoulder, watching a secondary plume of fire lick up the side of the concrete wall. “I’d say mildly disappointed.”
VZZZT.
Blinding halogen searchlights violently sliced through the darkness, sweeping across the loading dock. A distorted, mechanized voice crackled through the PA system, echoing off the concrete.
“Escapees spotted. Sector 4 exterior. North loading dock.”
Brice’s smile vanished, replaced by a cold, hardened edge. “They found us.”
The heavy steel exit doors on the ground floor flew open. Guards poured out into the night—at least a dozen of them, dressed in full tactical gear, their rifle lasers cutting sharp red lines through the drifting smoke.
Brian rolled his neck, the bones popping audibly. “…I was really hoping for a five-minute break.”
“So was I.” Brice rapidly scanned their surroundings. Fencing. Stacks of rusted shipping containers. A row of parked delivery trucks. Beyond the chain-link perimeter fence lay a heavily wooded drainage canal—cover. “There.”
Brian nodded, his jaw set. “Lead the way.”
They ran.
Or, at least, they tried. It was an ugly, desperate scramble. Brice limped severely, heavily favoring his right leg, while Brian leaned hard to his left, protecting his shattered ribs. Neither of them was operating anywhere near full strength, fueled entirely by panic and raw adrenaline.
Gunfire erupted behind them.
The staccato roar of automatic weapons tore through the night. Bullets sparked viciously off the pavement, kicking up chunks of asphalt against their boots. Without thinking, Brian violently shoved Brice forward, stepping squarely between his friend and the incoming fire.
Two heavy rounds struck Brian square in the back. For a fraction of a second, the skin beneath his torn shirt flashed a dull, metallic gray. The bullets flattened against his flesh with a sickening, heavy thwack, failing to penetrate. But the kinetic force was still devastating. The impact knocked all the air from Brian’s lungs, sending him stumbling forward.
“Damn!” Brian gasped, dropping to one knee as the gray faded back to bruised flesh. “They really need to stop doing that.”
Brice grabbed the back of Brian’s collar, hauling him roughly to his feet. “Come on! Move!”
They threw themselves behind the heavy rear tires of a parked delivery truck just as a fresh volley of bullets turned the truck’s metal siding into Swiss cheese. One stray round clipped the side mirror directly above Brice’s head, shattering it instantly and raining sharp, glittering shards of glass directly into his hair and down the back of his torn shirt.
Brice froze. Slowly, he reached up and picked a jagged piece of mirror out of his hair. He stared at it for a second, a deep, profound annoyance settling over his features.
“Okay,” Brice muttered, brushing the glass off his shoulders. “That’s just unnecessary. Now I’m irritated.”
Brian leaned his head back against the truck, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to breathe through his shattered ribs. “Got a plan?”
Brice let his gaze track past the boots, scanning the immediate environment. His eyes locked onto a massive, cylindrical shape parked just twenty yards away, right beside the loading dock’s main power junction.
A high-capacity fuel tanker.
A slow, dangerously vindictive grin cut through the grime on Brice’s face. The sheer exhaustion seemed to evaporate, instantly replaced by a sudden, hard-edged impulse for immediate payback.
Brian opened his eyes, saw the look, and immediately shook his head. “No. I know that face. What are you looking at?”
Brice pointed a bruised finger past the tires. “Just a little karma.”
Brian leaned forward, following Brice’s gaze. His eyes went wide. “Brice, that’s a commercial fuel tanker.”
“I know,” Brice said, his voice dropping into a cold, profoundly satisfied rasp. “And honestly? I was just going to quietly slip away into the woods. But these bastards dragged us out of our lives, locked us in cages, treated us like lab rats, and now they want to shoot glass down my shirt? No. I want to see the exact look on their faces when half this compound goes boom. Let them see what they get for holding us against our will.”
Brian let out a long, suffering sigh, staring up at the bullet-riddled chassis above them. “I don’t know why I even ask anymore.”
Brice’s grin didn’t waver. His eyes were locked on the tanker, completely fueled by the thrill of turning Genesis’s own resources into a crater purely out of spite. “Because someday… I’m going to say I don’t have a plan.”
Brian nodded slowly. “That’s the day I’ll finally panic. Assuming your lack of impulse control doesn’t vaporize us both tonight.”
Brice reached out, his fingers wrapping around a heavy, sheared-off steel pipe lying in the debris. He weighed it in his hand, then tossed it to Brian.
Brian caught it effortlessly with one hand, the cold metal grounding him.
The two friends looked at each other in the dim, strobe-lit shadows of the truck. They were bruised. They were bleeding. They were utterly exhausted.
But they were still smiling. And Brice looked genuinely thrilled to finally hit back.
Brice took a deep, jagged breath, shifting his weight onto his good leg. “Ready to hand these guys the bill?”
Brian rolled his shoulders, his grip tightening on the heavy steel pipe. “I was born ready.”
Brice raised a skeptical eyebrow. “No. You were born loud.”
Brian barked a quiet laugh. “Fair.”
Brice looked back toward the approaching sweep of flashlights. The crunch of boots on glass was getting impossibly close.
“Let’s go remind Genesis,” Brice whispered, his voice dropping an octave, “…that they really should’ve kept us locked up.”
Together, the two friends pushed off the truck, bursting from cover and vanishing into the shadowy maze of shipping containers, pulling the heavily armed guards directly toward the fuel tanker.