Sirens echoed from the avenue below, growing louder with every second. We had no time for more kissing.
“Where’s my dagger?”
"Deep inside the drawer where you keep the bedsheets, you dummy."
She took the dagger out, cast a spell, and transformed the dagger into a hairpin.
"Help me move them," I said, catching my breath.
We grabbed the unconscious men by their jackets and hauled them out into the public hallway, lining them up against the wall alongside the lookouts I had dropped earlier. Keeping the bodies outside was our best shot.
If first responders walked straight into a room full of unconscious bodies… damn it, I can’t imagine what will happen next.
Left in the corridor, the whole mess could be framed as a trouble that had nothing to do with what happened inside the apartment.
Before stepping back, I picked up one of the abandoned axes, turned toward the utility alcove near the kitchen, and swung the blunt end hard against the secondary gas line fitting. The metal groaned and gave way with a sharp hiss. A strong chemical odor of natural gas immediately bled into the foyer.
Gotta give the firefighters a reason. But hell, if only I’d known these assassins were so easy to talk to, why even bother to trigger this fire alarm...
Outside, the heavy rumble approached as the first fire trucks pulled up. I turned to slam the front door shut, but the warped frame refused to budge. The wood was split down the middle, the deadbolt hanging from splintered timber.
Heavy bootsteps echoed up the concrete stairwell. The firefighters were moving floor by floor to locate the alarm source and clear the units, starting around the eleventh floor where I had pulled the switch.
My pulse spiked again.
Through the ruined doorway, a radio squawked in the hall: "Dispatch, Ladder 115, we got multiple non-responsive males in the twelfth-floor corridor. No visible bleeding; breathing is shallow. Requesting immediate EMS and PD to our location."
Heavy knuckles rapped against what was left of our doorframe.
I took a breath, smoothed down my jacket, and pulled the broken door open with a calm face.
Clara stood behind me, panicked.
I calmed her down. “It’s okay, I got this.”
Two firefighters in full gear stood outside, flashlights cutting through the dim hallway. The moment their beams swept across the splintered door, their expressions hardened.
"FDNY. Anyone hurt in here?" the lead firefighter asked, resting a gloved hand against his Halligan tool. "Can we step in?"
"Yeah, come in," I said quickly. "Some guys tried to break through the door a couple of minutes ago. They smashed the lock and hit the pipe before running off."
The crew swept the unit with their gas meters, confirmed the leak at the valve, and shut off the main line with a wrench. "You two need to evacuate down the fire stairs right now. Let the medics check you out on the street."
We followed them down.
Down on the street, the block was sealed off with yellow tape, flashing red and blue lights reflecting off the storefronts. EMTs were already wheeling stretchers toward the entrance while uniformed patrol officers took statements.
Because the firefighters reported heavy signs of a violent struggle inside the unit, the officers flagged us for questioning.
To make things more complicated, several unconscious men had been found right outside our threshold. For the moment, the police treated the home invasion and the collapsed civilians as two separate incidents.
They loaded us into separate cruisers and drove us down to the local police station.
Sitting in front of a detective, I laid out: "I work security for her. Someone tried to force their way into the apartment, and I engaged them to drive them out."
The detective clicked his pen. "Describe the suspects."
I caught a glimpse of the men who the mind-control spell had possessed. They were awake now, looking around with genuine confusion and fear as officers questioned them.
Protecting myself was the priority, but framing innocent bystanders who had been hijacked against their will didn't sit right with me. So, I deliberately left out any features that matched their build.
"Three males," I said without missing a beat. "Dark hoodies, baseball caps, or ski masks pulled low. I didn't get a clear look at their faces… I mean, it was dark, and I was focused on stopping the breach."
Clara kept her story aligned with mine. In her interview, she said she stayed behind the locked door the entire time, only catching vague silhouettes through the cracked wood and unable to provide specific details.
The detective scribbled notes on his pad. "So, we have three unidentified males, an organized entry team, armed with axes, wearing dark casual wear, with no visible tattoos or distinct accents noted."
"That sounds accurate," I agreed.
“Any other witness?”
“I don’t know.”
The detective had the recovered men brought in for a line-up. I took one look and shook my head. "None of them. The guys who hit the door were broader, and they took off down the fire exit before the sirens got close."
The NYPD officers looked visibly frustrated, their notes a tangled mess of conflicting details. With all the weapons only recovered from Clara’s unit and no direct matches, they tentatively filed the case as an attempted gang-related home invasion.
Then came the real problem.
During the background check, the desk sergeant discovered that Clara's paperwork was flagged.
Her rental agreement had been signed with doubtful foreign documents, and the system listed her as an undocumented, stateless refugee with no verifiable entry record.
"Her local file is getting forwarded to ICE," a Chinese-American officer told me, handing over an official appearance notice. "She has a mandatory check-in date with immigration services. Don't miss it."
We walked out of the precinct into the cold night air, the paper clutched in my hand like a live grenade.
The threat of magical assassins was bad enough; now Clara was facing an ICE deportation crisis in the real world.
Her apartment was a crime scene sealed with police tape, and my place was a moldy shoebox.
I hailed a yellow cab and took her to a mid-range hotel near Queens Boulevard, booking two separate rooms at the front desk.