West London, June 2017. Weeknight. The wall clock over the coffee machine blinked 00:45 in watery blue. Most of the city slept. Not the five Americans in the chicken shop.
The owner—an older Indian gentleman with kind eyes—had already upended chairs onto tables and rolled the shutter halfway down. A crooked WE'RE CLOSED sign clung to the door. He should've sent them away two hours ago, but the big man in black had rumbled, surprisingly gentle for his size, "No. I'm finishing the hot‑wing challenge." It sounded like a threat even if he didn't mean it that way, so out of old habit the owner had ducked behind the counter where a chef's knife lived for rough closes. Before panic could grow teeth, the smaller American named Frank lifted his hands and, in careful Malayalam, offered an apology and a hello. The owner blinked, recalibrated, and smiled. Frank explained: the big one was "a special person, not dangerous." The owner shrugged, still shaken but amused, and let the night run long.
Now the two fair‑skinned American kids were a blur of capes and foam blades, still wired despite the hour. Emma, six, a red‑haired "Highlander" in tartan and a toy greatsword, fenced her brother Ben, seven, a blond "knight" with a plastic sword and shield. They whisper‑shouted Warband lines like blessings and curses:
"Surrender or die!" "Your money or your life!" "For honor and glory!" "Yield or die!" "Charge!"
Their blades thunked softly. Sarah, the mother, watched with a crease of worry. Frank, the father, said, "They're fine," and meant it.
Frank drained the last of his hot sauce, pushed his tray aside, and leaned in for a kiss. Sarah's ocean‑blue eyes flicked once; her platinum hair shifted as she lifted a handkerchief like a tiny white shield.
"No hot lips, soldier. Not tonight. Maybe later."
"Brutal," Frank said, half‑laughing, milk moustache and all.
"Ew, ew, ew—no kissing!" the kids chorused, scandalized.
Bruce said nothing, but he agreed. Kissing seemed weird—something women wanted to do that risked suffocation—and he knew blocking your airway was bad for life and for lifting heavy weights and such things. Also: yucky.
He pushed his sunglasses up his egg‑shaped head, then settled them again. He sat beside Frank, folded into a booth a size too small for him. He was over two meters tall—"six‑seven" in American—and his shoulders made the seams of his black coat complain whenever he shifted. He had no eyebrows; he'd singed them off years ago doing a stupidly heroic thing with a burning car and a trapped pet rat. Sunglasses parked where eyebrows should be seemed correct; in movies nobody laughed at people who wore sunglasses indoors, especially if they looked like Neo.
He lifted a wing. The booth groaned. He bit.
Hellfire.
Tears stung up uninvited. He tried to keep a flat, cool face—because Neo, or Peter Parker when he was being brave, didn't cry unless it was important—and dropped into the movie‑quote cadence he used when his own words got tangled.
"There is no… s‑s‑spice. It is not the s‑spice that burns—o‑only myself."
The kids pointed and howled. "Uncle Bruce is quoting again!"
For their sake—and because it hurt—Bruce did his stiff‑armed robot: shoulders clanked, wrists flicked, elbows ticking in little squares while he kept eating. The pain went somewhere useful when they laughed.
Behind the counter, the owner murmured, "Crazy Americans," smiling in his half‑sleep.
Bruce smiled back through the heat and slid his sunglasses down to hide the watering eyes. And then his thoughts did what they always did: ran off a cliff into the dumpster behind his brain to rummage for answers to questions no one ever seemed to answer.
Women were loud, mysterious creatures. He still didn't really know how babies were made, except health class had mentioned eggs—eggs—and factories and arrows on a diagram. Chickens laid eggs, but Sarah didn't, and yet somehow there was a baby growing in there and Frank already knew that, and Sarah's stomach got a little bigger each day. Were there hundreds of thousands of eggs? If so, where did all the extra kids go? Dissolve? Turn into ghosts? Could an egg be angry? He had asked Frank, dead serious. Frank had laughed so hard he'd never answered. It hadn't been a joke.
The wood under Bruce's mass complained. He wasn't fat; he was big—gym‑hours and stubborn muscle. (Sarah wasn't light either, technically; she weighed about as much as he could curl with one hand, which was interesting.) Being big helped you carry things and protect things. He'd hoped once that being big would make people stop laughing; mostly it made strangers step aside or cross the street at night. Big didn't make friends. It just made people wary.
He took a long pull of milk and stared down the next wing like it had insulted his level‑79 gnome warrior, HappyMan, who still hadn't hit max level because the game kept raising the level cap. That was fine. He liked challenges.
Across from him, Sarah reached in one smooth, maternal motion and dabbed sauce from the corner of his mouth with her handkerchief. "There you go, Bruce." Warmth in the voice. As she sat back, the keyhole of her cream polka‑dot dress shifted and the soft line of her cleavage flashed in the pendant light. Bruce flushed and looked away fast. Chests were a puzzle. At the gym, bigger chests on men meant stronger. Sarah's chest was… well… larger than his pecs. She could quiet two kids with a look, so maybe size and power matched for women too? Could women flex them like pecs? Why were they soft and bouncy when men's weren't unless the man was fat? And why did women make milk and men didn't? Questions arrived like arrows. He batted them down before his head overheated. Unknown meant danger; making women angry was very dangerous—he had learned that much by existing near them.
Under the table, Emma and Ben crawled and clashed plastic, popping out between benches, then vanishing again. Ben chanted, "Your money or your life!" in a knightly whisper; Emma answered with, "I'll drink from your skull!" and tried to keep a warrior face but kept giggling. Bruce's chest loosened. Kids were mysteries too—tiny once, now school‑big—but good mysteries that had once fit almost in his palms.
Then his phone buzzed. Little shopping‑cart icons marched across the screen—another order from Amber back in the united states, then another: rush shipping. He flipped the phone face‑down and slid it under a Bodiam Castle brochure.
Years ago, on a blue‑uniform shift, he'd found Amber sleeping rough on the street. She'd approached him with a strange proposal: she would be his "girlfriend" if she could live with him or for twenty dollars. He took girlfriend literally—girl + friend—and because he had almost no one besides Frank and the family, he said yes, plus he didn't have twenty dollars in his pocket back then. So he took her home and he gave her the bed, the bank login, and the house's quiet so she could be happy and sleep well. It was fine until she tried to kiss him and he said, "Ew, that's gross, Amber. Please don't suffocate me, and I don't want germs." After that she sent him to the yoga mat or the couch. Helping still felt right, even if it made him poor and stiff. Understanding wasn't his strong suit.
"Four left!" Ben announced from under the table, apparently keeping count the whole time. He held up five sauce‑slick fingers, squinted, and folded one down.
"Finish line, big guy," Frank said, nudging Bruce's shoulder with a grin. "You got this. Do it for the kids."
Emma tried to be serious and failed. "If he cries, we only laugh a tiny bit, okay, Ben?"
Ben nodded, already smiling.
"Honey, chew properly and finish your milk," Sarah told Frank, tapping the corner of her mouth.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, cheerful even while it burned.
Bruce went back to the wings and let his eyes drift over the table—castle leaflets, keep diagrams, a dog‑eared guide to Anglo‑Norman towers. On a grease‑stained receipt he'd sketched his favorite doomed trick from Medieval II: archers boxed in by peasants. It never stopped cavalry or catapult stones, but it felt fair—peasants were cheap and deserved a job, and he hated leaving units idle. Longbows didn't judge your face; they put arrows where you aimed. That was nice.
He set his sunglasses down, lifted another wing, and did the robot again—if a man had to suffer, he might as well make people happy while doing it. The owner chuckled in his doze. The fridge hummed. The coffee machine blinked. Chili‑vinegar hung in a thin ribbon over everything: pepper, oil, the wet‑metal smell from the doorway rug.
Then the night made the wrong kind of flicker.
Bruce's palm found the glass. Past his reflection, under the Westway's ribs, a tower block loomed—most squares black, a few stubborn glows. In one fourth‑floor square, a new color learned how to breathe. Not lamp‑yellow. Not fridge‑white. A thin, unnatural orange—the kind that didn't belong inside any home. It pulsed once, testing lungs, then widened.
Bruce's body stood before his brain finished the thought.
He scooped his wallet, shook out everything—crisp pounds saved for fish‑and‑chips and castles—and slid the stack beneath the salt. "I'm s‑sorry. I have to go," he said, voice flattening. The kids' laughter switched off.
Emma's shield dipped. Ben's sword sagged against his shoulder.
Frank followed Bruce's stare. Nearly a kilometre of sleeping city lay between them and that window, but once you saw it you couldn't unsee it: the wrong orange where cool dark should be. "Call nine‑nine‑nine," he told the owner, already sliding from the booth. "That tower. Fourth floor."
The owner leaned to the glass, saw it, and his smile vanished. "Yes," he said quietly into the phone. "Fourth floor—fire."
At the door, Bruce lifted the crooked entry bell with two fingers so it wouldn't jangle. He looked back once at Sarah and the kids. "I'm going to see if they're all right over there," he said. "I don't want to leave anyone's fate to chance."
"But why you?" Ben blurted.
"Because it's the right thing to do," Bruce said, and went.
"Bruce—be careful," Sarah called, her hand settling on the small swell under her sweater without thinking. Frank kissed her anyway—spice and all—quick and sure. "Back to the hotel," he said, locking eyes. "And if have to come then stay behind the police tape, ok. You stay behind it. I'll call if I need to."
He pulled the kids in, squeezed, and let them go. "Guard your mom, brave warriors. And stay strong!" he added, for their grinning benefit.
Emma hiccup‑laughed. Ben straightened like a very small soldier.
Frank shoved into the cool, metal‑smelling night—T‑shirt, shorts, runners—and matched Bruce's long, awkward stride in three steps. Bruce's gait ate distance even when his mind was elsewhere.
"Let's do what we can," Frank said low. "No crazy heroics."
"Y‑Yeah. I'll try," Bruce said, eyes locked on the tower.
They ran under the Westway—shoes slapping old rain, breaths settling—past puddles holding upside‑down sodium moons, past shuttered shops and damp brick. Behind them, the chalkboard clock clicked to 00:48, and a steady voice said into a phone, "Yes—fourth floor—I think there's a fire." Ahead, the thin orange grew teeth with a tiny electrical pop and a hungry flare along the frame.
"Don't be a movie hero," Frank added, not looking over. "You're not Neo. You can't dodge bullets or resist fire like some game character."
Bruce kept running. "Y‑Yes. I'm not N‑Neo," he said. "Just trying to be useful."
Frank didn't argue. The serious part of him had the wheel now. He brought his phone up, mind already laying out doors, knocks, stairwells, alarms. Bruce's hands opened and closed as he ran, priming to knock, carry, calm—whatever the next minute asked. He thought of longbows and silly quotes and of kids who didn't know the rules yet, and of how, when a window learned the wrong color, you didn't wait.
They went—together—toward the wrong orange.
They covered the distance in four minutes—under the Westway's iron ribs, past shuttered takeaways and puddles that held upside‑down moons. The tower rose out of the estate like a grey chess piece, twenty‑four storeys of panels and windows, the forecourt fenced and oddly bright with rubberised green around a bare tree and a green‑lipped entrance.
From the pavement they could already see flame learning the outside skin—thin tongues skittering along seams where no flame should travel. It looked wrong, like someone had painted petrol up the walls.
A scatter of residents stood by the railings and on the path: dressing gowns, hi‑vis from night shifts, a woman in a headscarf, a young man in a football kit. Voices overlapped—English, Arabic ("Ya Allah"), Amharic, Polish, Portuguese—fear making everything higher and quicker. No sirens yet. Just the hum of the A40 and the small, greedy sound of something eating air.
Frank didn't stop. "Inside," he said, and Bruce matched his shoulder.
The lobby was bare and municipal: postboxes, a noticeboard, a Fire Action placard with the usual calm lies, a lift taped off—OUT OF SERVICE in sun‑faded letters. No extinguisher box. No red handles. Just the single door to the stair and that door already propped on a fire bucket because someone had panicked.
Frank kicked the wedge away. "Keep this shut unless someone's moving people," he told a man coming down with a toddler on his hip. "Stay low. Go."
They took the stairs two at a time, passing a trickle of residents pushing down: a coughing couple, a woman with a baby against her chest, a teenager carrying a dog that shook and tried to be brave. Frank's voice stayed level, a metronome in the heat: "Down you go. Close your door behind you. Keep that stair door closed." Bruce repeated it, big hand on shoulders, guiding, never rushing the old or the scared.
On the fourth‑floor landing the air changed. Heat licked the paint. Smoke crept along the ceiling like a slow dark tide. A black‑cab driver with tired eyes—Ethiopian by his lilting English—was hammering on doors with his knuckles and his keys.
"Which flat?" Frank called.
"Sixteen," the man panted. "The fridge—boom—it exploded. I cut the power, but it's too late. The fire's out of control."
Frank raised a calming hand. "It's okay. I'm Ex‑US special Forces, and well this big guy is my friend. We know what we're doing. Lend me the keys."
For a heartbeat the man stared—then yanked up his keyring. "Take them if you must. But it's bad, brother. Already bad."
Frank took the keys. "We've got this flat for now. You get everyone else off this floor. Down the stair. Close doors behind you."
The man hesitated, then nodded and moved, banging farther along the corridor: "Wake up! Fire! Go now!"
Frank and Bruce stacked at 16. Frank brushed the handle with the back of his hand. Warm. He dropped low. "We crack it—we don't feed it," he murmured.
Bruce crouched, huge frame folded small. "Y‑Yeah."
Frank turned the key, eased the latch an inch. Smoke breathed out—dark, oily, electrical—and a smoke alarm shrieked above it. He braced the door on his thigh, counted three beats, opened another inch, then slid inside on his knees.
Kitchen ahead, left. The fridge stood open‑mouthed by the window, plastic gums blackening; fire popped in a tangle of cord and curtain. Heat shoved at them; visibility went to ghosts.
"Bathroom," Frank said. "Water, towels."
Bruce vanished into the flat's dim and came back with a bucket and a heap of soaked towels, their faces already draped. Frank toed a laundry basket away from the flame, ripped down a tea towel, shoved it wet along the threshold to choke the draw, then ran the tap full and slid a mixing bowl underneath.
They worked without speaking. Bruce heaved water where plastic glowed and cloth smouldered—around the edges, not at the heart—knocking the fire down in bites. Frank stripped anything that would carry flame—paper towels, post, an apron—and jammed it wet into the sink. He clapped a pan lid over the hottest bite, starving it; Bruce dumped; steam screamed.
A minute. Then another. The alarm still shrieked. The room breathed hard.
The orange shrank to a fist, then a thumb, then a smoking shine. Frank stood very still, listening for the wrong kind of roar. Nothing. He exhaled once and killed the tap.
"Good, that's it," he said. "We're done in here."
Bruce nodded, chest pumping. For a second there was only the tinny chirp of the alarm and the wet tick of cooling plastic.
Then a new light moved over the ceiling—flicker, flicker—and a sound like fabric tearing fast.
Frank stepped to the window and peered through the blackened glass.
Outside, flame was already running up the building, thin and eager, finding edges—laddering along the panels like a fuse. It licked past the frame with a hungry pop and a sweet, chemical breath, like melted fuel. Heat pressed the glass like a hand.
Bruce saw Frank's face change. "W‑What do we do now Frank? How do we reach that fire when it's outside?"
"Shit, that's not normal cladding. There are aluminium panel's there, but underneath it there must be some sort of a polyethylene core that is acting like a solid gasoline. And that's causing the building to catch fire even on the outside and the warm night air isn't helping either," Frank said, eyes on the climbing orange. "It's like some kind of plastic sandwich out there." He sniffed, grim. "I would say, maybe thirty minutes before this side of the building is a torch. And worse yet, there is only one stairwell, and twenty‑plus floors to evacuate now."
But as Frank was making his assessments, Bruce was already at the door and he shouldered it open. "Then we move. Kick doors open if we have to. We will wake everyone up, and we will make sure everyone has a fighting chance to get out of this building."
"That stair's going to choke," Frank said. "It's suicide to try for all of them. There simply isn't enough time, and besides the firefighters are going to be here any minute now, just let them handle it."
Bruce shook his head once, hard. "No, Frank. N‑No one gets left behind." And with that said Bruce was already heading towards the stairs and up towards the next level.
Frank swore under his breath, watching the flame's speed on the frame, doing the maths he hated. Then he snapped back and followed.
"Goddammit, Bruce," he said, breaking into a run. "You're going to be the death of me." And then he followed because long ago he had sworn to never leave the big guy alone no matter what.
Together they moved like a metronome—up two at a time; at each landing: six doors. Bang‑bang‑bang, shout, move. Six doors per landing was the rhythm the tower imposed; respect the rhythm and you could make minutes count.
"Move now. Fire's climbing the outer wall from four. Down the stairs. Close your door behind you—it slows the smoke."
When a chain rattled and a doubtful eye appeared, Frank's voice went calm and clipped. "Ex‑US special Forces. There's a fire, get out now. Trust me, take your shoes, keys, and shut the door behind you when you leave, go now. Take nothing you don't need. This building is about to go." It wasn't a boast; it was a key that opened panic‑locked minds. Doors cracked wider. Feet started toward the stair.
Bruce used a different pressure. Hulking in black, soaked towel turbaned tight, wraparound shades shielding his streaming eyes, he supplied momentum. If someone froze, he stepped inside and dropped into the movie‑metal cadence the kids knew. "Showtime—move if you want to live." Or: "Do it—do it now." If the latch stayed blind and the hallway stayed quiet, his shoulder took the frame. He hated what that did—the splinters, the smoke it bled into the stair—but the clock didn't care. He hauled people to their thresholds whether they liked it or not, pulled broken doors back into place as best he could, and moved. (Force only if you hear a human. Keep the stair alive. Keep moving.)
Six doors. Flight of stairs. Six doors. Flight of stairs.
By the approximate time of 01:30, the lobbies had the color of old coins and the taste of burnt plastic—the outside fire had turned the air to slow poison. The stair was still just this side of survivable. If they were going to reach the crown before the stair went truly bad, it had to be now.
Frank wet towels wherever a tap still ran and pressed them into shaking hands. "Low. Hand on the rail. Count landings. If you see crews, follow orders. Go." They didn't escort. They didn't explain. Wake, warn, make them move.
On sixteen, a chain held and a voice said, "They told us to stay put."
"Not tonight," Frank said, the way he'd say wind shift before a breach. "Fire's outside and climbing. Your flat won't stay safe. Shoes, keys, door shut. Go now." Eyes widened in shock; the chain slid back.
Seventeen, smoke lapped the ceiling like a low tide. Eighteen, heat breathed through the stair door. Frank checked the math against the clock he'd started at the chicken‑shop window: if they'd entered near ten past and kept under ninety seconds a landing unless they had to smash—top in roughly thirty. The stair might hold until the half, maybe a little past. They were on the wire.
Nineteen hit like a load‑bearing idea—one below the crown, a place to gather the stragglers from above, then drop as a single pulse. Frank made the call fast.
"Plan change. We lift the top floors down to nineteen, seal a door, breathe ninety seconds, then we drop as a group. I'll take front. You sweep and shove." He nodded at the landing door. "Find a flat on the lee side, interior room, quick count, doors shut, towels at the gap. Ninety seconds, no more."
Bruce nodded, eyes red behind wet cotton. "Roger."
They climbed into twenty‑two and twenty‑three like divers into a hot, blind sea. Bruce worked the rear, big and implacable, rapping frames with the heel of his hand: bang‑bang‑bang. "Wake up. On your feet. Down now." When someone opened, he went full Arnold, deadpan through the towel. "Get out. Get to the stair." Ridiculous—and it worked. Fear cracked; people moved. When a question started, he cut it short: "Answers downstairs. Move."
Frank kept the front tight—short, imperative, humane. A father sagging under a sleeping boy; Frank slung the boy to his own chest, gave the man a towel. "Grab your girl. Low and go." A woman on sticks; a neighbor anchoring her elbow. When words failed, Bruce shouldered a reluctant door and then set the latch back home with a gentleness that didn't fit his hands.
By half past, nineteen had a pulse—two dozen souls in a lee‑side lounge, interior door shut, rolled towels kissing the threshold. Faces grey with soot, eyes streaming. Frank's voice stayed even, a metronome beating back panic. "Two breaths. Water if you've got it. In ninety seconds we move—low line, hand to shoulder if you need to. I'm on point." He looked to Bruce. "You ride the tail. Count me twenty‑four heads."
Bruce touched fingers as he counted—one, two, three—tightened the towel at his neck, gave a thumbs‑up.
"Time," Frank said. He cracked the lounge door, tested the draw, then pushed the line into the stair where heat breathed like a mouth.
Nineteen to eighteen, the group moved like a living rope. Frank rapped the baluster with his knuckles to give them cadence—tap‑tap‑tap—low and steady. "Low and go. Good. Keep moving." Coughs barked, then settled.
Behind, Bruce was gravity. "Keep going. Don't stop. You've got it." When fear stalled feet, he nudged with a hand like a shovel blade and the rope flowed again. He glanced up the well, where darkness pressed like a lid.
Then the stair went black. Smoke turned from fog to felt. A child coughed—a high, seal‑bark sound—and another voice, smaller, folded down from above, faint behind a door: a hiccupped sob, then another. Two voices. Little. Wrong‑place little.
"Frank," Bruce said, a burr under his towel.
"I've got the line," Frank called back, already hooking the lead pair by their shoulders to keep momentum. "We drop, meet crews, come back." Somewhere below, a radio barked—orders in a firefighter's cadence. The cavalry was in the stair now. If they moved, if they didn't break, this group lived.
Bruce stood in the smoke with the cluster's last two at his hands. He could feel Frank's plan like a taut rope around his chest: get these people into the stream, hand them over, turn, go again. The right plan. The sane one.
The little sob came again from above, behind a door they must have hammered already—unless the occupants had been silent, asleep, hiding, terrified.
His breath rasped the towel. Unknowns were danger—but leaving a voice in the black felt worse. Like the moment in a movie you yelled at the screen and then loved the idiot for afterward.
He leaned to the last pair. "Follow him," he said, pointing into the rope's back. "Don't stop. Hand to shoulder. You're nearly there."
"Where are you going?" one coughed.
"Up." He tried for cool and found steel. "I'll be back."
"Bruce!" Frank's voice cut back through the smoke, thinner now with distance and urgency. "Stay on the tail. We do not split."
Bruce answered with the only lie he ever used on Frank. "Right behind you."
He watched the rope heave, watched the last pair vanish into dark that wasn't quite complete. Then he slid past the new last shoulders, set his left palm flat to the cool inner wall—the concrete that never saw sun—and started up.
"Come on, big boy," he told himself in Arnold's accent. "If it bleeds, we can kill it. No—get to the—stair." Stupid. Not a jungle. Not a monster you could knife. But the voice steadied his feet, and the numbers came back like prayer. "Twenty‑four flats above nineteen. Six doors a landing. Don't break unless—" He stopped thinking in sentences and started listening with his bones.
On twenty‑two the landing door breathed like an animal. He went low, swept a hand across the carpet until his fingers found cold brass. Two tiny knuckles tapped from the other side—weak, uneven. He put his mouth to the crack.
"Hey," he said, low and slow. "It's me—your friendly American tourist. Bruce. Big guy in black. Open the chain."
The door would not open.
Bruce pressed his ear to the seam and heard it again: a small cough, then a thin voice, muffled by wood. No chain slid. The smoke shoved at his towel like a hand.
He set his shoulder to the lock rail and kicked hard. The frame spat splinters and the door flung inward. Heat punched him; smoke folded him to one knee. His chest lit like a matchbox. Not yet, he told his body, the words slow in his head. Not yet. Don't fail me till they're out.
He crawled.
"W‑Where are you?" he called, voice a rasp. The smoke alarm drilled the room; the flat breathed hot and wrong.
"Here!" a small voice answered, somewhere ahead and left.
Bathroom. He found tile with his palm, found the open door by the cool bite against his fingers. Inside, two little figures in dark clothes—long dresses, headscarves—sat in the fog of steam and smoke. One lay on the tile, limp as rope; the other knelt, coughing, shaking her shoulder.
For a heartbeat his starved brain misfired and made them something he could understand: little ninjas, twin warrior girls on a mission. He blinked hard until they were just two frightened children again.
"Whoa," he said softly, the old movie‑flatness tucked under the towel. "What are you doing here, little ninjas? Is she hurt?"
"My sister was coughing and then she fell," the kneeling girl said, words breaking. "I called Mama but she didn't answer. I don't know where she is."
"That's okay," Bruce said. "I'll carry you. If you can't walk, I carry you."
He scooped the limp child under his left arm and tucked the other to his right side, big forearm a shelf across her back. Pain put white lines at the edges of his sight. He stood anyway. The world tilted; he stamped it flat by force of will.
"Come with me if you want to live," he managed, because the line steadied him.
The corridor was a black throat. He ran bent, heads tucked against his chest, shouldering the stair door with a hip. Down.
He took risers in greedy handfuls—two, three at a time—half jumping the last steps of each flight to buy seconds he didn't own. Once he missed the landing edge and lurched; his knee hit concrete; he kept the girls high and took the blow with his shoulder. "Get down," he told the night, and then he did, lower, lower, pushing air that wasn't air into his lungs.
The older girl's whimper turned to a breathless hitch. The smaller one went quieter in his arm, her weight different in a way he didn't like. He prayed in the flat way he did everything. A little more time. Please. Just a little more time.
Light flickered through stair slits. Fire made holy windows in his head. He saw, for one sick moment, his father at the foot of the stairs—massive, rough, impossible—and his mother beside him, both dead these many years, hands out, beckoning. Come on then, son. He pushed past them, jaw set. Not yet. Not now.
He was on level fourteen—or something near it. Numbers slipped past his mind. He was down to the counting children do: one step, two step, three step, don't stop. His vision tunneled. His chest was all wire and flame. He tried to breathe; nothing came.
A few more stairs. His legs shook. He went to one knee, then both.
Shapes slid out of the smoke—two firefighters on hands and knees, masks blank, lamp beams thin and white.
Bruce thrust the girls toward them. "Take them," he coughed. "Quick—hurry down." The little bodies were unresponsive; the firefighters didn't argue.
"Got 'em," one said, voice tinny under the mask. "With us, mate. Down now."
Bruce pushed to follow and his body decided no. He folded to the landing like a dropped coat. He braced to get up and nothing in his body cared to listen.
Is this it? he asked no one. Is this all I get? Frank's going to be pissed. The kids. Sarah. Amber— He almost laughed, one dry bark. Amber won't cry, but at least I paid the damn premium on life insurance—good job, Bruce, finally responsible for once—
He would have let it go there. He was ready to let it go there and just close his eyes.
But then something metal scraped the inside of the smoke to his right. He rolled his head, slow as a tide. A wheelchair lay on its side, one wheel lazy‑spinning. Beside it, a heavyset man lay on the landing like a dropped coat, eyes closed, mouth open, chest stuttering a shallow, failing rhythm.
Hallucination, Bruce told himself. Not that clever, remember?
He crawled.
Two fingers found a pulse against a damp neck—weak, there, going. Bruce got his feet under himself, then got his legs under the man's arms and locked his hands together in the man's armpits. The first pull took everything; the second took the rest. He leaned back and let his legs be the engine. The stair accepted the weight one riser at a time, each edge of concrete biting the man's heels. Down, down. He stopped thinking of floors. He was a machine that produced one more step, then another.
Somewhere later—ten landings, ten years, ten breaths—more lights swam up. More helmets. Hands took weight. Voices pinned him to the now.
"We've got him—good job—hey, big man, stay with us."
They took the old man. The line flowed around Bruce and down the well.
Bruce shuffled after them on hands and knees and found the lobby not so much as a place but as a temperature change, and then the doors, and then night. Blue lights wrote on wet tarmac. The tower spoke in flame. The crowd beyond the cordon was a single animal with a thousand eyes.
Frank was there at the tape, jaw locked, a police sergeant with both palms flat to his chest in a gentle, unmoving wall. Frank saw him and took one half step that was still a mile. Bruce grinned—he couldn't help it; it wasn't much, just teeth in a soot‑black face—and lifted his hand four inches before gravity remembered him.
He found the ground with the side of his face and the whole world shrank to a bright pinhole at the end of a long, dark hall. Someone rolled him. Somebody else pressed a mask to his mouth. Words swam above him and popped like bubbles. He didn't catch a one.
He thought, without meaning to: At least I did one thing right.
No one thanked him. No one knew his name. He smiled anyway, because it didn't matter. Somewhere to his left a siren whooped and turned.
The pinhole winked out. His chest went to take the next breath and couldn't find it.
Black folded in. The noises went thin, then away. His heart fired once more, once less, and then stopped.
Everything went quiet.