Ribbons kissed steel and the dock plate quivered like a live thing. Hawke leaned into the angle iron and let the vibration come up through his arms until his bones knew the rhythm. Flash stood left of the opening, knees bent, shoulders square, the forklift key ring jingling once in his fist before he remembered to pocket it. Peter planted beside the pallet jack with the emergency hammer touching his shoulder like a promise.
The first mask dipped to test the gap. Hawke stabbed the angle iron point into the seam where roll-up door met jamb. Metal screamed. The ribbon skated off the door and showered hot flecks that died on wet concrete. The second mask tried a low swipe; Peter snapped the pallet jack's handle and jammed the forks harder under the plate. The seesaw didn't budge.
"Left flank," Flash warned, eyes cut to the catwalk. A fourth shape slid down a hanging chain with the easy arrogance of a gymnast who'd never met friction. It landed light on the dock edge, ribbon already yawning open.
Hawke didn't split his attention. He gave Flash the pike. Flash caught it and didn't ask what to do with a point—his body figured it out. Hawke took two steps toward the newcomer and fed it junk: a cracked plastic crate from the nearest rack, flung underhand so the ribbon would have to choose between pride and angle. The blade took the bait, carved the crate into confetti, and found Hawke already inside its guard.
He went low and mean—heel to instep, hand to wrist plate, head to chin line—then used the weight of the thing against the dock lip. It tumbled backward and hit concrete with a wrong hollow sound. The ribbon flickered, hungry and confused. He kicked the flat of the blade away from bodies and back into door where it could offend a wall instead of a person.
At the gate, the roll-up buckled under sustained heat; the zinc coating went buttery; the paint curdled into dull blisters. Flash sank the angle iron another inch into the jamb seam and levered the point until the metal stiffened again. He didn't look like a bully now. He looked like a jack post.
The third mask tried to climb over the plate. Peter met it with the dumbest tool in the room and made it feel smart. He brought the hammer down on the blade mount, not the light—hardware hates being reminded it is hardware. The mount spat sparks; the ribbon hiccuped to nothing; the mask jerked its head in a motion that broadcast confusion even through armor.
"Above you," Hawke called, seeing motion at the torn roof panel. A pod dropped and bounced; magnets clawed for bite on wet steel. He punted it with the side of his shoe. It clanged off a bollard and died, leaking a whine like a mosquito with opinions.
The big craft's glow outside leaned closer. Pressure rolled into the warehouse and pressed palms along ribs. Dust lifted from rafters, hovered indecisive. Somewhere out on the river, horn and siren braided themselves into one long, low animal sound.
"Hold," Hawke said, and meant the wall, the breath, the plate, the plan.
The second mask decided patience was a mammal problem and launched straight through the gap, ribbon off, arms wide to tackle and pin. Hawke side-stepped an inch, tore the emergency chain from a secondary roll-up on the adjacent bay, and let the counterweight take the slack. The auxiliary fire curtain dumped like an iron smile behind the leaping figure. It hit the slab chest-first, bounced, and slapped to the floor where Flash pinned it with the pike through the shoulder seam.
"Got you," Flash said, not a victory shout, just a statement that made his hands steadier.
"Two more," Peter said, counting shadows in the gap.
"Make it one," Hawke answered.
He grabbed the pallet of shrink-wrapped paper towels nearest the door—it had weight, but water had already turned the floor into a low-friction game—and muscled it across until it leaned at a tilt against the dock plate, adding dumb mass to the wall. The remaining ribbon licked the pallet's corner and made the plastic shrink tighter until it smoked. The paper underneath caught a memory of flame and then forgot it under the rain still dripping from roof beams.
A crack like sky splitting came from the far side of the warehouse. The fire curtain they'd shut earlier twitched and bowed; the crushed seedlet under it kicked a last time, then went flatsilent for good. Beyond, somewhere in the street, something huge fell and argued with gravity about when to stop.
The mask in the gap feinted high and cut low for ankles again. Peter hopped the sweep and, with both hands, bounced the hammer from blade mount to mask like punctuation. "Find a dictionary," he said, breathless. "Learn a new word."
It slashed for his voice; Hawke was already there, shoulder-first, stealing the line. He shoved the blade into the jamb so it carved a harmless streak down paint. The mask's free hand clawed for purchase on the plate edge and found the pallet wrap instead. Plastic squealed. Hawke planted his palm on its faceplate and pushed as if removing a nail. Armor bit his hand; the bandage wicked water cold into burn. He didn't let go.
Flash, pike set, gave pressure the way you give to a rusted bolt. The angle iron flexed and held. The blade scrawled a spark alphabet and lost interest. The mask reconsidered and slid back the inch it had stolen. Peter wedged the pallet jack's forks another half inch underneath. The seesaw clicked into a new confidence.
For a breath the world tried on quiet again and it almost fit. Then the roof thumped with more feet. The torn panel went black with bodies. A longer silhouette crouched in the opening—not seedlet, not pod. Something like a perch and a gun married into one patient shape. The stalk aligned on their wall with the bored assurance of math.
Hawke sucked air through his teeth. "Laser."
"Is that the technical term?" Peter said.
"Yes."
The stalk built a bead at its tip that wasn't white or blue; it was a hole that ate color. It would draw a line through the dock plate and their lives without asking for permission.
"Back," Hawke said, and Flash obeyed faster than the word ended, hauling the pike free. Peter yanked the pallet jack and jumped his toes an inch away from the bite of any ricochet he hadn't met yet.
The stalk fired. The line drilled the plate dead center. Steel bloomed to orange and then caved. Hawke shouldered Peter and Flash away and met the burn with the only countermeasure he had: movement. He shoved the angle iron into the new hole from the safe side and levered. The plate didn't heal, but it bucked; the second shot went through off-axis and bit a bollard instead of a person.
He needed a blind. He needed smoke. He scanned the wall for a thing that was supposed to be boring and found it: the CO₂ cylinder chained beside a dead fire extinguisher. He tore the pin, aimed downward at the gap, and squeezed. The nozzle coughed, then exhaled a white river that poured cold fog into the opening. The stalk fired blind and wrote a line into steam that looked like nothing. The fog wrapped the masks and made their lenses blink confusion.
"More," Peter said, already grabbing the spare.
They hosed the gap with cold cloud until the air tasted of metal and winter. Through the milky wash, Hawke saw shapes waver and lose certainty. He didn't need them to leave; he needed them to surrender perfect aim.
The big craft's pressure deepened, pushing on eardrums like altitude. Its throat gathered a layered light that wanted to be a verdict. The warehouse roof answered with a groan, as if remembering old snow and deciding new stress wasn't interesting.
"Driver," Hawke called without looking away from the gap, "lights off, engine ready."
"Ready," the driver said. No quiver now. Not resolve, just exactly the tone you get when nothing else is left to be.
The stalk fired again, an impatient line that cut fog and screamed when it buried in concrete. Chips stung shins. Hawke stepped through the cloud, pivoted on the ball of his foot, and drove the angle iron up under the stalk's lip where mount met cleverness. The joint popped. The stalk went crooked, firing into its own perch. The roof panel sparked and spat, then lost interest.
From above, a new noise: not weight, not light. Voice. A bullhorn, human, shredded by distance and echo.
"Yellow bus—hold position," it said. "Do not break cover. Do not engage the main beam."
Peter's head snapped up. "Is that—"
"Someone with a helicopter and a plan," Flash said, too fast to be cool about it.
Outside, rotors chopped air into blocks. A searchlight slid across the torn door, found the bus, and then slid away so it wouldn't paint their position for the thing in the sky. The big craft adjusted, plates rolling across its belly like armored eyelids. The pressure fell a degree, then returned heavier. The throat's light narrowed to a decision.
"Under the mezzanine," Hawke said. "All the way back." He didn't like giving ground, but you don't let pride argue with geometry. He pointed; Flash jerked his chin at the driver; the driver backed the bus deeper until pallet racks tried to kiss the bumper. Kids scooted on the floor, hands over heads, wide eyes still somehow inventorying one another.
At the dock plate, the CO₂ cloud thinned. Two masks remained in the seam, patient again. The stalk lay crooked; a new one edged into place like a mouth healing around a tooth.
"Out of time," Peter said.
"Not yet," Hawke said.
He fetched the last big dumb thing the room would give him: a roll cage of bottled water shrink-wrapped for nowhere. He tilted it and pushed, wheels squealing, until it blocked half the gap. He stabbed the angle iron through wrap into frame so the cage couldn't roll back. The ribbon licked it and boiled the top layer into steam. The bottles popped their caps like applause.
The bullhorn voice returned, closer. "Bus—prepare to move on my mark. Stay low. Take the river lane north. Repeat: north."
"North is docks," the driver called, as if the voice could hear through corrugated steel and rain.
"North," Hawke said anyway. "When they say."
The throat above hit its last inhale before exhale. The pressure went from suggestion to present tense. Dust lifted again and didn't settle. The roof bolts sang. Every hair on Hawke's arms remembered static.
"Mark in three," the bullhorn said. "Two."
Hawke set his feet, one hand on the angle iron, one on the plate. He felt the bead inside him move a notch he hadn't known existed and lock. Not reward. Not miracle. Just readiness lining up with an event.
"One."
"Go," Hawke said—not to the voice, to the driver, to Flash, to Peter, to the bus, to the people on the floor, to the muscles in his forearms, to the bad idea he was about to make a plan.
The driver dropped gear. The bus leapt like a thing that remembered it was a machine. Flash yanked the pallet jack's handle free, letting the dock plate jump a half inch, enough to rattle the masks. Peter was already pivoting toward the aisle, counting as he moved, breath in square.
The big craft fired.
Light took the roof where the warehouse ended and lifted it into a bright, flat noon. The beam carved a line across steel and through air and found the empty space where a school bus had been a second before. The world said yes to surviving in a voice loud enough to make the body shake.
Hawke slammed the plate back up with his shoulder so the gap shrank behind the bus's tail and the line that followed the first licked steel, not kids. The roll cage of water hissed; bottles burst into white breath. The masks recoiled on instinct that didn't belong to this planet.
The bus fishtailed through the cut they'd made in the river fence and took the gravel in a long skating line that decided to become a road. Rotors moved with them, spotlight ghosting the lane ahead without ever sitting on them. North waited, dark and wide.
Hawke took one last step into the gap and put the angle iron hard across the crooked stalk. It folded. He didn't wait for applause. He turned and ran for the bus, feet finding wet concrete, then diamond plate, then aisle runner. Peter's hand flashed up from a seat back; Hawke caught it, used it to swing his weight, then let go so Peter could count with both hands again.
"Everyone down," the driver said, voice steady because everything else was not. The bus bucked the lip and found the service lane. Gravel sprayed. The river ran black and sure on their left.
Behind them, the warehouse door blew out in a white square. The fire curtain caught, held, glowed. The roof shed a sheet of something that used to be roof. The big craft's beam swept and came back hunting, but the under-bridge shadows swallowed a rectangle the color of a school year and made it into a rumor moving north.
Hawke braced a hand on the seat frame and let his shoulders remember being stacked. He met Peter's eyes. Peter's were wet and wild-but-here.
"You good?" Hawke said.
Peter nodded too fast. "Define good."
"Alive," Hawke said.
"Then yes," Peter said, and blew a breath that tried to laugh and failed and turned into oxygen.
Flash, two rows back, had both palms flat on two small backs. He met Hawke's look and didn't try to be a brand. He was a person, and he said, low, "Do that again if you have to."
Hawke didn't say he would. He didn't say he wouldn't. He watched the spotlight skate the lane ahead and the black river keep pace and the seam in the sky sulk above the buildings, deciding its size.
The bus chased the narrow light north. The throat's pressure faded behind them, not gone, not done—just elsewhere for now. And for now was enough to be a plan.