Page 135 of The Words Beneath the Noise

Needed to tell Finch. Needed to get this information to someone who could act.

Explosion closer. Much closer. The hut shook, windows rattling in their frames. Papers flew from desks, scattered across the floor like dying leaves.

Grabbed the decoded intercept. Stood. Started toward the door.

Another explosion. Directly outside.

The world became noise and light and pain.

Pressure wave hit me like a physical blow, lifting me off my feet, throwing me backward. Glass shattered inward, thousand tiny blades catching the light as they flew. Wood splintered. The ceiling groaned, cracked, began to collapse.

I hit something hard. Floor or wall or desk, couldn't tell. Stars exploded across my vision. Ears screaming with a high-pitched tone that drowned out everything else.

Tried to move. Couldn't. Something heavy across my legs, my chest, pinning me down. Looked up through swimming vision and saw the ceiling beam that had fallen, thick oak timber that had supported this hut for decades now pressing me into the floor.

Dust everywhere. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't see. Could only feel the weight crushing down on me and the warm wet spread of blood from wounds I couldn't locate.

The intercept. Where was the intercept?

Twisted my head, ignoring the pain that lanced through my neck. There. Crumpled paper a few feet away, just beyond my reach. The information that might save everyone, lying useless on the floor while I lay trapped beneath debris.

Tried to reach for it. Arm wouldn't cooperate. Something wrong with my shoulder, something grinding that shouldn't grind, pain white-hot and nauseating.

Another explosion. Further away this time, but the hut shook again. More debris falling. More dust. More darkness as the remaining lights flickered and died.

“Help.” The word came out as a whisper. Throat raw from dust, from screaming I didn't remember doing. “Someone. Help.”

Nothing. No one. Everyone else had evacuated. Everyone else had listened to the sirens, followed the drills, made it to shelter while I stayed behind trying to be a hero.

Stupid. So stupid. Tom would be furious. Tom would find me and shake me and demand to know what I'd been thinking, staying in a building marked for destruction just to finish one more line of code.

If Tom found me at all.

The thought brought tears that I couldn't wipe away, couldn't do anything about except let them track through the dust on my face. Tom out there somewhere, fighting to defend the estate, not knowing I was trapped. Not knowing I might never see him again.

All those words I'd never said. All those moments I'd held back, too afraid of what feeling them meant. Too careful to risk the heartbreak of hope.

And now hope was all I had.

Hope that someone would come. Hope that the beam wouldn't shift and crush me completely. Hope that the bombers overhead would be confused by killed lights and moved markers and wouldn't drop their payload directly on the spot where I lay pinned and bleeding.

Time became strange. Seconds stretching into hours, hours compressing into heartbeats. I drifted in and out ofconsciousness, pulled back each time by pain or fear or the stubborn refusal to give up that had carried me through three years of this war.

Tom's watch was in my pocket. Could feel it pressing against my hip, still ticking, still counting time that might be running out. His luck, he'd called it. Given to me because he'd believed I was worth protecting.

Worth saving.

Worth loving.

I'd never told him. Never said the words out loud, never admitted that what I felt had grown beyond anything I knew how to contain. Had hidden behind coded confessions and careful distance, too afraid of what openness might cost.

And now the cost of silence might be everything.

“Tom.” His name scraped past my lips, prayer and confession and desperate plea all at once. “I'm sorry. I should have... I should have told you...”

Explosion overhead. Closer than any before. The hut collapsed further, debris raining down, and I curled in on myself as much as the beam would allow, arms over my head, waiting for the final blow.

It didn't come.