Page 136 of The Words Beneath the Noise

The sound faded. Dust settled. Silence fell, thick and absolute, broken only by the crackle of flames somewhere nearby and the distant wail of sirens that seemed to be moving away.

Moving away. Which meant the bombers were leaving. Which meant the first wave was over.

Which meant we had maybe fifteen minutes before the second wave arrived to finish what the first had started.

Tried to move again. The beam shifted slightly, pressure easing on my chest enough to draw a full breath. Pain flaredeverywhere, too many sources to isolate, but I was alive. Still alive.

The intercept. Still there, crumpled but intact.

Reached for it with my good arm. Fingers brushing paper. Stretching. Straining.

Got it. Clutched it to my chest with the desperation of a man holding onto the last piece of himself.

TWENTY-FIVE

CRIMSON SKY

TOM

I'd been halfway across the courtyard when the sirens screamed again, a second wave tearing through the blackout sky like God's own fury. The first bomb hit somewhere beyond the perimeter, a dull crump that shook the earth beneath my boots, and then the world fractured into noise and fire and the smell of cordite thick enough to choke on.

“Down!” I bellowed at the young lance corporal stumbling beside me, a boy who couldn't be more than nineteen with eyes too wide and hands fumbling at his rifle strap. I grabbed a fistful of the lad's collar and threw us both behind the low stone wall edging the chapel path. We hit frozen ground hard, my shoulder screaming where old shrapnel wounds remembered every impact, and overhead the whine of falling ordnance split the air like a saw through bone.

The second bomb landed closer. Much closer.

Hut X.

My heart stopped. Just stopped, ice flooding my chest, because Art was in Hut X. Art had been working on that intercept, the one Finch had given him, convinced his patternsmattered more than shelter. Ruth had told me he'd cracked it, had sent her running to Finch with the decoded intelligence while he stayed behind to pull the final details.

Stayed behind. In a building now taking direct hits.

“Sarge!” The lance corporal was pressed against me, breath coming in panicked gasps. “Sarge, what do we?—“

“Stay down.” My voice came out rough, mechanical. My hands moved on instinct, checking the boy for injuries, scanning the courtyard through smoke that rolled thick as London fog. Flames licked up from somewhere near the motor pool, painting the snow in shades of orange and red. Glass littered the ground like stars fallen wrong, crunching under boots as figures ran through the chaos.

Another plane roared overhead, low enough that I could see the black cross on its belly. Low enough to shoot at, if I had a clear line and the rifle in my hands instead of tucked inside by the security office. My fingers itched for it, muscle memory screaming that I was naked without the weight of the weapon, vulnerable in a way that made my skin crawl.

Then I saw it: the gunner's position hanging open on the plane's underside, a figure leaning out, muzzle flash lighting up the darkness as they strafed towards the manor.

I was moving before thought caught up. Yanked the lance corporal's rifle from his shaking hands, dropped to one knee, and brought the scope to my eye. The world narrowed. Breath, heartbeat, the cold kiss of metal against my cheek. The plane banked, trying to line up another run, and for half a second the gunner was perfectly framed, backlit by his own fire.

I squeezed the trigger.

The gunner jerked, slumped, and the stream of bullets went wide, chewing up snow and dirt thirty yards from the nearest hut. The plane veered off, engines screaming, disappearing into the smoke and darkness beyond the tree line.

“Christ,” the lance corporal breathed. “You just?—“

“Go.” I shoved the rifle back at him. “Get to the shelters. Now.”

“But Sarge?—“

“Go!”

The boy went, scrambling across the courtyard with his head down and his shoulders hunched. I watched him go for half a second, then turned towards Hut X and started running.

Debris everywhere. A section of the manor's east wing had collapsed, stones and timber spilling across what used to be the formal gardens. Windows blown out all along the ground floor, blackout curtains hanging in shreds, and somewhere underneath it all someone was screaming, high and thin and endless. I registered it, filed it away, kept moving. Medics would get to them. Or they wouldn't. Right now there was only one person I gave a damn about.

My boots hit ice and I nearly went down, caught myself on the corner of a wall that was still standing. My hands came away wet. Not water. Blood, dark and sticky in the firelight. My stomach lurched but I shoved it down, shoved everything down except the need to move, to get there, to find Art and drag him out if the whole bloody estate came down around us.