Page 137 of The Words Beneath the Noise

Hut X was destroyed.

I stopped running. Couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Just stood there staring at what had been a building and was now a mountain of shattered wood and broken beams, smoke rising from the wreckage in lazy spirals that caught the firelight and turned it hellish.

The near corner had taken a direct hit. Roof gone entirely, walls collapsed inward, desks and papers and everything that had been inside now just debris. The far end was still partially standing, one wall upright through some miracle of physics, but the rest...

“No.” The word came out airless. “No, no, no?—“

I was climbing before I knew I'd started. Hauling myself over broken timber, shoving aside chunks of plaster, cutting my hands on shattered glass and not caring because somewhere under all of this was Art. Had to be. Had to be alive, had to be breathing, had to be?—

“Art!” My voice came out hoarse, scraped raw. “Art, can you hear me?”

Nothing. Just the creak of settling wood and the distant wail of sirens and my own pulse hammering in my ears.

“Art!” Louder now, desperate. “Answer me! Please, God, answer me!”

A sound. Faint, muffled, but definitely a sound. A cough. Weak and wet, coming from somewhere beneath a fallen beam near what had been the back wall.

I moved faster than I'd ever moved in my life.

“Art! I'm coming! Hold on!”

The beam was massive. Oak, thick as my thigh, pinning down a section of collapsed ceiling. I grabbed it, pulled, felt my muscles scream and my back protest and didn't care, didn't care about anything except getting to the sound of that cough.

“Tom...” Art's voice, barely there, coming from the darkness beneath the rubble. “Tom, I can't... I can't move...”

“I know. I know. Just hold on. I'm getting you out.”

The beam shifted. An inch. Two. I braced my legs, pulled harder, and something in my shoulder popped in a way that would hurt later but right now was just noise. The beam moved again, enough to create a gap, enough to see?—

Art.

Pinned beneath the debris, face grey with dust and blood, one arm twisted at an angle that made my stomach turn. His eyes were open, blinking slow and unfocused, and in his goodhand he clutched a crumpled piece of paper like it was the only thing keeping him alive.

“Art.” I dropped to my knees beside him, hands already moving, checking for injuries even as my vision blurred at the edges. “Art, look at me. Stay with me.”

“Tom.” His voice was a rasp. “You came.”

“Of course I came. You think I'd leave you under a collapsed building? What kind of bloody idiot do you take me for?”

He laughed. Or tried to. It turned into a cough that brought blood to his lips, and my heart clenched so tight I thought it might stop entirely.

“The intercept,” Art said, shoving the crumpled paper toward me with shaking fingers. “I finished it. The decryption. Finch needs to see. Two-wave attack, the second wave follows pathfinder markers, if we kill the lights and move the decoys?—“

“Art, I don't care about the intercept right now?—“

“I do.” His eyes focused, sharp despite the pain. “People will die if Finch doesn't get this. Please, Tom. Take it to him. Then come back for me.”

“I'm not leaving you.”

“You have to.” His good hand found mine, gripped with surprising strength. “I cracked it. I finally cracked it. All those patterns, all those hours. This is what they were for. This saves people.” His breath hitched. “Let me save people, Tom. Please.”

I looked at the paper in his hand. Looked at his face, grey and bloodied and so determined it broke my heart. Looked at the rubble still pinning him down, the beam I couldn't lift alone, the fires burning all around us.

“I'll get help,” I said. “I'll take this to Finch and I'll bring people back to dig you out. But you have to stay awake, Art. You hear me? You don't get to close your eyes.”

“Wouldn't dream of it.” His smile was weak, pained, but real. “Go. Save the world. Then come back and save me.”

I took the paper. Pressed my forehead to his for one desperate second, breathing in dust and blood and the smell of him underneath it all.