She Was Just A Child (PART 2)

CHAPTER 50: THE EDGE OF THE FLAME

Gunfire echoed through the corridors of Echo-9 like a war drum, bouncing off metal walls and sterile tiles. Every bullet felt like thunder. Every scream like a crack in the concrete foundation.

Dian clung to König's chest as he ran.

Her body swayed with his steps, head pressed beneath his chin, eyes wide but unblinking. Her fingers were curled into his vest like she was afraid letting go would tear her apart.

She felt weightless. Not just from exhaustion. Not just from the aftermath of surgery or trauma or sedation.

But because for the first time since she woke up in this place...

She wasn't alone.

And that terrified her more than anything else.

---

Behind them, the corridor caved inward with a metallic howl.

Roze spun mid-run and fired a short burst from her rifle, dropping two masked Purge soldiers mid-sprint. Oni moved in silence at her side, blades out, clearing their flanks without a sound. Conor barked something in Irish over the comms-half command, half curse-before tossing a proximity charge into the collapsing stairwell.

"Extraction point's one level down!" Zero's voice crackled through the comms. "I've got eyes on the landing pad-helos inbound, thirty seconds!"

"Make it twenty," König growled.

Dian shifted in his arms.

"Where... where are we going?"

"Out," König said. "And not back."

She didn't ask what that meant. She didn't care. The only direction that mattered was away.

---

Conor kicked down the final bulkhead with a roar, revealing a tunnel choked in smoke and emergency lights. The landing pad at the end pulsed with red strobes, the KorTac evac bird already dropping from the sky, rotors thundering as wind tore through the corridor.

König didn't slow.

He sprinted straight through the fire and chaos, gunfire still flaring behind him.

Dian blinked against the wind, her eyes stinging, tears streaming sideways across her face.

Roze and Oni cleared the platform perimeter, taking down the last of the hostiles. Zero shouted something unintelligible through the radio-something about bio-sign locks and countermeasures-but König barely heard it.

He only heard her breathing.

The way it hitched.

The way it trembled.

The way it changed when the wind kissed her face.

---

The ramp dropped.

KorTac operators swarmed, covering the team as König crossed into the bird with Dian in his arms. The instant her feet touched the floor, she staggered-but he held her upright, hands on her shoulders.

She looked up at him.

"Is it really over?"

He didn't answer right away.

Not because he didn't want to. But because he wasn't sure if he had the right to say yes.

But he said it anyway.

"For now."

She nodded.

Then her knees buckled-and he caught her again.