novelraw Chapter 105: Hearts Still Beating
Chapter 105: Hearts Still Beating
"Oh, one thing," Sera announced suddenly, her voice traveling in the darkness.
Four sets of eyes came to her at once.
"Try to keep these ones alive," she told them. "They don’t need to have working arms or legs. But a beating heart would be... appreciated."
Silence held for a beat, the cold making everything feel crystalline and fragile.
Alexei let out a quiet laugh that didn’t disturb the air. "Strangest request I’ve gotten before a party," he said, amused. "We can break them and leave them breathing."
Elias’s frown deepened. Questions stacked behind his eyes. He didn’t ask them. "Alive is messy. It’s also against all laws about cruel and unusual punishment."
"Messy is fine," she said. "I can handle messy. And I am beginning to think that you are the only one still following the old rules, Elias. They certainly weren’t when they came into my cabin and took what they wanted. Tell me, if we didn’t stop them, what would have happened after?"
Zubair only dipped his chin, like he was filing the instruction next to ammo count and exit routes. Lachlan didn’t react at all with his face. He just said, "Done," and checked his knife like the promise had weight in his hand.
Zubair sketched the plan in low words and smaller gestures. Elias would peel left and take the western corner sentry. Lachlan would drift right for the northeast. Alexei would hold center shadow until both were down, then be the hammer—if they had to go loud, he would be the sound they remembered. Zubair would float where he was needed, pulling lines tight where they tried to loosen.
"And me?" Sera asked, though they all knew.
"You keep count," Zubair said. "You tell us where to push." He glanced at her sidelong. "And you remind us who needs to keep a heartbeat."
The creature preened at that. That’s right... theAlpha commands.
They moved.
Elias melted along the wall until he vanished, a seam of dark folding over him.
Sera tracked him only by the faintest scrape when he slid his knife free. The western sentry was young, bored, his rifle hanging a little low and a cigarette flaring bright against his cupped hand every few seconds. He didn’t register the shadow behind him until an arm went around his throat and the cigarette fell hissing into the snow. He sagged without noise.
On the other side, Lachlan ghosted through a ragged line of shipping pallets. The northern sentry was older, sober, and scanning like a man who’d lost before and learned from it.
He caught a flicker of movement and started to pivot; Lachlan was already inside his reach, hand on the barrel, twist, wrist snap, an elbow like a hammer to temple. The man went down in a whisper of snow and breath.
Sera exhaled, slow. The creature’s rumble eased for a heartbeat. Two lives banked. Plenty more left to spend.
Alexei eased forward to the yawning seam where brick had spilled away from the south wall. The opening was a jagged mouth, big enough to climb but small enough to funnel. He crouched, rifle low, eyes laughing in the shadows. He loved this part too much to hide it.
Zubair ghosted to Sera’s shoulder and spoke so quietly that even the wind didn’t seem to hear. "Three cycles in there," he said, chin indicating the interior in slivers. "Cookfire near center, tables left, racks right. Overwatch on the catwalk. Their best are high. We cut the legs and let the body fall."
Sera tilted her head, listening to the warehouse breathe.
Men were talking in that loose way people do when they think their walls are thick enough. There was a tick of cooling metal, and the soft squeal of something being dragged over concrete. There—under it all—the faster beat of a heart close to the seam. A man just beyond the breach, posted behind the toppled bricks.
"Two steps inside, right," she murmured. "Knees bad. He leans."
Zubair didn’t ask how she knew. He passed the detail down the line with a flicked finger. Alexei hummed approval under his breath.
They went in on the turn of a breath.
Elias slipped through first, a cut of shadow against shadow. He flowed past the leaning man, hand finding mouth, knife finding the space under the ribs. The man folded without a sound and sank against the bricks like he’d chosen to sit.
Lachlan followed, a silent shape with a hard center. He angled toward the racks, where silhouettes of long guns waited in a careless pyramid.
A hand reached for one, but Lachlan’s boot took the wrist sideways and his knife kissed the tendons on the way past. The man hissed and went to his knees, his hands suddenly more decorative than functional.
Alexei came last with a predator’s patience all burned fresh.
He moved like something eager finally allowed to run: three steps, a laugh under his breath, the rifle butt coming up into a jaw with a percussive thud that drank the man’s grunt and threw him into a table leg. Cards and bottle caps scattered like startled insects.
"Quiet," Zubair breathed, and the command settled over them like falling ash.
They were inside.
Heat lapped at Sera’s face from the cookfire. The smell was old oil, unwashed bodies, gunmetal, stale bread. Half the men inside still didn’t know the outside had shifted against them. The other half felt it in that primal way a room does, where air changes shape and you find your hands are already curling into fists without understanding why.
Sera stayed in the seam, where the night breathed into the warehouse and the warehouse breathed back.
The creature prowled a tidy circle along her ribs, wanting more. She fed it with sight instead: the shape of the catwalk, the line of a ladder bolted to a post, the gleam of a pistol tucked lazy at the small of a man’s back. She counted heartbeats in clutches of three.
"Two on the ladder," she whispered. "Left catwalk has a twist in the grate halfway down—will slow a runner."
Zubair passed it on with a nod, drifting toward the ladder like a man who’d lost something there last week and meant to be casual about finding it.
Elias ghosted the opposite direction, intent on the catwalk’s far end. Lachlan worked the floor, leaving tripped bodies behind. They were in agonizing pain, but they were very much still alive.
Alexei hovered between tables like a storm no one had had the sense to predict.
A bottle rolled. A chair scraped. Someone finally shouted, "Who’s there?" into the space like he expected an answer.
No one answered.
Sera felt the creature rise, the want of it insistence and heat. Now. Her hands stayed at her sides. She kept her voice flat. "Remember," she said, just loud enough for her horde. "Keep the hearts still beating."
Alexei’s grin flashed in the firelight. "With pleasure."
Lachlan didn’t grin at all. He just said, "Copy," and moved to intercept the first man reaching for a pistol.
Zubair’s mouth ticked—something like approval, something like satisfaction—and he put his boot on the first rung of the ladder.
Inside the warehouse, the wolf preppers started to turn toward them, slow at first, then all at once.
Sera set her shoulders against the seam of night and light and let her horde go.