Kira Dallas's Arc

Chapter 11 of 13

The Denver deal pointed Kira's supply line north. But her real medical haul still sat two levels below her boots, behind the newly breached door to Level 4. In two days her team would go in. She climbed to the medical labs on Level 3 to turn a kicked-open door into a real plan. Sinclair Feldman waited on a crate, his broken leg stretched flat and splinted. The security station fight had cost him six weeks on his feet. It had cost Captain Hills two soldiers. Sinclair would not walk into Level 4, so he had done the next best thing. He spread a blueprint across his lap. "Can't carry you down there, gal," he said. "So I mapped it instead. Every step." Kira crouched over the page. Dense route markings crossed it. Room labels. Red warning boxes. Sinclair tapped the containment control station, then the reactor room beside it. "Safest route hugs the west wall," he said. His voice dropped, clipped. "You go in the reactor room, the radiation fries you in seconds. Not minutes. Seconds. Stay out." He traced a blue line past storage rooms to the control station. "That's your path. Nothing else." Logan Harrison leaned in the doorway, Aussie hat pushed back, a camouflaged grenade launcher slung across his chest. He hefted it. "M32. Six shots, no reload between them." He thumbed the drum. "Loaded frag for the ghoul-sized ones. Got a few EMP rounds too, if the room's got anything that runs on power." He said it plain, like reading a parts list. Then he almost smiled. "Point it, don't hug it. Learned that the hard way." Kira had worked beside Logan since the first mapped route. She knew his jokes carried real warnings underneath. "How many frag before you switch?" Kira asked. "Four," Logan said. "Save two. Something always comes late." Mary Long stepped in, scrubs clean, her tan medical folder hugged to her chest. She set out antirad vials and stimpaks in a straight row on the crate. "Twelve antirad, six stimpaks staged for the entry team," she said. She looked at Kira over her round glasses. "Fever watch on anyone who takes a scratch. Twelve hours. No exceptions." Head Nurse now, she did not ask. She told. Kira checked each item against the blueprint. Seal intact on every stimpak. She tested one antirad vial's cap herself, the way she tested everything. It held. She looked up at the three of them. The map, the launcher, the medicine. A route, a weapon, a safety net. "We go in two days," Kira said. "West wall only. Four frag, then switch. Nobody touches the reactor room." She folded the blueprint and clipped it into her pack. The breach was no longer a hole in a wall. It was a plan. Level 4, and the sealed medical gear inside it, had a date.