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“Sebastian.” His own voice sounded so small, but even still, it seemed to echo in the hall, and Leon had a spike of terror that it would bring everyone in the building down upon them. His hands shook, his legs felt like jelly, and he couldn’t breathe. The horrible, sweet yellow gas clogged his lungs.
“Hess, hey, Hess, open your eyes.” Sebastian’s cool, calloused hands cupped Leon’s jaw and tilted his face up. “Open your eyes.”
Leon bit his lip against a whimper. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to see. He just wanted to wait until it was all over, or maybe just die so it could all end right now.
But he forced his eyes open.
And air flooded back into his lungs when he did. Sebastian. Clever, competent, fearless, Sebastian gazed back at him.
“Hey.” Sebastian ran his thumbs over Leon’s cheeks and his lips quirked into a sweet, confident smile. “We’re gonna keep moving, okay?”
Leon managed an affirmative twitch of his head. “Yes.”
“Good.”
Sebastian grabbed his hand, tangled their fingers together, and pulled him down the hallway.
He didn’t move slowly, and Leon realized it was because there was still a fight raging in the hall they had just left. The yells and shouts and screams bounced deafeningly over the marble floors. And it was getting closer.
“Not much farther.” Sebastian gave Leon’s hand a squeeze and picked up the pace.
But then the sound of ships roared overhead.
“Back!” Sebastian shoved Leon against the wall and braced his hands on either side of his shoulders. He hunched over him as though to shield him completely with himself. The sounds of machine gunfire echoed down the hall, but much too far away for it to hit them.
No, hit Sebastian. Any bullets would have had to go through him to get to Leon. Leon grabbed for Sebastian, his mouth opening, but his fear- and horror-addled mind had no words to string together.
But Sebastian was already looking over his own shoulder, checking the hallway, and then grabbing Leon’s hand and pulling him back down it.
“That was bad. That was very bad.” Sebastian shook his head and muttered as they hurried down the hallway. “That’s going to get everyone out of these rooms, and we don’t want to run into anyone… Oh goddammit.”
Sebastian stopped and looked left and right, but they were in the middle of the hall, with no doors nearby. Leon wondered what he could be looking for and then heard running feet. Multiple pairs of running feet were coming straight down a hallway that would turn into theirs.
Sebastian started backpedaling and shoving Leon. “Go back, go back—”
“You!”
A soldier Leon recognized but didn’t know stood in the hallway in front of them, a finger raised and pointed straight at Sebastian. Dust and blood covered every inch of him, and he held what looked like a piece of twisted rebar in his right hand.
A group of three more manic-looking soldiers stood behind him.
“Tucker.” Sebastian let go of Leon to raise both of his hands. He backed away slowly, and as he got to Leon, Leon could see that he’d gone completely pale. “Tucker, don’t be crazy.”
“You did this!” Tucker started stomping toward them, his eyes wild, his veins popping out and flushed with blood. “You traitorous worm! You did this!”
“No, no, no—”
Tucker’s roar cut off Sebastian’s frantic begging. Tucker broke into a charge, and Leon reached for his holster. His stomach dropped to find it empty, his gun lying far away in the hallway where he’d shot the sniper.
Then Sebastian lunged past him. “Hess, run!”
Sebastian met Tucker with a vicious roar and immediately locked them into a tight grapple. “Get to the tunnels, Hess, go!”
But there was no way in hell Leon could leave Sebastian behind. No matter how much terror coursed through his veins, how much sweat gathered in his palms, or how much his heart threatened to beat itself to death, Leon couldn’t leave Sebastian behind. Not again. Not here.
He jumped forward and slammed his elbow into the jaw of one of the men coming to help Tucker. Then he turned and brought his knee up into the stomach of another. Adrenaline raced through his veins and, for a moment, eclipsed even the fear.
When one of the men managed to land a palm strike to his nose, snapping his head back, a laugh cracked out of him, and he snapped out a kick up the man’s groin. A fight he could do. A fight he could always do.
