Chapter 5 - Fire in the SnowThe front window of the apartment shattered inward with a deafening crash as a hail of submachine gun fire chewed through the cheap drywall, sending plaster dust and glass shards flying across the room.
“Get down!” Andrew shouted, grabbing Nula by the waist and dragging her behind the heavy oak structure of Gabriel’s armchair just as a second volley of bullets tore through the doorframe.
Gabriel coughed violently from the dust, pressing flat against the floor.
“Marcus! Hold the hallway!” Andrew barked, returning fire with precise, calculated shots through the shattered window frame.
“Boss, there are too many of them! They’ve blocked both ends of the stairwell!” Marcus yelled back over the deafening roar of automatic gunfire, tossing a fresh magazine into his pistol.
Nula pressed her back against the wall, her heart racing. For two years, she had played the role of a quiet, broken maid hiding from poverty. But looking at Andrew—bleeding slightly from a reopened stitch on his shoulder, fighting like a cornered wolf to protect her and her father—she realized something profound.
She wasn't her mother. She wasn't a victim waiting for a hit-and-run.
“The fire escape,” Nula shouted over the din of battle.
Andrew looked at her, confused. “The exit is blocked!”
“Not the front exit!” Nula pointed toward the rusted metal door leading to the rear fire escape in the kitchen. “When I was twelve, my mother showed me how the building’s old ventilation shafts connect to the abandoned textile factory next door. If we can get Dad across the bridge, we lose them in the underground steam tunnels.”
Andrew didn't hesitate for a second. He trusted her.
“Marcus, cover our rear! We’re moving!” Andrew hoisted Gabriel up into a fireman’s carry with effortless strength, ignoring the strain on his injured shoulder.
Nula grabbed her father’s oxygen tank, slinging the heavy metal cylinder over her shoulder, and led the way through the kitchen into the freezing night air.
Snow was falling thickly now, burying the city in a blanket of pristine white that contrasted sharply with the chaotic violence of the shootout. Bullets pinged off the rusted metal railing of the fire escape as Nula scrambled down the steps, her hands gripping the frozen iron without a single tremor.
She threw open the service door to the abandoned textile factory, guiding Andrew and her father into the cavernous, dark interior filled with the ghosts of old machinery and dust.
They dropped down into the maintenance hatch beneath the factory floor—the old steam tunnels her mother had mapped out decades ago.
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As the heavy iron hatch slammed shut above them, plunging the tunnel into darkness save for the beam of Andrew’s tactical flashlight, the sound of their pursuers kicking open the factory doors echoed faintly from above.
They were safe. For now.
