“Get down!”

“Stay down!”

“Floor, floor!”

The three people above us, two women and one man, screamed as they waved the muzzles of their rifles in our faces. Hands up, palms out, we tried to placate them, but they kept screaming.

If it had just been me, I would have gone after them. Maybe they had silver, maybe they didn’t. But it would have been my choice.

It wasn’t just me, though. Jessica was here, too. A member of my pack. A woman I’d pledged to look after. A woman I already loved and cared for like a sister.

“On your stomach!”

“Hands behind your head!”

And still, outside, gunshots resounded. There was another explosion, and we all heard a scream of an unknown man, one crying for his mother as he bled out on the battlefield.

There wasn’t any way we were going to get out of this, not with the way their fingers were clearly itching to pull the triggers of their rifles.

“Okay!” I shouted, rolling over onto my stomach, clasping my hands behind my head. “Okay! Happy?”

“Zip ties, Kowalski! Zip ties!”

This was it. This was really it. We were either going back into our rooms or they were taking us off the premises. We were going to disappear, and even though our men were here somewhere, Jessica and I were going to be hostages…victims for the rest of our lives.

The reality settled in like a sumo wrestler sitting on the base of my skull, the weight of it crushing all passion or love from my mind and body. This was it. There was nothing more afterwards, just a cheap simulacrum of life, a facsimile where I was poked and prodded and experimented on until I died.

And Jessica? What would she have? What kind of life would she live as a human hostage who was of no use to them?

It was better for her to die on these stone steps, right here and now, than it was to perhaps live out a life like that, where all she was a cheap token used in a game to keep me under control. No, right then, I had to make a choice. A choice for her, but also a choice for both of us.

As the guard standing over me now, his feet straddling my form on either side, began to slip a plastic zip tie around my wrists, I made my decision. I was going to fight.

I grabbed the guard’s surprisingly soft hands in mine and rolled, kicking up as I went, trying to sweep his legs out from beneath him.

And then the sound of silenced rifles broke the air, cutting through the shouts and yells with the finality of a bartender making last call to a crowded bar.

The body I’d just kicked went limp and fell to the side.

Above us, the other two dropped like marionettes with their strings suddenly cut. Their bodies went slack and collapsed onto us.

“Vanessa?” Peter’s voice called.

“Jessica?”

She and I both rolled out from underneath the deadweight, the Jaeger-Tech personnel’s last dying breaths heavier in my ears than their bodies had ever been. “Peter? Oh my God, you’re really here! I knew you were!”

One moment I was struggling to my feet, bruised and sore from the tumble down the stairs, and the next I was enveloped in his loving embrace. Complete for the moment, my body and my soul screamed out in joy as I was with my lover, with the man I was meant to be with for the rest of my life.

He crushed my lips with his, and I closed my eyes as I melted into his strong arms, his rifle pinned between our bodies. I’d never been in love or felt so loved by anyone before in my life. It was like coming home, like having someone tell you everything was going to be all right, and being able to one hundred percent mean it.

Slowly, though, reality crashed back over us like waves on the coast, and we broke apart. We were still at the top of this tower, surrounded by men who wanted us alive as test subjects, as simple resources.

“Are you okay?” he asked, gazing down into my eyes. “Are you hurt?”

“Scraped up,” I said, grinning up into his camouflaged face, with all its swirling streaks of black and brown and dark green. I noticed the smudge on his lips and chin, and realized that had been me. I reached up, tried to wipe it off. All I got was a streak of grease on my fingers, though. “I’ll live.”

He grinned back at me and I thought that, if only for a moment, he’d lose himself in the joy of the moment. And I think he did. I think he really did. He knew true joy. But then the training kicked in for both men. “We need to go,” he said. “Murdoch, get a move on.”

“Right,” Richard said as he and Jessica separated from their own passionate reunion. “These three were up here trying to secure you. We gotta go.”

Before we left, though, Peter drew his own sidearm. He flipped it around and handed it to me, grip first.

I took it with a nod, racked a shell into its chamber, and disabled the safety.

And, just like that, with the world coming down around us, gunfire still filling the air, and bodies now lying at our feet, we were off. Finally.

We might not have been safe yet, but at least we were together.