He knew this feeling.

At first there was nothing. He was floating in the air, deaf and blind, suspended on clouds for an eternity.

And then he felt the jolt. Like a horse the size of the Hoover Dam had kicked him.

He gasped for air.

All he could hear was the ocean.

His body rocked. His nerves were on fire.

A voice filtered down through the fathomless depths which threatened to consume him.

“Walker. Fox!”

He heard screams, like siren calls drifting along the waves.

The first thing he saw was an orange glow. It chased away the darkness, fire and heat fighting with icy water, as though both were desperate to be the thing which killed him.

He gasped for air and tasted smoke. It made him cough, and a hand slapped his back.

“Fox, get up! Come on!”

His world skewed. The orange moved. He was propelled upward and it took him a moment to realize he was standing up now. Shadows flickered into view.

Axel.

Syria.

No, this couldn’t be Syria. That was so long ago.

He sucked in another breath, but all it did was make his body ache more. His brain swam, thoughts struggled to surface, and then as though everything were suddenly in focus, he remembered where he was.

“Data,” he coughed.

“Typical,” Axel grunted. “Can you walk?”

Fox wanted to nod, but he didn’t dare risk it. “I’m fine. I’m okay. What blew up? I didn’t think I was that hot.”

“Ha,” Axel deadpanned. The longer he spoke, the clearer his voice became. “No idea. There are civilians. We’ve gotta clear the place. I can’t hear any fire suppression systems.”

“Sabotaged?” Fox screwed his eyes shut a few seconds, and when he opened them again he could make out Axel’s features, which was good enough for now. “Go. I’m gonna hit the server room, see if I can save anything.”

Axel gazed into his eyes, then gave a quick nod of his head. “You’ve got three minutes before I haul you out of here over my goddamn shoulder.”

“It’s a date.” Fox winked and focused on retaining his balance as Axel stepped out of the office.

Or what was left of it.

The door was gone, and so was the glass wall with its blinds. Everything was ruined. The ceiling was black with smoke, the carpet near the door seeming to have melted into tiny peaks like the world’s smallest mountain range. Beyond it, orange firelight flashed and danced to the left of his new door-hole.

“Everybody out!” He heard Axel’s voice cut loud and clear above the chaos. “I want you to grab the hand of the person nearest you and make for the exit. Nobody run. Nice and calm. No, leave that, you don’t need it. You, what’s your name? Grace. I want you to call 911 the moment you get outside. Go.”

Fox was pulled toward the sound. Axel had him on a string. He always had.

He heard the crackle and roar of the flames, felt the heat of them on his skin as he stepped out into the corridor.

Shit, there was fire everywhere. Bits of ceiling rained down on him.

He had a job to do, and this damn fire was going to wipe out every last bit of data he needed if he couldn’t follow through.

Fox glanced away, toward the open plan area. Axel was out there, his black suit like a dark beacon as he evacuated the property, and in his heart Fox knew that that was where it was safe.

He fumbled at his tie and loosened it enough to pull over his head, then wadded it together in his hand to make a rudimentary mask. One of these rooms had to be the server room, and his single best chance now - rather than logging in as an array of users and hoping for lax security - was to just steal hardware outright before it melted to slag.

All he had to do was find the right room.

Fox plunged toward the flames, his head down to minimize the risk of inhaling more smoke. Other doors and windows had been blown in or utterly destroyed, and he was able to peek quickly into each office as he passed. In one he found a middle-aged man halfway through clambering out of his window, and left the guy to it without comment.

He risked a look down at himself, half expecting to find burns from head to toe, but he could only assume the door had protected him. Maybe that was even what had hit him, sparing him from the heat of the blast itself. If that were the case it could be what saved other people in these offices, as none of them had left their doors open last time he checked.

Fox stopped as the fire grew more intense. The last room he looked into was no office.

But it was also the source of the fire.

“Shit,” he spat, the word muffled by his tie.

The racks of switches and servers at the back of the room were barely visible behind all the goddamn flames. There were flecks of ash falling on him like sand in the desert, raining down the back of his neck.

Who the hell didn’t have fire suppression in their server room?

Fox back-pedaled from the inferno and sprinted out to the open plan area.

“Two minutes!” Axel bellowed at him.

“Pinky-swear!” Fox yelled as he grabbed the nearest extinguisher and ran back down the corridor. He dropped his tie as he pulled the nozzle free, and sucked in as much air as he could before he plunged into the server room.

The hiss of the extinguisher was like the whoosh of a grenade launcher. It spat a cloud of grey-white chemicals into the blaze, which was far too out of control for the device to fully tackle. Fox didn’t need to put the whole thing out, though. He just had to reach the server rack.

His head swam, and he ignored it. Plastic on the network cables was melting, probably giving off toxic fumes, so he did his best to hold his breath for a minute before he desperately had to inhale again as he tossed the expended extinguisher out of the room and reached for the multitool on his belt.

Fox flipped the tool open, switched to a screwdriver, and began frantically unscrewing servers from the rack. He’d have to get behind it all to unplug and remove them from the network, but this was the hard part and he wanted it out of the way.

He heard screams still. Or were they memories? Echoes of a Humvee on fire and the body of a man sworn to protect him pressing him into the sand?

He felt like he was going to be sick.

Fox unscrewed until he could use his fingers to spin the bolts the rest of the way. The fire baked his back and made sweat pour down his spine.

He was going to die in here.

He grit his teeth and darted around the side of the cabinet, then delved behind it. The space was cramped, but the fire hadn’t spread back here yet, and the bulk worked to shield him from the worst of the fire for now. He yanked at power cables without mercy. It didn’t matter if he fried motherboards, the hard drives were the vital parts that he needed to save.

God, why couldn’t they have hot-swappable drive bays like a damn modern organization?

His cursing was a stream now, unstoppable and angry.

Maybe the nice lady at reception had called ahead to notify whoever that Axel was here to see them. Or at least that the FBI were on site. Fox couldn’t think of any other reason for a bomb to be set off here, now. The timing was too much of a coincidence.

Which meant their guy was here. Or had been, anyway.

Fox cursed more loudly. He’d been flirting with Axel while their target was setting a device and destroying the evidence that Fox had worked months to get his hands on.

Maybe it wasn’t the lady at reception. It could have been anyone. Maybe Fox’s own activity had trickled back to the wrong ears and set off a chain of events that couldn’t be predicted or stopped. He couldn’t assume that all this was down to the flash of an FBI badge. If Fox were sitting at a desk and heard that someone was floor walking asking users for passwords he’d be on his feet like lightning.

He tore the last of the cables free and pushed the servers forward on their rails, enough so that he’d be able to grab them from the front, then he escaped his protective cubbyhole.

The fire had grown.

Fox faltered in the face of it. The heat, the brightness, the detritus.

Could he hear gunfire?

Yelling. Yeah. He could hear shouting, that was for sure.

A blink, and the fire had leaped closer. Or had he blacked out?

Door to the head. Could have a concussion.

He grimaced at the thought and quickly wrenched the servers from the rack, but they were too heavy for him to carry more than two, so he laid the third on the floor and kicked it along the carpet toward the exit.

Toward freedom.

The sweat flooded his eyes. It stung and he couldn’t free up a hand to wipe it away. All he could do was blink quickly as he kicked the server out into the corridor.

The fire had begun to re-ignite the areas he’d extinguished. It was billowing across the ceiling, racing him toward the exit.

It would beat him.

Fox stumbled away with the awful sense of his whole body succumbing to heat and fumes and concussion, and somewhere along the way he felt his whole world tilt. All he could see was the fire as it raged past him.

God damn it. Eight years ago he’d lain down in a desert, his head swimming, his breath like fire. And here he was again. Surrounded by heat and flame and clutching the data he’d risked his life to save.

Except this time he wasn’t so sure he was going to make it.

No. Scratch that. He wasn’t going to make it.

He definitely heard gunfire.

Maybe.

So much for that beer Axel owed him. He couldn’t miss the irony in the fact that the only times he ever met the guy his heart raced for was when he was in life-threatening situations. But if this was going to be it, he at least got Axel’s number this time, which was a hundred percent better than he’d managed in Syria.

If only he got to live long enough to call it.