"Fuck, that hurt," Konrad moaned. "I can almost feel a bullet wedging itself between my ribs."
"Damn it, we celebrated too early," Yuri grumbled, stepping on the hand of the now-dead mercenary. "Sore loser bastard. But lucky you, you had that artifact and a bulletproof vest."
Nope, he did not feel lucky at all.
"I'm almost sure it's broken," Konrad complained. "It only made the pain worse."
To prove his words, he pulled out the scorching Mama's Beads, offering them to the Wolves.
"Jesus Christ," the tiny leader yelped. "How long has it been this hot?!"
"For a while now," he claimed, unbuckling his vest, too.
Every careless movement had him jolt in pain.
"Still, this is some expensive pistol," Walther noted, twisting it off the corpse's hand. "I'm sure if you weren't wearing those, the bullets would have gone right through you."
Yeah, things could have been worse.
Like, he could have been standing there without any protection, like—
"Wait. Dmitry?!" he turned with a yell, pulling a muscle. "Fuck. Hey, are you all right?"
The Wolves froze, too.
The Captain stood right by Konrad's side when that merc started shooting.
It took them way too long to notice he had collapsed without a word.
"Still breathing," Yuri claimed, leaning closer. "But it doesn't sound good."
Yeah. Once the silence settled around them, he could also hear the wet gurgling.
And he noticed the blood on the stairs, too.
"Oh shit," Konrad panicked. "And I lost my Stone Blood. I gotta go find it."
And he would've, too, if the next movement hadn't caused him enough pain to double over.
"Lost it where, kid?!" Walther asked. "If around this site, you can forget about it. Have you seen those anomalies? There's no time. We have to stop his bleeding and get him treated right now."
"The bar, then," Konrad mumbled. "We have to carry him there."
But right now, he couldn't even carry himself.
"No, the swamp is closer," Yuri said, still listening to the Captain's breathing. "Well, not closer, but by the time we'd drag him through these anomalies, we could make it to the scientists' lab."
Not that it mattered to Konrad, as long as they were on the move.
"Let's go, then," he urged, reaching for the Gepard.
Bad idea, again.
"Leave it," Yuri barked. "You're wounded, too, and it would slow us down. We'll come back later."
"Yeah, nobody knows that the mercs are dead yet," Walther claimed. "They won't come here anytime soon. I'll put your Mama's Beads into my secure container, and the rest stays."
"Fine, fine, let's hurry," Konrad gritted out, his pain refusing to subside.
They improvised a stretcher, and the Wolves carried the unconscious Dmitry down.
He would have done that himself, but—
It was already a miracle he reached the bottom floor without rolling down the stairs.
"This way is the safest," Yuri noted, taking a sharp left on a gravel road below the construction site. "This is where we came through as well. There's only one problematic area along the way."
But by problematic, he meant impossible.
The road had left the complex in an underpass below the railways.
That was all fine, too, but the whole thing was on fire.
"You have to be kidding me," Konrad moaned, still struggling to breathe. "Napalm?!"
"Ah, first time seeing a fire anomaly?" Walther asked, trying to put on a brave face. "It's not as hot as the real thing. Well, unless you trigger the core of the flame."
"It's like a minefield," Yuri explained. "But there's a clear path through it."
"It took us a while to find it, that's why we were late. But it shouldn't have changed since."
Yeah. Okay. Konrad believed them, but—
"How do you take the stretcher across?!"
"Fuck," was the first answer he got.
"We'd have to go through one by one," Walther admitted, too. "No way we could trace the same path with this bulky thing. But if I hauled the guy over my shoulder—"
Hah. They underestimated how much Dmitry weighed.
Last time Konrad carried him, he used magic to help with it.
Now, that was out of the question.
"I'd say I'd take him across," Yuri said, "But I won't pretend I could do it."
They put the stretcher down, and Walther attempted to lift his unconscious friend.
"Oof. This will be tough," he grunted, too.
Konrad had an idea, but he wasn't sure how viable it would have been.
"Yuri can take the empty stretcher across and lead us," he offered. "And we'll walk him through, somehow. One arm over your shoulder, one over mine, and, um. We'll be very, very careful."
"Damn it," the Wolves cursed in unison.
"Well," Yuri scratched his head. "It's either that, or we go all the way back to the bar. But that route would be even rougher. Kid, will you make it?"
A valid question.
If he still had his magic—
Well, he would have opened a portal already.
Now, he could only hope his grueling endurance training with Welf might pay off.
"I will," he said, lifting his chin. "But, um. I want Walther to go up front, and I'll be at the back. If shit happens, you let go of everything and run. No heroics."
"Who's talking heroics, idiot?" the guy scoffed, but didn't protest. "Let's do this."
"Only step where I'm stepping, and don't let your limbs hang off the side," Yuri warned.
Which would have been easy if his legs were not already wobbling.
"Ready," Konrad lied, both supporting Dmitry, and holding on to him for dear life.
"Ready," Walther repeated, and the leader of the Wolves took point with the stretcher.
Even if they said these flames weren't real—or at least, not as hot as a real fire—Konrad was sweating bullets. They were correct in the sense that if he didn't touch the flames, he was fine.
But if his elbow were off by an inch, it would scorch his jacket off.
And that was still without him triggering the anomaly—whatever that meant.
Konrad didn't want to find out, taking one tiny wobbly step after the other.
"Two paces forward, then a sharp left," Yuri led them. "Now one step right and we're in the clear."
"Clear?! We're only halfway through," Konrad moaned, his sweat stinging his eyes.
"But we'll be past the trigger," Walther explained, holding most of the weight. "Almost there."
The pain was excruciating.
He was better off keeping his eyes closed, only listening to their voices and the crackling of the flames. Put one foot after the other. That was all he had to do.
"Now one step right," Yuri reminded him, speaking from further away now.
He must have reached the other side already.
Konrad followed his instructions without looking, but didn't expect the pothole.
As his feet fell into it, he sucked in a sharp breath in surprise, and that in turn caused the pain in his chest to explode. Not by itself, either. His entire body jolted, and he felt something hot.
"Fuck," Walther grunted, and he could hear the crackling getting louder.
"Oh shit," Yuri said, too. "You might've triggered it."
"Huh?" His eyes flew open. "And what now?!"
"We Run."