The Weight of Steady Hands
The smoke on Trellis Street rolled black against a bruised evening sky, thick as tar, and underneath it the apartment complex groaned like something alive and dying. Windows on the third floor had already blown out, glass scattered across the pavement in a glittering ruin, and somewhere inside a woman was screaming for her mother.
Liam stood at the threshold of the building's east entrance, helmet strap fastened, gloves already blackened from the heat radiating off the door frame. Around him, five officers waited for his signal, their breathing audible even through their masks, quick and shallow with fear. He could hear it. He could hear everything — the crackle of timber giving way somewhere above, the distant wail of a second engine still four minutes out, the frantic thud of someone's fist against a stuck window. None of it showed on his face.
"Two confirmed on the third floor," Nolan said beside him, voice rough from the smoke already curling under the door. "Elderly woman, unit 3B. And a kid, maybe twenty, trapped near the stairwell collapse."
"Copy," Liam said. Only that. No hesitation, no tremor, as if he were confirming a grocery order rather than walking into a…
