Michael and Lani made their way to the ground floor and entered a room. Once there, they set their packs down and grabbed magazines from pouches inside the bags. They stuffed their partially spent magazines into the bags and closed things up. Once they finished swapping through their magazines, they grabbed their packs back up and moved to the door.

Michael threw the door open and walked out of the building, his eyes jumped around as he looked to the structures surrounding him. This would be good for an infantry platoon right now, he thought to himself as he began making his way to an apartment building. He had two hundred meters to clear, so he started jogging.

Lani waited in cover, watching the buildings for any kind of movement or flash. Sure enough, she saw someone poke their head out of a window in the tall building that Michael was running toward. Before she could get her weapon raised, the figure ducked and vanished into the building. “We got someone,” she whispered into her microphone, “top floor, they moved to the hallway.”

“They already know we’re here,” Michael responded, “we might need that group to come get involved after all.” He grabbed his talk button and keyed out. “Pikhota, tse Wolf,” he said before letting go of the button.

“Wolf, Pikhota, we got english on our net,” the voice responded, “whatcha need, over?”

“Move in on the apartment block,” Michael said as he pressed the button again, “I got the northwest corner, and a ton of shit to clear, over.”

“We’re on our way.” the voice responded.

Michael went to respond when he met a gunman in the doorway as he tried to enter. They made the mistake of shoving a pistol in full presentation at his face, which was the best way to beg Michael to take the gun from him. And, that’s pretty much what he did.

He leaned to the side to clear himself from the muzzle path as a shot cracked off. As the shooter fired his first shot, Michael grabbed the front of the gun and twisted it three hundred and sixty degrees, keeping the shooter's finger trapped in the trigger guard as the bone broke. He ripped the gun toward himself, tearing the skin that held the finger in place. Once he had the gun free from the shooter, he pointed it upward from his torso into the target's neck and fired five shots. “Ne shkoda, fucker” he mumbled to himself as he aimed the newly snatched pistol through the door and peered in to see if the shooter had help behind him. Sure enough, he spotted a man. He fired one shot which smashed its way through an older gas mask lense. The slide locked open.

As Michael was dropping the empty gun to go back to his rifle, Lani spotted another shooter on the second floor. As she was raising her weapon to engage, shots rang out in her direction. She fired shots at the muzzle flash, holding the trigger on her AK and burning the entire magazine in a rather tightened grouping for someone firing thirty shots in one burst. Firing her armor piercing rounds into the cover just below the point of the muzzle flash, she tore through the thin concrete and placed about half of her shots in the body of the shooter. She grabbed another magazine and kicked the empty one out with it, moving quickly to roll it in and rack the charging handle.

Michael finished shooting the two men that had run in behind the doorway shooter. Once he moved his way through the room, he looked down the hall and waited for more shooters to come from the rooms. These are full residences, he realized to himself, people are gonna have too many places to hide and it’ll take too long to clear it all. He still continued to scan the hallway, waiting for shooters or traps.

Lani picked up and ran to Michael, not liking the proximity in which the rounds had landed near her from the last shooter's attempt. As she made her way into the room, a gunman stuck his arm through a doorway and opened fire with a pistol. He squeezed off rounds as fast as he could in Michael’s general direction, though he missed entirely.

Michael ducked back into cover, waiting for the panic’d shooter to run out of rounds. He could hear the man muttering something unintelligible but he didn’t care enough to try and listen. He moved his way down the hall and aimed his AK where he could hear the man reloading his pistol. He fired through the wall, letting loose a fifteen shot burst. Once he let off the trigger, he kicked the wall where it had weakened from being shot through and broke a hole through it. He aimed through the hole and let five more shots off. His initial burst had hit the man's arms and chest, the followup shots tore through his head and neck.

Lani moved to the window of a room that was facing a courtyard between buildings. She knew something wasn’t right. Her instincts were telling her that things were about to go horribly wrong. She heard an engine roaring toward them. Sure enough, she turned and saw a BTR-70 with the blue and yellow Ukraine flag marking on the sides. As it rolled to a stop next to a building, a loud pop sound was heard from the building she was in. From the fourth floor, someone had fired an RPG directly into the top of the armored transport.

As the BTR was struck in the turret, the molten projectile inside the warhead of the propelled grenade shot through the metal and hit the ammunition storage. Though the 14.5mm cannon was little more than a chaingun on steroids compared to other armored vehicles armaments, the amount of rounds in the rack was plenty enough to make a serious explosion inside the vehicle. One soldier was flung through the door on the side as he had prepared to step out. The gunner and commander were incinerated by the blast, while the driver was burned by a fire that flashed through the drivers area. The infantry squad that was still in the back of the vehicle were either burned by the fire, crushed by the force of the explosion or shredded by flying metal that was blown about inside the compartment. The man on the balcony smiled as he watched his work. Setting down his launcher, he grabbed up his modified semi-auto hunting shotgun, a product of old soviet design that appeared much like a Mossberg or Winchester would.

Lani made her way to the stairwell and ran her way up as fast as she could. Given that she was wearing a full set of soldiers body armor, helmet, a protective mask and a very full ruck, she moved like someone would if they were wearing shorts and a t-shirt. She made long bounds up the stairs, making sure to take a quick peek down the halls before running up further till she reached the fourth floor. There she was met by a shotgun aimed in her direction from two living units down.

He fired two shots at her in quick succession that she dodged narrowly as she stepped back behind the wall by the doorway. As she ducked back, she could discern the sound of a grenade spoon flicking away from its housing. He had tossed a grenade at the doorway, but this wasn’t a fragmentation grenade or even a high explosive grenade. This grenade was a phosphorous grenade, which would create an inextinguishable fire on whatever it came in contact with. He had made the mistake of rolling it toward her.

Lani quickly stepped out and kicked the grenade back to the man's feet. The fuse expired as it rolled back, setting off the grenade. The man hadn’t thought to back himself into cover, being enhanced as he was. He didn’t even bother to look down as he had tried to fire another shot at Lani. The grenade detonated, blasting the man back as he began to spontaneously burn to death. Not wanting to wait for a half burnt man to get back up and be a problem later, Lani peered around the corner and fired five shots into his writhing body. Fuck you and your bullshit, Lani thought to herself as she made her way back down the stairs.

Michael made his way to the exit of the building near the burning BTR. He took a breath as he looked on at the destruction. Nobody could survive that, he realized as he decided to make his way to the stairs.

“I got the rocketman,” Lani spoke over the earpiece to Michael, “We should probably call it in.”

“Yeah,” Michael said softly in response, “I’ll handle that.” He started jogging up the stairs to the second floor where Lani aimed down the hall. He slipped by her and smashed the first door that he found. As the door flew open, a man inside fired an AKM at Michael while standing stationary in the room. Michael moved to the side as he fired back, placing three shots quickly in his chest. As he went down, another man from behind a corner in the room popped out and fired his own AKM at Michael, this one moving a little faster than a normal person. Michael got two shots off, hitting the man's arm before one of his rounds struck Michael in the plate of his vest.

He hit me too good, Michael thought to himself, this one’s enhanced. He peered back around the corner, firing a couple shots as Lani peered from the opposite corner and let out a fifteen shot burst into the torso of the man who hadn’t accounted for her to get involved so quickly. He stood quite rigidly for someone who had just been peppered fifteen times in the chest, neck and face. With his remaining eye, he glared them down as he finally collapsed.

Turning back toward the hallway, Michael noticed a man holding something in his left hand while aiming a pistol toward him and Lani. “Bomb man!” Michael shouted as he aimed his weapon at the triggerman. Before any shots could be fired, the man let go of the device, a dead-man switch he was holding on to. Michael shoved Lani hard enough that the force of his shove threw her back to the stairwell. Lani didn’t have time to grab Michael and drag him with her to safety before the wall was blown through.

As the wall blew through, a chunk of it slammed into Michael and threw him into a room through the closed door. One of his arms got caught between the chunk of concrete wall and the doorframe, the crunch of bones could be heard.

Lani stood up and fired through the gap in the debris in the hallway and killed the triggerman with five shots to his chest and neck. As she went to pull the wall away from the doorway to get to Michael, an RPG was fired from the building across the courtyard. As it struck, the floor above Michael broke and came down on him. The edge of the solid concrete landed on his knees.

With his remaining good arm, Michael pulled a tourniquet from a pocket and unwrapped it, shoving the strap between his legs and wrapping it around one of his legs. Blood was still pooling where his crushed legs were trapped. As he pulled tightly, Lani reached in with another tourniquet and wrapped it around his other leg. Yanking both of them tight and securing them, she grabbed the quick release tabs of his ruck and disconnected his bag from his back and grabbed him up.

Michael let out a groan and gripped her elbow. “I might be done for,” he said softly, “there’s still targets in the other buildings.”

“No,” she said through a crack in her voice, “you first.” She lifted the concrete enough and snatched his legs, shoving them out of the space under the fallen ceiling. Grabbing him up, she threw him over her shoulders and let him rest on the ruck she was still wearing. Running down the stairs, she made her way to the ground floor. Once there, she started moving away from the building as quick as she could. With his remaining arm, Michael held on to her shoulder strap.

For a few moments, as Lani sprinted to the other side of the school building, she found a team of men waiting for her. These men wore the blue and yellow Ukraine flags that identified them as soldiers on Lani’s side. They were staged next to a Dozor-B, an armored car that was shaped much like an MRAP of sorts. These men did not look like the regular soldiers that they had been escorted by. Their AK-74’s had rail systems and adjustable stocks, their masks were aftermarket and their body armor was commercial grade in a derivative pattern of Multicam. Spetsnaz, Skorpion detachment.

“You are Lani,” one of them said as he waved to her, “I’m Senior Lieutenant Bachev.”

Lani moved Michael off of her shoulder and prepared to hand her off to the special group of operators who were usually involved in guarding things of nuclear nature. Chernobyl was such a case. Though she had read some of this information, at this point she didn’t care. As she went to set Michael on a stretcher that one of the operators had set on the ground, she felt his arm tense up and cling to her tightly.

“Kill them,” he said weakly before falling limp and landing hard on the stretcher.

Lani stood still, her face went blank as she looked at Michael. Though a team of elite operators, one of which was a medic, worked immediately to bandage the shattered legs and splint up the arm with a crushed elbow, she could feel her world giving way beneath her. Her breathing deepened and accelerated. The world around her made no sound, though the soldiers called loudly to Michael for a response. They removed the helmet and mask very carefully from him. His left eye was blood red. His face looked like an emotion she almost never saw before. Peaceful.

Lieutenant Bachev waved his hand in front of Lani’s face. She finally came back to some sense for only a moment. Only enough to know what she was going to do next. She threw her helmet to the side and pulled her mask off of her face. She turned toward the officer and spoke through her teeth with brewing rage. “Bachev, send no help.”

“I have been-” Bachev tried to speak, but Lani put her hand up as if to gesture to him that shutting up was a good idea.

“Your men are a liability against this threat,” she said as clearly as she could, “Anyone out there will die,” She pulled her pack from her back and set it on the ground, replacing spent magazines and grabbing a canteen of water from a side pouch. She drank it down hard before tossing it to the side. She threw her pack on her back and tightened it back down before grabbing her mask and wiping it off with a cloth. “Vsi pomrut’” she muttered as she pulled her mask back onto her face. “Vsi pomrut’”

“Everyone?” Bachev asked with confusion in his tone, as if to question if she knew what she was saying.

“Yes,” she said as she looked him in the eyes with a look that pierced his very being, “every motherfucker will die.”