Grave was out of breath. The broken down state of the building made it extremely difficult to navigate, and how close the enemy was made it even harder to do so cautiously. They had ducked underneath entire fallen hallways, propped up only by the few remaining cinder blocks of what used to be a wall. They had climbed over what had to be a dozen or so piles of fallen concrete, far more than when they had first scouted the place out a day earlier. At every corner, it seemed like there was a militia man hovering and the two must have made at least three detours just to get around without getting caught.

And even when they had finally made it to the emergency staircase that would lead them to the upper level and to their planned escape route, they found the staircase in a pile of rusted iron and concrete. Grave let out a curse as he stepped into the stairwell, dark eyes scanning the pile of rubble and the twenty foot gap between the floor and the landing above. They had virtually run into a dead end.

Elegy put her hands on her knees as she entered the stairwell, her lungs heaving. "Oh no... The staircase must have collapsed during the explosion."

Grave let out another curse, doing a full circle to assess his surroundings. It was starting to look like picking such a run down building for a sniping point was a bad idea after all. "We need another escape route, now."

"H-Hold on." Elegy reached into the pocket of her jacket, pulling out a rumpled piece of paper with the floor plan of the building. She studied it for a second as Grave stepped to the entrance, scanning the hallway and listening for pursuit. "There's... There's an elevator shaft. Straight down the center hallway to the right. It goes straight down to the basement."

"Then let's go."

Having gone nearly fifteen minutes without running into the militia, it was utterly inevitable that they would run into someone along the way. The fact that it was on the very back of Grave's mind probably didn't help in averting the anxiety. He probably would have jumped the first soldier he encountered with so much tension built up inside of him. So when the first male, uniformed and armed, stepped around a corner of intersecting hallways, barely an arm's length from him, Grave did the first impulse that seized him.

The man had but a second to look in Grave and Elegy's direction, his expression shifting into one of alarm before Grave moved in toward him. He grabbed the man's weapon arm with one hand, and with the other seized a fistful of the man's coat and shirt. In one swoop, he pulled the man around him, pushing the rifle toward the ground, and slammed him, head first into the concrete wall. There was a spray of bullets from the rifle just as the man's skull impacted with the wall, embedding into the floor. It was about as loud as several miniature explosions all concentrated in one area within a quiet, desolate space. And it echoed.

Grave snapped his head up, his eyes wide. "Damn it." Sure enough, following the echoing gunfire were racing footsteps and the clatter of weapons.

Elegy let out a low moan behind him. "No... Why does this always happen?!"

"Shut up and take some cover!" Grave practically chucked the man's rifle at Elegy before pulling out his secondary weapon, an automatic rifle holstered at his lower waist. He cocked it, removing the safety and lifted it to aim down to the end of the hallway where several more militia soldiers emerged, fully armed.

Their eyes locked on Grave, a fellow soldier at his feet, a sniper rifle on his back and a weapon cocked and aimed in their direction. "He's over here!"

Grave let fly several rounds, forcing the men to duck for cover. He moved behind the corner of the hallway, across from where Elegy had taken cover before pressing his back to it just as the soldiers returned fire. Bullets blasted off chunks of concrete off of the corner he stood against, his ears ringing. One hand fumbled into a pouch belted around his waist, pulling out a fist-sized black grenade. He made eye contact with Elegy for a second before she nodded.

Elegy poked her head out around her corner, her rifle shouldered, and fired at the soldiers, forcing them back into cover. Grave tugged the pin out of his grenade at the same time, holding it for one solid second before chucking it around the corner to the other end of the hallway. There was a resounding tink tink in the silence left as Elegy pulled back behind her cover, and an "Oh F--" before a loud bang split the silence.

Black smoke flooded the hallway, Grave turning on his heels to dart down the adjacent hallway that the first soldier he had incapacitated and come from, leaving behind shouts and coughs. He passed another intersection, past rows of doorways where apartment rooms once were before Elegy, close behind him, pulled him to a stop at a second intersection.

"This way!" she gasped, her voice hoarse and turned down the left side. Grave followed close behind her, glancing back for a second to check for pursuit. The black smoke already spread across the ceiling here, the distant shouts escalating. They were at a frantic run now, adrenaline coursing through their veins. Elegy navigated her way with the floor plan in one hand, through what looked like an empty lounge or kitchen room that connected to another hallway, parts of the floor missing to reveal the fifteen foot drop to the lower level.

They emerged into a wider space, another hallway with thick smoke drifting in, with nothing but a broad bare wall before them. Grave slowed to a stop, giving the wall a broad sweep before glancing at Elegy who was looking frantically at the floor plan. "Where the f*** is the elevator?!"

"I-I don't know!" She pushed her dark hair out of her face, studying the floor plan, as the thundering footsteps grew closer. "T-This is was the first blueprint, they must've redesigned it or something!"

Grave took one look down the other smoky hallway to know that the soldiers were down that way before spotting light streaking across the floor from a steel door, partly open. A broken sign hung above the door, the cover completely missing but the neon lights still spelling out the word EXIT. He couldn't have laid eyes on anything better.

Grave crossed the space in two strides, kicking open the door with a loud bang, before looking down the metal staircase. It led directly outside, overlooking clusters of brick and concrete buildings on the outside of the town square. The metal staircase snaked its way down the side of the building, slowing years of rust and parts of the support hardly connected to the brick wall. The landing they stood on was only connected by a rusted narrow beam, serrated edges exposed by the weather. It must have been a fire escape. An extremely old fire escape in disrepair. But it was an escape, probably their best chance out.

"Let's go, let's go!" Grave shouted at Elegy. He kept an eye on the hallways as she rushed past him and onto the staircase.

She came to a full stop at the top stair, her hand gripping fiercely at the railing as she stared down the rickety staircase. "Holy shit!"

Grave pushed her with one hand, his eyes and rifle still locked on the interior space as the steel door slowly swung shut. "Don't stop! Go! Go!"

"O-Okay!" Elegy broke into a hastened, but nervous run down the staircase, each step making the entire structure shudder and groan. Grave followed close behind, knowing all too well that the soldiers in pursuit were close enough to just be around the corner. No, he was sure that they couldn't make it down the staircase without the militia men reaching the fire escape.

They had descended at least three flights before reaching the first landing as the bang of the steel door echoed far above them. Grave lifted his weapon as he reached the landing, pointing it at the uniformed men who stepped onto the staircase, hesitant upon seeing the unsteady structure. He fired a few more rounds, the men instinctively falling to their knees for cover before breaking into a run down the second few flights of stairs. Bullets buzzed past over head, enough to make both Grave and Elegy's pace increase. What unnerved Grave more were the huge chunks of metal, rusted over from weather, that popped off of the stairs wherever the bullets struck.

At this point, neither Grave or the enemies could get in a clear shot. Bullets flew past both the sniper and his support, blasting off chunks of the staircase, and even worse, pieces of the beams that attached the staircase to the brick wall. They reached the second landing as the staircase let out a deep moan, shaking violently enough to cause him and Elegy to cling against the railing for support. Up above, the soldiers had rushed halfway down the staircase, clutching desperately against the railing as well before they realized that the structure couldn't possibly hope to support all their weight.

But it was already too late. The metal let out a horrible shriek as the landing directly above them split with the soldiers standing on top it, and leaned out over the narrow streets below. The tension pulled against the flimsy supports down the staircase, pulling them out one by one until the first landing sunk several feet, completely detached from the building.

Elegy was screaming almost as loud as the metal staircase was. Grave roughly shoved her toward the building where there was a gaping entrance way of the lower level, moving forward himself if the landing he was standing on hadn't sunk a foot, detaching from the wall and knocking him off balance. He stumbled back, catching himself on the railing before he found the metal floor he stood on peeling away from the building.

A curse flew from his mouth as the landing directly above him slammed into the nearest building, filling the air with the crunching of metal. The floor underneath him was a steep tilt as he struggled across it, the sound of crushing metal in his ears just as he pushed off, the floor behind him smashing against the building. It would have been just his luck that the staircase had leaned to one side just as he leapt, placing his landing zone directly into the brick wall between the fire escape exits on every floor and the windows adjacent to it. Never the less, his gloved hands flew out before him, his legs bracing for impact as his hands reached for something to grab on to.

His body slammed into the brick wall as his hands found nothing but the rough surface of the wall to grip on to. But Grave could hardly tell. He knew the roar of pain in his hands as they attempted to slow his four story plummet against a brick wall and the harsh vibrations in every bone of his body. At some point, his hands were gripping just air and his body struck a wooden roof, crashing clean through before landing in a mountain of black plastic bags, filled with trash.