by Rachel Aaron
“Yes, sir,” Cooper said, gripping his swords with a deadly grin. “Nothing like going out in a blaze of glory, eh, Jackson?”
“I don’t want anyone going out at all,” Rosalie said angrily. “Our goal is half an hour. That should be long enough for everyone from this part of the city to reach the Rose Gate. We’ll hold until then, and then we’ll retreat through town ahead of the titans, protecting civilians along the way. Got it?”
Both men nodded, and she sent them away, lifting her voice over the roar of the cannons to call out the new plan.
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Relaying Rosalie’s orders to all the cannon teams took some yelling, and lots of running. After a few gaps and bursts, the squads found a rhythm and the cannons started going off like clockwork. Each fired as soon as the cannon to its right began to reload, which meant a shell was landing on the breach every five seconds.
The constant explosions hammered the titans backward at first. Because the soldiers had no time to aim, kill shots were rare. But even when they didn’t die, the monsters still went down, their twitching bodies and severed limbs serving as a dam against the river of titans pushing in from outside. That should have been enough to turn the tide, but the monsters kept coming.
Rosalie couldn’t understand it. Could the dumb creatures somehow signal that there’d been a breach in the wall? How had they known to swarm Trost Gate from every corner of the countryside? When a runner finally came down with a report from the top of the wall, he told Rosalie the titans were piled ten deep, crawling over one another in their eagerness to get inside.
But not a single one made it through. Now that the squads were shooting in a round, the cannon fire never stopped. For twenty glorious minutes, they held the line without a single break. Rosalie was about to relieve Emmett, who’d been firing capably since the round began, when she saw one of the recruits running toward her.
“Ma’am!” the girl called, raising her voice to be heard over the cannon fire. “We just sent out our last round! The stockpile’s empty!”
“Empty?” Rosalie cried. “It’s only been twenty minutes!”
“We double-checked the whole armory,” the recruit said, her voice panicked. “There’s nothing left. All we’ve got is what’s out here.”
Rosalie scanned the cannon line, doing the math in her head. The neighborhood was empty of civilians, but there was no way everyone had reached the other side of the city. They had to buy more time.
“New orders,” she said to the recruit. “Relay this to all firing teams: we’re slowing down the round. Ten seconds between shots, starting with my team. Move!”
The recruit took off, and Rosalie turned around to see Emmett and Willow staring at her in horror. “Are you sure about that?” Willow asked, glancing at Emmett, who looked pale. “Ten seconds is a big gap between explosions.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Rosalie said, turning back to check that the recruit had made it all the way around the firing arc. “I’ll call it out. Fire the next shot on my mark…”
The cannon to her right fired, and Rosalie waited, keeping her face calm but feeling the blood drain from her cheeks as she slowly counted down from ten. When she reached one, she turned to Emmett. “Fire!” He yanked the line, and their cannon rocked backward, sending its shell straight into the face of the fifteen-meter titan crawling through the broken gate. The moment the thundering explosion faded, Rosalie turned to the team on her left. “Not yet!” she shouted as they got ready to fire. “Next shot, ten seconds!”
The squad nodded anxiously, their faces ashen as they waited for the go-ahead. As the seconds ticked by, cannon-blasted titans began picking themselves up from the blood-soaked cobbles, their vacant faces turning hungrily toward the humans only a few meters away.
“Fire!” Rosalie screamed.
The shot went off before the word was out of her mouth, blasting the titans back again.
But it quickly became obvious that the situation was different now. After every cannon shot, the ten-second silence allowed the monsters to creep a few steps forward. Each shot pushed them back again, but never quite as far as they’d gained. Bit by bit, the grotesque mass was pressing in, closer and closer.
The minutes crawled by. Rosalie wished she could tell every soldier how proud she was of their resolve, their discipline in holding to the round despite the titans advancing after every shot.
And then, in an instant, the delicate balance tipped.
Rosalie’s team had just fired a shot when she saw a titan wriggling through the mass of broken bodies piled on top of it. Small by titan standards at only three meters, the creature was unbelievably nimble. Like an eel, it wiggled between the bodies, squeezing free just as they fired their shot. It jumped straight at Rosalie’s cannon.
She didn’t even have time to reach for her swords. The titan was already on top of them, its mouth hinging open like a snake’s. Rosalie was rearing back to throw the shell into its gaping throat when Jax sailed down on his maneuver gear cables and cut its head off.
“You all right?” he asked, shaking the blood off his swords.
Rosalie was fine, but…the titan’s decapitated body had fallen directly on top of their cannon, knocking it sideways and blocking the barrel.
“Help me move it!”
Jax was at her side at once, shoving his still-bandaged shoulder under the titan’s bloated stomach. Although the monster wasn’t much bigger than a man, it was impossibly heavy and bulky. Even with the help of Willow and Emmett, rolling the steaming body out of the way took far too long. The other cannons kept firing, but when their place in the rotation came up again, Squad 13’s gun was still pointing in the wrong direction.
A terrible silence ensued. When she realized they weren’t going to make their shot, Rosalie turned to the next cannon team to order them to fire, but she was too late. During the delay, the titans had surged forward.
The blasted ones in front reached all the way into the street. Not completely regenerated, they stumbled on their broken limbs toward the circle of cannon emplacements. Terrified, the squads began firing wildly at the titans coming toward them. This knocked down the ones in front, but with no shots landing at the gate, new titans surged through like rats.
“Focus fire!!” Rosalie screamed as they shoved their cannon back into position. “The maneuvering gear teams will take care of the runners! Keep your guns on the breach!”
The other teams tried to obey, training their cannons on the broken gate once more, but it was too little too late. In the thirty seconds the barrage had stalled, the titans’ front line had pushed out of the bottleneck and into the street. The moment they got through the hole, the titans fanned out, each heading for a separate cannon squad. The maneuvering gear kill-teams moved in, swinging down from the roofs, but they couldn’t keep up with the flood.
“Fall back!” Rosalie yelled. “We’re overrun! Get to the roofs!”
“Wait!” Willow cried, closing the hatch on the shell she’d just finished loading. “We just got pointed the right way again! One more shot—”
Behind Willow, a ten-meter titan shoved itself forward. Its blank, dreaming face split in a huge grin as it spotted the soldiers desperately shooting their maneuvering gear at the nearby rooftops. It charged forward, reaching out with greedy hands big enough to grasp a horse. But the ground was littered with fragments of the monsters that had fallen, and it slipped, its shadow swallowing Willow seconds before its giant body landed on her with a fleshy thunk.
“No!” Emmett screamed, jumping on the collapsed titan.
“Willow!”
With more strength and speed than Rosalie had ever seen
him use, Emmett drew his swords and slashed the back of the titan’s neck, cutting into its vulnerable spot like he was slicing open a fish’s belly. The blood was still flying when Emmett rolled to the ground and dove under the titan.
“Help me!”
Rosalie and Jax grabbed the steaming corpse, with Jax doing most of the work to lift its dead weight enough for Emmett to pull Willow free.
The moment she emerged, Rosalie knew it was bad. Willow’s body looked intact, but her torso was soaked with blood. More was oozing from her mouth, her lips turning blue as she struggled to breathe.
“I’ve got you,” Emmett said, frantically brushing the blood off her face. “I’ll save you, Willow, don’t worry. Just tell me what to do.”
“Not much…to do,” Willow gasped, pointing at her bloody chest, which Rosalie could now see was caved in. “Crushed ribs…into my lungs.”
“It’s all right,” Emmett said, his voice weirdly calm. “We can fix this.”
Even blue and gasping for breath, Willow still managed to roll her eyes. “You can’t fix…a punctured lung, Emmett.”
“Then tell me what I can do!” he cried, bowing his head over her. “I can’t lose you.”
“And I can’t lose you,” she said, smiling at him. “That’s why you need to go. They’re coming, and I don’t want them to get you, too.”
Emmett shook his head frantically. “I’m not leaving you.”
“You have to,” she wheezed. “You have to go out there and find answers to all our questions.”
He bent lower with a sob, pressing his forehead against hers.
“See the world for me,” Willow whispered, closing her eyes. “Jax, would you please…”
Jax nodded and grabbed Emmett around the waist.
“No!” the boy screamed as Jax lifted him. “Willow!”
But Willow had gone still and the titans were everywhere. They lifted their heads when Emmett screamed, their faces lighting up at the prospect of an easy meal. With a bitter curse, Jax turned his back on Willow and fired his lines, pulling himself and a still-screaming Emmett off the bloody street. Rosalie was right behind them, shooting the steel hooks of her cables into the tile roof of the shabby apartment building beside the Garrison base. When she landed, she forced herself to turn and assess the situation.
From the rooftop, she had a clear view of the countless titans pouring through the breach like hungry vermin into a larder. She must have called the retreat in time, however, because all the cannon teams seemed to have escaped.
Except for Willow.
Rosalie clamped her jaw against the sob rising in her throat. Not yet. She needed to stay calm. Be a solider. Be—
“Rosalie?”
She turned to see Jax watching her. Beside him, Emmett had finally stopped screaming and was now staring blankly at the titans filling the street below.
“We need to get moving,” Jax said, placing his hand on the spare silver cylinder strapped to the top of his blade sheath. “We’ve got two gas canisters each. That’s not enough to get us across the city, but if we hustle, we can get ahead of the titans and refill at the headquarters building in the center of town. Sound good?”
When Rosalie nodded, Jax turned to grab Emmett, but the thin boy yanked his arm away.
“I can make it myself,” he said. “Willow was always worrying that we didn’t pull our weight. She’d never forgive me if I dragged you down. You’d do better to check on the reserves at the base. I don’t know if they heard the call for retreat.”
“If they’re not out yet, they’re not coming,” Jax said grimly, nodding behind them.
Rosalie turned to look, clutching her mouth. The base she’d come to think of as home was completely overrun. Titans crawled over the stone buildings like roaches, breaking down doors and shoving their arms to grab the soldiers trapped inside. One popped two recruits into its mouth at once, sucking their bodies between its lips before Rosalie could look away. She was fighting the urge to be sick when the building beneath them started to shake.
A giant hand grasped the edge of the roof they were standing on. Next appeared a head, an old wrinkled face the size of a small cottage rising above the building like a hideous grinning moon. Rosalie pulled her swords instinctively, but before she could take a step toward the titan, Jax shoved her in the other direction.
“Run!” he yelled.
“But—”
“There’s nothing left to fight for here!” he cried. “Run!”
Rosalie shoved her swords back into their sheaths as she, Emmett, and Jax scrambled across the tiles, jumped, and kept going, using their maneuvering gear to move from rooftop to rooftop while the narrow streets below them quickly filled with monsters.
Titans were everywhere. Every time Rosalie looked down, there seemed to be more, walking between the tall brick buildings and poking their arms into the shops and houses. But as she and her squadmates fled across the city, Rosalie could see that all the buildings they passed were empty. They’d done it. Thanks to their fight to hold the line, everyone in the southern half of the city was able to evacuate.
Unfortunately, this also meant that she, Emmett, and Jax were the titans’ only meal.
“They’re onto us,” Emmett said nervously as they landed on the slanted roof of a furniture shop. “There’s a herd of them following us. At this rate, we’ll be bringing a stampede to HQ.”
“Don’t worry about that now,” Jax said. “Just focus on making the jumps. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not much gas to waste doing it.”
“We’ll be fine,” Rosalie said. “Another few blocks and we should be able to see the building, right?” She turned to Jax for confirmation, but when he nodded and moved to the edge of the roof, she noticed that the strap on top of his blade sheath was empty.
“Jax,” she said, her voice alarmed. “Where’s your spare canister?”
“I’m already using it,” he said without looking back.
“What?” she cried. “When did that happen?”
“Just after we left the cannons. I was already low when I saw Woermann riding up and charged out to help. With everything going to hell, I didn’t have time to nip back into the base for a refill.”
Rosalie paled. “Are you going to make it?”
“I’m damn well going to try,” he said, jumping to the next roof. “I’ve coasted on low gas before. If I get stuck, I’ll just give you my canisters to fill and hide out on a roof until you get back.”
“Absolutely not,” Rosalie said angrily as she jumped after him. “They’ve got eyes on us. If you stop, they’ll climb up and get you, and without gas, you’ll be a sitting duck.”
“If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears,” Jax snapped. “But right now, our only choice is to keep moving. It’s not that much farther to HQ. We just need to…”
He trailed off as he landed, squinting at something in the distance. Rosalie skidded to a halt as well. “What is it?” she asked as Emmett landed behind her.
Jax pointed at the city in front of them. Rosalie lifted her hand to shield her eyes, squinting through the bright afternoon sun. Then she saw it.
Directly ahead, at the heart of the city center, was the towering block of the Trost Garrison Headquarters, the building they’d been desperately racing toward. And it was swarmed with titans. The monsters were poking their arms through the doorways and windows and sticking their heads through the elevated gates. They were inside as well. From this high, Rosalie could see smaller titans walking around in the big equipment area, right next to the compressors they needed to refill their gas canisters.
“Damn,” Jax breathed. “Damn, damn, damn. There goes our resupply.”
“Why are there so many titans?” Emmett demanded. “What are they looking for?”
Rosalie’s stomach sank. “People. All the other buildings were evacuated, but the Supply Corps would ha
ve stayed back to protect supply lines for the front. They must have attracted the titans’ attention and gotten overwhelmed.”
“But there are recruits in there,” Emmett said, his voice shaking. “We have to do something!”
“What can we do?” Jax said. “Assuming I can make it on the gas I’ve got left, that place is crawling with titans, and there’s only three of us. We’re good, but we’re not that good.”
Rosalie nodded gravely. “He’s right.”
“Not you too, Rosalie!” Emmett cried. “We can’t just leave them!”
“If we go in as we are, we’re just throwing our lives away,” she pointed out. “That doesn’t help anyone. Our best bet is to get across the city as quickly as we can and report the situation to the Garrison at the Rose Gate so they can send a rescue unit that can do some good.”
“Good thinking,” Jax said. “Meanwhile, we find somewhere else to resupply.”
Emmett swallowed. “But there is nowhere else.”
“I know,” Jax said, tightening his hands on his maneuver gear handles. “But we’d better think of something, because I’m down to my last few jumps, and you two will be on your spare canisters soon.”
Emmett crouched, drew a line in the dust of the roof, and made an x in the middle. “There’s the inner gate.” He drew an arc from one end of the line to the other, creating a tall semicircle. “There’s the city’s outer wall, and we’re”—he marked a spot close to the middle of the shape—“about here, more or less…which means we’ve got at least as far to go as we’ve already covered. If Rosalie and I trade out our canisters now and give you the ones we’re currently using, what’s left might be enough to get you across.”
“Except I’m heavier than either of you,” Jax pointed out. “I’ll go through gas faster than you.”
While Jax and Emmett argued over the exact ratio of gas usage to weight, Rosalie scanned the nearby streets. They’d pulled ahead of the mob following them, but their lead wouldn’t last long. She turned to tell Jax and Emmett to run while strategizing, and her eyes drifted across the rooftops to Wall Rose, the same arc that Emmett had just drawn…“We can use the wall,” she said.
