VIKTOR
The hiss was not a sound, but a physical presence. It slithered from the vents, a venomous serpent coiling through the stagnant air, a promise of suffocation. It was the last breath of a dying man, the warning rattle before the strike.
My lungs seized, my throat clamping shut. It was an ancient reflex, bone-deep, carved into me by the chemical ghosts of Grozny and the scorched earth of Syria. But my body was a traitorous, broken thing. My vision swam, the world tilting on its axis, the edges crumbling into a void of pure blackness spun from blood loss and the concussive thunder still echoing inside my skull.
The gas was a phantom, invisible, insidious. Only a cloying, synthetic sweetness beneath the copper-rich reek of my own blood and the spilled life of the men in the hall gave it away. It was death, wearing a stolen perfume, its invisible fingers probing, searching for a way inside.
