His eyes and mouth shot open, and he breathed in the charged air around him. It entered his lungs and died there, swallowed and spat out almost as quickly as it had found its way in.

His senses slowly returned, and he scanned his surroundings, taking in what he could before the agony coursing down his lower body caught up to him.

A broken, empty alley. The orb sprinting away in the street at its end. He could feel the taste of blood in his mouth and the hot sensation of it oozing down from the top of his head, obscuring his eyes. He wiped it away.

Then he felt it.

He groaned, gritting his teeth and spitting out a chunk of viscera that had risen and collected in the back of his gullet. The focal point of the pain was centered on his lower body, and in trying to reach for his legs, he saw that they were trapped under one of the chopper's rotors.

He pushed it off slowly, feeling the blade detract from his kneecaps and tear away the Kevlar plating along with pieces of his own flesh that had melded with the electrified metal. He kept his breathing steady – moving the blade slowly, first off his leg, then away, pausing to rest and feel the pain wash through him, letting it run over and out, over and out. Then he pushed again.

The final push brought a roar from his lips as the rotor was dislodged, and he looked down to see his limbs" bloody mess.

A bone, stark white and bloodied against the dark walls surrounding him, stuck out of the side of his left shin.

He allowed himself a moment to lie back and feel the burning scent of the charnel city fill his nostrils. Feel that fire. Be the fire. A thing of flesh is weak. Meat's good only for cooking. You aren't meat. You're the flame that burns it.

He positioned his arms behind him and pushed, saliva dripping from his mouth at the effort. He pushed, feeling the leg crack under the pressure, sweat dripping from his burning forehead. Then he stopped.

Maybe you're not cut out for this after all.

He ignored the voice. He closed his eyes tight, shutting off his mind to it right now. He needed grit, not doubt. He cast it aside.

He tried again, pushing with all upper body strength he could muster, even knowing that his right arm must be numb – he must have made contact with the living electric light the little bitch had used to her advantage. He had to give her props for that. He had enjoyed himself too much and had gotten too emotional being so close to the end.

That wouldn't happen again.

He shifted his weight to let the left arm take the brunt of the work. He roared like an injured beast in the alley, swearing and releasing the rage that filled his lungs with every inch he moved off the ground. Through the will that had carried him this far, he managed to free his right foot and use it to help propel himself up, grabbing a piece of rubble ejected by the chopper to steady himself.

He looked down as he felt the foot of his other leg drag across the ground, limp and useless. He reached into his vest and took out the gauze and morphine pack, testing the syringe against the light of the spark that passed by every couple of seconds – about thirty to his count – and fashioned a tourniquet to bind his arm and found a good vein. His strength slowly renewed as he felt the drug flow through his system. At the very least, the pain flooding through him from his leg was dimming. But it was useless, and it would only slow him down.

He limped forward, still grimacing with each step at the stab of dulling pain that ran up his side. He ignored the bone down there. His eyes were focused. Present.

At the end of the alley, he found the main road again, flanked on both sides by the dismal specters who regarded him with silvery, sunken eyes. He ignored them and limped on, holding onto the sides of tables to keep himself upright.

I thought you were a strong one. The voice echoed in his mind like a disappointed father. But you let that filthy little girl beat you.

He blocked it out. He kept his eyes on the tower that stretched into the skies before him. The girl and the dog couldn't have gotten far. He'd find them.

Then he felt something. A cold shudder ran through his body like an involuntary spasm. He turned to see that it was one of the pathetic shadows that populated this dead place. Its arm had phased through his flesh, its fingers having actually grabbed his body.

"Get off," he growled.

The specter shook its shimmering skull, so he drew his pistol with his other hand and popped it right between the eyes. The shot echoed through the whole street as the ghost dissipated before him. And before he knew it, he found fifty different eyes staring at him in the darkness of the road.

"Stay," he barked at them, ambling along as best he could. But he saw out of the corner of his vision that they were following him now. They had risen from their seats, pausing their mindless activity, and began gravitating towards him as a group.

He quickened his pace, but they started forming a circle around him that finally closed and penned him in.

"Back!" he roared, firing blindly into the crowd, feeling the weapon kick against his weakened arm. He wasted maybe three or four. Then the crowd surged forwards.

You know, it's a shame, the voice bounced off his consciousness, booming and brash. "You had so much promise.

The ghosts started tearing at his fatigues, and he spun round, firing into the crowd until he heard an empty chamber's maddening click.

"You don't want to do this," he said, hoping the gambit would work as he watched the wailing crowd close in further.

"Oh?" the voice sniggered in his brain, slicing across it like red-hot razor blades skating across the soft flesh of his eyeballs. Sorry buddy, but you've lost this one. You aren't strong enough to stand before me.

He felt the shadowy limbs grip his arms and spread them apart. The pistol was still in his hand. He struggled, hurling every curse he knew at them as they tore away at his clothes, and his eyes flew to the dead sky as he kicked out, and the exposed bone kicked back against him.

"You know the dog's coming to kill you," he said, banking everything on words now, of all things. He didn't even know if the voice was still listening, but he had his hunches. There was a feeling he got deep inside himself when he knew it was there, watching him and listening intently.

"And the girl's a Tribal, " he continued, his arms growing weak against the pressure of the ghosts pulling at him, beginning to rake across his screaming mouth. "She's a Tribal! She doesn't know what you can do. I do!"

He felt the thing in his brain shift. He felt it appraise him with new eyes, a mind considering its options. Weighing them all up. Come on, you sonovabitch.

You got big plans for me, eh?

"How'd you like to end it all," he growled with his last breaths as the ghosts' sinuous, dark fingers groped for his lips. "Fly across the whole damn world and burn it all again."

He didn't know it for certain. But he felt an element of joy in the voice's next question.

Why should I believe you?

"Because," he said, biting away the reaching tendrils of the darkness that had consumed his whole body by this point. "You don't wanna die. You don't wanna go out as the tiny dream of a little bitch like that. I'm your last chance."

There was silence.

"And you know that," he ventured as his head sunk into the abyss. "Don't you?"

For a solid minute, he thought this was how his life would end – swallowed by some braindead relics of the Dead City. Then, he felt their limbs rescind from him, speared through by some presence that ordered them to stand down. He felt it tear through them like pulling stray dogs on a collective leash, choking them till they fell in line.

Then he found himself in front of the corpse pool that had remained burned into his memory since their first foray into the tower. He remembered the faces of his men as their bodies were lifted into the air and twisted, squeezed like fruit in a blender. He'd watched the blood seep from their busted veins and their drained, crushed forms join the macabre display below.

As he limped steadily towards the tower, he felt the groaning of the power that surged all around him. It was rare for him to have found something that could have torn him to shreds with barely a thought, despite any training he'd had. That's why he'd never forgotten that night, and that's why the dog was going to die by his hand.

He felt the power part before him, a veil of pure, raw energy and burning hatred lifting momentarily at the behest of its master.

Don't disappoint me, he heard the voice echo in his mind. They are coming.

He checked his pistol and reloaded calmly, trying to ignore the vacant faces of the soldiers he recognized as he strode toward the looming tower. Those boys had been careless and shown that, in the end, they truly were nothing more than just meat for the grinder.

He loaded his last five bullets and slammed the pistol's chamber shut. All the shit they'd endured underground had been for this. All the deaths out there in the wastes had been sacrifices to get him here. They'd paved this path for him with their miserable little lives and pain. But it didn't matter now. He was here.

The dog and the girl would die, and then nothing would matter at all.