They didn’t walk away.

Garrett pushed himself off the shelving. A climbing harness hung from his shoulder. He threw it off. His face had gone the color of raw meat.

-Hold her.

Marcus moved first.

He was the biggest. Six-four, maybe two-forty. He came in low, arms wide, the way men do when they’ve wrestled and never fought. I let him close the distance. Then I drove the heel of my palm up into his nose.

Cartilage gave. He staggered back with both hands to his face.

Cole hit me from the side.

I didn’t see him until it was too late. His shoulder caught me in the ribs and slammed me into the inspection table. The edge drove into my spine. The air left me.

I got an elbow into the side of his head. He grunted. His grip loosened.

Then Travis grabbed my right arm.

Then Marcus came back, blood pouring over his mouth, and grabbed my left.

Four men. One of me. In an open aisle with nowhere to put my back.

I knew the math. I had always known the math. You don’t win a four-on-one in open space. You survive it by making it expensive and getting to a door.

I threw my weight backward into Marcus and kicked out at Garrett’s knee. I caught it. He howled and went down to one side.

But Travis had my arm, and Cole wrapped my legs, and they put me on the concrete.

That’s when it stopped being a fight.

That’s when it became what Garrett had wanted it to be from the moment he walked into the building.

He limped over. He stood above me. He was breathing hard.

-You think you’re better than us.

-I don’t think about you at all.

He stomped on my left leg.

I had been shot once, in Helmand, through the shoulder. I had broken three ribs falling off a fast-rope in training. I thought I knew what pain was.

I didn’t.

The tibia and fibula both went. I heard them before I felt them. A wet, green-stick crack that came up through the floor.

Then the pain arrived, and the warehouse went white at the edges.

I did not scream.

I want to be honest. It wasn’t courage. It was training. Fifteen years of training folds over you in the worst moment and holds you together when nothing else can. I breathed. I rode it. I filed it.

Garrett nodded at Cole.

-The other one.

Cole hesitated.

-Garrett.

-Do it.

-Man, this is. This is already.

-I said do it.

Cole raised his boot and brought it down on my right shin.

The second crack was duller than the first. My body had already spent its adrenaline. The pain was deeper, thicker, a color instead of a sound.

Both legs gone. I lay on the cold concrete of my own equipment depot with four men standing over me, and I took inventory, the way I’d been trained to.

Left tibia and fibula, displaced. Right tibia, probably. I could feel the wrongness of the angles without looking. Blood in my mouth from biting my tongue. Three ribs, bruised or cracked, from the table.

I could not stand. I could not run. I could not walk.

My legs were finished.

But my hands worked. My mind worked.

And my phone, locked and secure in my left breast pocket, had already done its job eleven minutes ago.

Garrett crouched down beside me. His knee popped where I’d kicked it. He put his face close to mine. I could smell the beer on him. They’d been drinking before they came. That was going to matter later. I filed it too.

-Here’s how this went, Commander. You were doing a late inspection. You climbed the shelving to check a top rack. Against your own safety regs. You fell. Both legs. Nobody around. Tragic.

-The shelving’s bolted at nine feet. I’d have to fall off the moon to break both legs on it.

-You’ll be too doped up to remember what happened.

-Marcus is bleeding on my floor. Cole’s boot print is on my shin. You’ve been drinking. Travis hasn’t touched me, which means he’s already deciding whether he wants to go down for the three of you.

Travis took a step back.

Garrett’s jaw worked.

-Shut up.

-You didn’t think this through, Garrett. You never do. That’s why you failed the eval.

He grabbed the front of my jacket and lifted my shoulders off the ground.

-You pathetic bitch. Your career is over. You understand that? Over. Nobody’s going to believe a washed-up woman who can’t even walk over four operators with clean records.

He leaned closer, waiting.

Waiting for me to cry. To beg. To break.

I smiled at him.

My mouth was full of blood. I smiled anyway.