One Last Dance
The mahogany dance floor still shone under the flickering electric lights, save for the dark, worn streaks which bore witness to its history and overuse - the memory of hundreds of songs and thousands of dances etched into it like laughter lines on an ancient face. The gramophone in the corner had been outdated years before its installation, but it added character and legacy to the strange dance hall in the vault. The thick steel door was sealed shut now, and its hinges wouldn’t move again.
James stood tall, proud, and handsome in his freshly tailored green suit. He had been waiting patiently but anxiously for Sophia, eager to see her, but nothing could prepare him for how elegantly she swept into the room in her flowing, newly crafted dress. It cascaded onto the floor, gliding behind her as she moved gracefully towards him wearing an uncharacteristically shy smile, quietly worrying that a dress made from military fatigues might look silly.
James thought she looked anything but silly, but knew that underneath her expertly sewn hem lurked a pair of combat boots, and it made him grin from ear to ear. She had done a superlative job in making them something to wear in such a short time, and with so few resources; the seamstress-turned-soldier was full of surprises, even now. Some of them were things he knew, or at least, things he had known once, but it all felt like knowledge from a lifetime ago. Everything was coming back now though, and pushing all of the darkness of the war out of his head. The sight of her cleared the deepest recesses of his thoughts with the incandescence of her love, like a sunrise spilling through the window of a cluttered attic. She was the centrepiece of his mind, the only thing in the room that he saw, and the only thing left in the world that mattered.
As she crossed the floor towards him, they were a lifetime away from the pair of hunted, terrified soldiers who’d run into what they’d thought was a safe haven. Bloodied and weary, they'd slammed the vault door shut, and collapsed. The operation had gone so far to hell so quickly.
Lucas had been stopped by one of the military police inside the Unseen’s compound and panicked; he killed the man where he stood and stuffed the body into a supply crate. It was sloppy work, putting them on a timer, an ultimatum to complete their objective before anyone noticed the guard’s absence. By the time they'd reached the command centre there was already an alarm sounding, and they'd had to fight their way inside. That was when Dolly died, her head ripped apart by automatic fire. The rest of them sprinted into the target zone, upending tables as they went, and threw the explosives into place; a block in each corner of the conference room on the ground floor, directly underneath the commander’s office.
Sophia took James’ hands and stepped close to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and looking up at his face. The lights reflected in his eyes and even the vault door shone like a steel sunrise behind him. James placed a hand on her waist and they began to move together, as the gramophone in the corner scratched out its song and filled the room with music one last time.
They were surrounded in the conference room. A door on either side rendered cover scarce, and what little that could find was flimsy. They managed to cut down the first few guards to enter with sharp, accurate fire, but the advantage wouldn’t last much longer. The four guerrillas, James, Sophia, Lucas and Amy, all reloaded and looked to one another. A few deft hand signals gave the order to prepare to run. Silently James counted to three with his fingers, and they leapt over the top.
A deep rumble sounded from the surface above, but neither of them noticed the sounds of the war; they were wrapped up in the dance and lost in the almost-forgotten comfort of each other. James span Sophia round and she laughed the carefree and irresistible laugh he'd fallen in love with years before. It was like the war had been a fluid filling her lungs and driving the ‘Sophia’ out of herself, but she could breathe easy now. So could he, seeing that that not even that un-waking nightmare could extinguish her happiness completely. Smiling, he lifted her, spinning circles while holding her slender, scarred body above his head.
They burst out of the rear door of the conference room as a group of soldiers in black armour were taking up positions outside. Two of them fell immediately as James’ team ran outside guns blazing. The rest ducked into whatever cover they could before shooting a deafening storm in return. The four guerrillas weaved, running from cover to cover, making as difficult moving targets of themselves as possible, but a few rounds still managed to graze them. Burns and superficial cuts stung around their bodies, and the familiar panic of impending death swirled in their stomachs as they sprinted to the garages. Sophia hurriedly tore the detonator out of her pocket and clicked the red button on top.
Sophia’s heart swelled seeing him relax again; she didn’t think it had happened for years. She giggled as she whirled through the air, looking down at his smile. He barely tore his gaze away from hers – not to check the perimeter or keep one eye on a route of enemy approach. Not even a glance over one shoulder to double, triple, quadruple check that they weren’t being followed. His attention was all on her.
James’ team reached the garage, shrouded in smoke blowing over from the command centre, but found it being stormed by shock troops; the escape team’s cover had been blown early. Silently, the four of them wrapped around the black-clad attackers, taking them in the back in the hope of saving whoever was still fighting inside. A few seconds of intense fire killed the shock troops, and James’ team were able to see the aftermath of their assault.
The escape team’s kill zone was a wide fan of gore and fury. A dozen bodies lay dead on the floor, and sitting back against the wall was a broken green and crimson mess. A mess named Gus. He was barely breathing, and his head drooped down limply. His weapon was still in hand, but his grip was loose and failing. From the first look at him they knew that there was nothing they could do – he’d been hit so many times that it was a miracle he hadn’t stopped breathing already.
Bloody smears on the ground told the story of how he'd pulled Ben and Katie’s bodies close to himself; if they absolutely had to go down, it could only be together.
"Keys." He wheezed, offering a bloody fistful of glinting steel from his pocket. His hands were shaking with the exertion of a dead man in motion.
James put Sophia down again, and they danced intricate serpentine forms around one another. Their boots made heavy impacts on the wooden floor, and their feet didn’t glide as easily across the polished surface as they should, but it didn’t matter. In perfect synchronisation, like two halves of a beating heart, they moved and whirled. Despite the wounds, despite aching, exhausted muscles, and despite the hell-on-earth erupting above them, they danced. The war wouldn't take this from them. This was sacred.
Sophia put a bullet in Gus’ head to spare him the injustice of a slow death or capture. He deserved so much better, but it was all she could give him. The others watched with a grimace, but she was spared the sight by the tears in her eyes.
The four of them piled into the one jeep left functional – everything else had been sabotaged to delay any pursuit. James revved the engine hard and raced from the garage under a hail of fire. Heavy mounted guns pounded at them, punching holes in the jeep's thin armour plates as the surviving guerrillas accelerated through the chain-link fence.
The song finished and the dancers collapsed into one another's arms, exhausted but happy. Happier than they had been for longer than they could remember.
Steel rang on steel and echoed around their dance hall, their false sanctuary, the site of their last adventure together. The sharp percussive beating on the vault door snapped Sophia out of the trance for a moment, and reminded her of where they were, what they were doing, what they were waiting for...
Scratching sounds of a record spinning caught her attention again. James was smiling at her still, his love penetrating through the fear and futility and bitterness. He silently extended his hand, but his eyes said everything – We’ve given the war enough. If these are to be our last moments, then at least let them be ours.
Mud sprayed in a bough wave in front of the tyres as the abused jeep skidded to a halt, just inside a dense pocket of woodland, and James shouted to bail out. The jeep wouldn't keep running for much longer after all that damage, and even a delayed pursuit wouldn’t be far behind, so they needed to use this moment of concealment as best they could. No motion came from the back seats. Sophia screamed at them to get out, giving orders to a pair of corpses was futile. Lucas and Amy were riddled with wounds and had died in silence in the back.
James cursed and kicked the wheel arch, but they couldn't waste time. Grimly, they heaved the bodies into the front seats, set the engine running, and tried to make the weight of Lucas’ foot hold the throttle down. The jeep screeched forwards along the road as James and Sophia ran into the woodland, hearing the sound of a crash soon after and hoping it was far enough away to confuse any pursuers. Side by side they sprinted through the raking, dead branches and tangled undergrowth for what felt like hours, until they saw moss-covered concrete sinking into the earth. The thick steel door at the bottom of the damp, eroded staircase was a beacon of hope, something they might be able to hide behind before sneaking out again.
When they tried, hours later, they realised that the locking mechanism had worn and sheared, rendering it impossible to retract.
At first, the realisation that they were trapped had been hard to swallow, a bitter pill at a time when nothing was sweet. But after the panic, the anger, and the fear of what was coming, there was a wave of relief. There was as an unexpected comfort in knowing that they could finally stop running. They could stop looking over their shoulders and plotting and planning and fighting. They could finally stop fighting.
Death had always felt somehow inevitable, but now that their hands were tied it lifted the burden. Their fate was sealed but this limbo, this meantime, was theirs to spend on themselves. For them, the war was over. They could see out their retirement, brief as it would be, together – at least they had been granted that mercy. With the gramophone in the corner and the dancefloor beneath them, they knew what their last act would be.
Sophia and James lost themselves in one another’s eyes, allowing everything except the music, the motion and each other to consume their consciousness. They were vaguely aware of the ’boom’ as charges detonated around the door, and the vast chunk of steel slammed to the ground in a cloud of dust and smoke. Shock troops of the Unseen stormed through, clad head to toe in matte black, but all the couple saw was one another. As the gunfire opened up they clung to each other, they gently turned to the rhythm, and they stood tall, together.
James stood tall, proud, and handsome in his freshly tailored green suit. He had been waiting patiently but anxiously for Sophia, eager to see her, but nothing could prepare him for how elegantly she swept into the room in her flowing, newly crafted dress. It cascaded onto the floor, gliding behind her as she moved gracefully towards him wearing an uncharacteristically shy smile, quietly worrying that a dress made from military fatigues might look silly.
James thought she looked anything but silly, but knew that underneath her expertly sewn hem lurked a pair of combat boots, and it made him grin from ear to ear. She had done a superlative job in making them something to wear in such a short time, and with so few resources; the seamstress-turned-soldier was full of surprises, even now. Some of them were things he knew, or at least, things he had known once, but it all felt like knowledge from a lifetime ago. Everything was coming back now though, and pushing all of the darkness of the war out of his head. The sight of her cleared the deepest recesses of his thoughts with the incandescence of her love, like a sunrise spilling through the window of a cluttered attic. She was the centrepiece of his mind, the only thing in the room that he saw, and the only thing left in the world that mattered.
As she crossed the floor towards him, they were a lifetime away from the pair of hunted, terrified soldiers who’d run into what they’d thought was a safe haven. Bloodied and weary, they'd slammed the vault door shut, and collapsed. The operation had gone so far to hell so quickly.
Lucas had been stopped by one of the military police inside the Unseen’s compound and panicked; he killed the man where he stood and stuffed the body into a supply crate. It was sloppy work, putting them on a timer, an ultimatum to complete their objective before anyone noticed the guard’s absence. By the time they'd reached the command centre there was already an alarm sounding, and they'd had to fight their way inside. That was when Dolly died, her head ripped apart by automatic fire. The rest of them sprinted into the target zone, upending tables as they went, and threw the explosives into place; a block in each corner of the conference room on the ground floor, directly underneath the commander’s office.
Sophia took James’ hands and stepped close to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and looking up at his face. The lights reflected in his eyes and even the vault door shone like a steel sunrise behind him. James placed a hand on her waist and they began to move together, as the gramophone in the corner scratched out its song and filled the room with music one last time.
They were surrounded in the conference room. A door on either side rendered cover scarce, and what little that could find was flimsy. They managed to cut down the first few guards to enter with sharp, accurate fire, but the advantage wouldn’t last much longer. The four guerrillas, James, Sophia, Lucas and Amy, all reloaded and looked to one another. A few deft hand signals gave the order to prepare to run. Silently James counted to three with his fingers, and they leapt over the top.
A deep rumble sounded from the surface above, but neither of them noticed the sounds of the war; they were wrapped up in the dance and lost in the almost-forgotten comfort of each other. James span Sophia round and she laughed the carefree and irresistible laugh he'd fallen in love with years before. It was like the war had been a fluid filling her lungs and driving the ‘Sophia’ out of herself, but she could breathe easy now. So could he, seeing that that not even that un-waking nightmare could extinguish her happiness completely. Smiling, he lifted her, spinning circles while holding her slender, scarred body above his head.
They burst out of the rear door of the conference room as a group of soldiers in black armour were taking up positions outside. Two of them fell immediately as James’ team ran outside guns blazing. The rest ducked into whatever cover they could before shooting a deafening storm in return. The four guerrillas weaved, running from cover to cover, making as difficult moving targets of themselves as possible, but a few rounds still managed to graze them. Burns and superficial cuts stung around their bodies, and the familiar panic of impending death swirled in their stomachs as they sprinted to the garages. Sophia hurriedly tore the detonator out of her pocket and clicked the red button on top.
Sophia’s heart swelled seeing him relax again; she didn’t think it had happened for years. She giggled as she whirled through the air, looking down at his smile. He barely tore his gaze away from hers – not to check the perimeter or keep one eye on a route of enemy approach. Not even a glance over one shoulder to double, triple, quadruple check that they weren’t being followed. His attention was all on her.
James’ team reached the garage, shrouded in smoke blowing over from the command centre, but found it being stormed by shock troops; the escape team’s cover had been blown early. Silently, the four of them wrapped around the black-clad attackers, taking them in the back in the hope of saving whoever was still fighting inside. A few seconds of intense fire killed the shock troops, and James’ team were able to see the aftermath of their assault.
The escape team’s kill zone was a wide fan of gore and fury. A dozen bodies lay dead on the floor, and sitting back against the wall was a broken green and crimson mess. A mess named Gus. He was barely breathing, and his head drooped down limply. His weapon was still in hand, but his grip was loose and failing. From the first look at him they knew that there was nothing they could do – he’d been hit so many times that it was a miracle he hadn’t stopped breathing already.
Bloody smears on the ground told the story of how he'd pulled Ben and Katie’s bodies close to himself; if they absolutely had to go down, it could only be together.
"Keys." He wheezed, offering a bloody fistful of glinting steel from his pocket. His hands were shaking with the exertion of a dead man in motion.
James put Sophia down again, and they danced intricate serpentine forms around one another. Their boots made heavy impacts on the wooden floor, and their feet didn’t glide as easily across the polished surface as they should, but it didn’t matter. In perfect synchronisation, like two halves of a beating heart, they moved and whirled. Despite the wounds, despite aching, exhausted muscles, and despite the hell-on-earth erupting above them, they danced. The war wouldn't take this from them. This was sacred.
Sophia put a bullet in Gus’ head to spare him the injustice of a slow death or capture. He deserved so much better, but it was all she could give him. The others watched with a grimace, but she was spared the sight by the tears in her eyes.
The four of them piled into the one jeep left functional – everything else had been sabotaged to delay any pursuit. James revved the engine hard and raced from the garage under a hail of fire. Heavy mounted guns pounded at them, punching holes in the jeep's thin armour plates as the surviving guerrillas accelerated through the chain-link fence.
The song finished and the dancers collapsed into one another's arms, exhausted but happy. Happier than they had been for longer than they could remember.
Steel rang on steel and echoed around their dance hall, their false sanctuary, the site of their last adventure together. The sharp percussive beating on the vault door snapped Sophia out of the trance for a moment, and reminded her of where they were, what they were doing, what they were waiting for...
Scratching sounds of a record spinning caught her attention again. James was smiling at her still, his love penetrating through the fear and futility and bitterness. He silently extended his hand, but his eyes said everything – We’ve given the war enough. If these are to be our last moments, then at least let them be ours.
Mud sprayed in a bough wave in front of the tyres as the abused jeep skidded to a halt, just inside a dense pocket of woodland, and James shouted to bail out. The jeep wouldn't keep running for much longer after all that damage, and even a delayed pursuit wouldn’t be far behind, so they needed to use this moment of concealment as best they could. No motion came from the back seats. Sophia screamed at them to get out, giving orders to a pair of corpses was futile. Lucas and Amy were riddled with wounds and had died in silence in the back.
James cursed and kicked the wheel arch, but they couldn't waste time. Grimly, they heaved the bodies into the front seats, set the engine running, and tried to make the weight of Lucas’ foot hold the throttle down. The jeep screeched forwards along the road as James and Sophia ran into the woodland, hearing the sound of a crash soon after and hoping it was far enough away to confuse any pursuers. Side by side they sprinted through the raking, dead branches and tangled undergrowth for what felt like hours, until they saw moss-covered concrete sinking into the earth. The thick steel door at the bottom of the damp, eroded staircase was a beacon of hope, something they might be able to hide behind before sneaking out again.
When they tried, hours later, they realised that the locking mechanism had worn and sheared, rendering it impossible to retract.
At first, the realisation that they were trapped had been hard to swallow, a bitter pill at a time when nothing was sweet. But after the panic, the anger, and the fear of what was coming, there was a wave of relief. There was as an unexpected comfort in knowing that they could finally stop running. They could stop looking over their shoulders and plotting and planning and fighting. They could finally stop fighting.
Death had always felt somehow inevitable, but now that their hands were tied it lifted the burden. Their fate was sealed but this limbo, this meantime, was theirs to spend on themselves. For them, the war was over. They could see out their retirement, brief as it would be, together – at least they had been granted that mercy. With the gramophone in the corner and the dancefloor beneath them, they knew what their last act would be.
Sophia and James lost themselves in one another’s eyes, allowing everything except the music, the motion and each other to consume their consciousness. They were vaguely aware of the ’boom’ as charges detonated around the door, and the vast chunk of steel slammed to the ground in a cloud of dust and smoke. Shock troops of the Unseen stormed through, clad head to toe in matte black, but all the couple saw was one another. As the gunfire opened up they clung to each other, they gently turned to the rhythm, and they stood tall, together.