10-12-2026, 01:05 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-12-2026, 01:15 AM by Dominik Taicheschski.)
By the third morning of the storm, Dominik discovered that there were forms of suffering more irritating than mortal danger.
He wanted a cigarette.
Badly.
The pack was in the inside pocket of his Dominion’s coat. He knew exactly where it was because he had checked twice in the last hour, mostly to reassure himself that Karim's prohibition had not somehow caused the cigarettes to disappear under the intensity of his stare.
No smoking in the tunnels.
Karim had said it once, in the same tone he used for unstable structures and gas leaks, which meant Dominik had understood immediately that negotiation would be pointless. He still thought about it. Come on, they were technically outside.
The firefighter crouched beside the breach glanced up at him. Concern momentarily flashed his face.“You getting tired?”
Dominik kept his attention on the weave holding several tons of fractured concrete exactly where Karim had told him to keep it. “I want a cigarette.” He mumbled.
The man looked toward the ventilation duct overhead, then back at him.
“Me too.”
He chuckled as the firefighter disappeared through the opening.
What had once been the lower floors of an apartment block now hung above them in layers of broken concrete, twisted reinforcement and collapsed rooms. The building had not come down cleanly. One section had pancaked while another remained partially upright, leaning into the neighboring structure at an angle nobody sane would describe as stable. Snow packed the streets outside so deeply that the rescue tunnel entered what should have been the second floor. Somewhere below their boots, cars and pavement had disappeared entirely beneath the storm.
Karim had taken one look at the structure twenty minutes earlier and started assigning positions. Dominik had learned long ago that Karim never used more words than necessary when there was a building trying to fall on people.
“Hold this plane. Not the slab. The load above it.”
Dominik followed the line Karim indicated through the broken structure. “Here?”
“Two centimeters left.”
Dominik focused and the weave adjusted.
“There.”
That had been the end of the discussion. Karim could make two centimeters sound like a matter of national survival, and given the circumstances, it occasionally was.
Dominik did not mind taking orders from people who knew more than he did. That seemed an obvious rule, although experience had taught him it was apparently not obvious to everyone. This, admittedly, was closer to what Dominik had imagined intelligence work would look like when he was younger. Not the endless background investigations. Not interviewing government employees about suspicious travel reimbursements or trying to determine whether an undisclosed relationship constituted a security risk. Not reports that generated three more reports because someone had placed a date in the wrong field.
Holding up a building while firefighters crawled beneath it was at least honest about the stakes. Mid-thought, a vibration moved through the weave and Dominik's attention sharpened instantly onto it. The pressure against what he held changed, subtle at first, then enough to make the structure groan above them.
“Karim...?”
Karim was already looking. He crossed beneath the fractured ceiling, eyes following lines Dominik could only partly read. “Don't compensate.” He ordered.
Every instinct Dominik had told him to do exactly that, but with a deep frown, he didn't.
The slab settled another fraction, and somewhere inside the breach a firefighter shouted. Dominik tightened his control and held precisely where Karim had told him.
“It's shifting again…”
“I know.” Karim crouched, studied the broken support beneath them and pointed toward Julian farther down the corridor, speaking into their shared communications devices. The little blink that was Julian’s dot on Dominik’s display began to move. “Take the east side. Slowly, ” Karim instructed him.
Moments later, the load changed again as Julian’s weave caught it. Dominik felt the pressure redistribute through the structure, and only then did Karim look back at him.
“Now three centimeters right.”
Dominik focused on moving it precisely three centimeters. Of all them, Dom was probably the only one with the precision to shift the weight of a thousand metric tons centimeters to the right. Maybe Vellas could do it, but Vellas wasn’t here.
The groaning stopped, and for several seconds nobody spoke. Then the firefighter's voice came through the breach. “We've got two more alive.”
Everyone in the tunnel seemed to breathe again. Dominik did not. Not yet. He held the weave while the rest of the rescue team disappeared into the building. His shoulders had begun aching hours ago and had since moved into that useful stage where discomfort became background information rather than complaint. The Power itself came easily enough. Holding something still was not complicated. Holding it exactly still while exhausted men climbed beneath it and the structure kept trying to find a new way to fail was another matter.
A woman came out first, strapped to a board beneath layers of thermal blankets. She was aware enough to argue with the people carrying her about someone still inside. Her son, Dominik realized. The boy followed several moments later, young, maybe eight or nine, and alive and otherwise looked fine. He glanced up at Dominik as he scooted by, a startled look on his face when he realized the skeletons on his Dominion’s patch meant death. Dominik winked, but he didn’t get a chance to see if the effort to break the tension had any effect.
A third person came later under a gray covering. Nobody announced anything because they did not need to. For a moment Dominik looked at the shape passing beneath the emergency lights. One hand had slipped free beneath the edge of the covering, and a wedding ring remained on it. Then the body was gone. Dominik looked back at the ceiling. There would be time later, perhaps, to decide how he felt about things. The storm had created very little space for that so far. He understood now why the other Dominions sometimes spoke about work in terms of what came next rather than what had just happened. You could mourn everyone eventually, or you could stand in the tunnel and become useless. Dominik preferred being useful.
A rescue worker near the entrance said something about Ascendancy having opened this branch the previous morning, and Dominik smiled faintly without looking over. Of course he had. When Dominik had woken after their first night of work, stiff from sleeping on the Kremlin floor for a mere 3.5 hours and feeling as though every muscle had been replaced with wire, Ascendancy's place near the door had already been empty. Dominik had checked the time because surely he had misunderstood something. He had not. nAscendancy had simply gone back out.
That was the sort of thing the Ascendancy did regularly. He behaved as though limitations were facts applicable to everyone except himself, then somehow managed to justify the behavior by accomplishing whatever impossible thing had made the rest of them question the possibility in the first place.
Dominik had watched the most powerful man in the world sleep on a floor beside his men, wake early, go back into the cold and spend the next day doing the same work he required of everyone else. There were probably easier men to serve on this planet, but Dominik had never wanted anyone else.
“Release by half.”
Karim's voice brought him back. Dominik exhaled and eased some of the pressure from the weave. The remaining structure settled onto the temporary supports the rescue engineers had placed beneath it.
“Again.” Karim ordered and Dominik released more. To their relief, nothing moved.
“It’s clear.”
Dominik let the Power go, rolled his shoulders once so hard that his neck popped, and immediately reached inside his coat.
Karim did not even turn around. It was like he could see in the back of his head. “You pull out a single cigarette and you’ll regret it, Dominik.”
Dominik stopped with two fingers already hooked around the cigarette pack.
“I didn't do anything.” He grumbled.
The firefighter emerged from the breach, face streaked with dust, and laughed at their scene.
Dominik withdrew his empty hand with as much dignity as possible.
“Workplace discrimination.”
The firefighter handed him a bottle of water instead. Dominik drank half of it in one go.
He wanted a cigarette.
Badly.
The pack was in the inside pocket of his Dominion’s coat. He knew exactly where it was because he had checked twice in the last hour, mostly to reassure himself that Karim's prohibition had not somehow caused the cigarettes to disappear under the intensity of his stare.
No smoking in the tunnels.
Karim had said it once, in the same tone he used for unstable structures and gas leaks, which meant Dominik had understood immediately that negotiation would be pointless. He still thought about it. Come on, they were technically outside.
The firefighter crouched beside the breach glanced up at him. Concern momentarily flashed his face.“You getting tired?”
Dominik kept his attention on the weave holding several tons of fractured concrete exactly where Karim had told him to keep it. “I want a cigarette.” He mumbled.
The man looked toward the ventilation duct overhead, then back at him.
“Me too.”
He chuckled as the firefighter disappeared through the opening.
What had once been the lower floors of an apartment block now hung above them in layers of broken concrete, twisted reinforcement and collapsed rooms. The building had not come down cleanly. One section had pancaked while another remained partially upright, leaning into the neighboring structure at an angle nobody sane would describe as stable. Snow packed the streets outside so deeply that the rescue tunnel entered what should have been the second floor. Somewhere below their boots, cars and pavement had disappeared entirely beneath the storm.
Karim had taken one look at the structure twenty minutes earlier and started assigning positions. Dominik had learned long ago that Karim never used more words than necessary when there was a building trying to fall on people.
“Hold this plane. Not the slab. The load above it.”
Dominik followed the line Karim indicated through the broken structure. “Here?”
“Two centimeters left.”
Dominik focused and the weave adjusted.
“There.”
That had been the end of the discussion. Karim could make two centimeters sound like a matter of national survival, and given the circumstances, it occasionally was.
Dominik did not mind taking orders from people who knew more than he did. That seemed an obvious rule, although experience had taught him it was apparently not obvious to everyone. This, admittedly, was closer to what Dominik had imagined intelligence work would look like when he was younger. Not the endless background investigations. Not interviewing government employees about suspicious travel reimbursements or trying to determine whether an undisclosed relationship constituted a security risk. Not reports that generated three more reports because someone had placed a date in the wrong field.
Holding up a building while firefighters crawled beneath it was at least honest about the stakes. Mid-thought, a vibration moved through the weave and Dominik's attention sharpened instantly onto it. The pressure against what he held changed, subtle at first, then enough to make the structure groan above them.
“Karim...?”
Karim was already looking. He crossed beneath the fractured ceiling, eyes following lines Dominik could only partly read. “Don't compensate.” He ordered.
Every instinct Dominik had told him to do exactly that, but with a deep frown, he didn't.
The slab settled another fraction, and somewhere inside the breach a firefighter shouted. Dominik tightened his control and held precisely where Karim had told him.
“It's shifting again…”
“I know.” Karim crouched, studied the broken support beneath them and pointed toward Julian farther down the corridor, speaking into their shared communications devices. The little blink that was Julian’s dot on Dominik’s display began to move. “Take the east side. Slowly, ” Karim instructed him.
Moments later, the load changed again as Julian’s weave caught it. Dominik felt the pressure redistribute through the structure, and only then did Karim look back at him.
“Now three centimeters right.”
Dominik focused on moving it precisely three centimeters. Of all them, Dom was probably the only one with the precision to shift the weight of a thousand metric tons centimeters to the right. Maybe Vellas could do it, but Vellas wasn’t here.
The groaning stopped, and for several seconds nobody spoke. Then the firefighter's voice came through the breach. “We've got two more alive.”
Everyone in the tunnel seemed to breathe again. Dominik did not. Not yet. He held the weave while the rest of the rescue team disappeared into the building. His shoulders had begun aching hours ago and had since moved into that useful stage where discomfort became background information rather than complaint. The Power itself came easily enough. Holding something still was not complicated. Holding it exactly still while exhausted men climbed beneath it and the structure kept trying to find a new way to fail was another matter.
A woman came out first, strapped to a board beneath layers of thermal blankets. She was aware enough to argue with the people carrying her about someone still inside. Her son, Dominik realized. The boy followed several moments later, young, maybe eight or nine, and alive and otherwise looked fine. He glanced up at Dominik as he scooted by, a startled look on his face when he realized the skeletons on his Dominion’s patch meant death. Dominik winked, but he didn’t get a chance to see if the effort to break the tension had any effect.
A third person came later under a gray covering. Nobody announced anything because they did not need to. For a moment Dominik looked at the shape passing beneath the emergency lights. One hand had slipped free beneath the edge of the covering, and a wedding ring remained on it. Then the body was gone. Dominik looked back at the ceiling. There would be time later, perhaps, to decide how he felt about things. The storm had created very little space for that so far. He understood now why the other Dominions sometimes spoke about work in terms of what came next rather than what had just happened. You could mourn everyone eventually, or you could stand in the tunnel and become useless. Dominik preferred being useful.
A rescue worker near the entrance said something about Ascendancy having opened this branch the previous morning, and Dominik smiled faintly without looking over. Of course he had. When Dominik had woken after their first night of work, stiff from sleeping on the Kremlin floor for a mere 3.5 hours and feeling as though every muscle had been replaced with wire, Ascendancy's place near the door had already been empty. Dominik had checked the time because surely he had misunderstood something. He had not. nAscendancy had simply gone back out.
That was the sort of thing the Ascendancy did regularly. He behaved as though limitations were facts applicable to everyone except himself, then somehow managed to justify the behavior by accomplishing whatever impossible thing had made the rest of them question the possibility in the first place.
Dominik had watched the most powerful man in the world sleep on a floor beside his men, wake early, go back into the cold and spend the next day doing the same work he required of everyone else. There were probably easier men to serve on this planet, but Dominik had never wanted anyone else.
“Release by half.”
Karim's voice brought him back. Dominik exhaled and eased some of the pressure from the weave. The remaining structure settled onto the temporary supports the rescue engineers had placed beneath it.
“Again.” Karim ordered and Dominik released more. To their relief, nothing moved.
“It’s clear.”
Dominik let the Power go, rolled his shoulders once so hard that his neck popped, and immediately reached inside his coat.
Karim did not even turn around. It was like he could see in the back of his head. “You pull out a single cigarette and you’ll regret it, Dominik.”
Dominik stopped with two fingers already hooked around the cigarette pack.
“I didn't do anything.” He grumbled.
The firefighter emerged from the breach, face streaked with dust, and laughed at their scene.
Dominik withdrew his empty hand with as much dignity as possible.
“Workplace discrimination.”
The firefighter handed him a bottle of water instead. Dominik drank half of it in one go.