A wedge of boot soles grated against the seventh-floor landing. Mireya did not move from the emerald velvet cushions. She adjusted a goose-down bolster behind her lumbar arch, tucked her wool throw tighter over her knees, and took a small sip of room-temperature plum compote. "Mireya, they have submachine guns," Janna hissed from the doorway, clutching a bundle of jagged copper wire like a drowning sailor gripping driftwood. The transmigrator was filthy, her coveralls soaked in battery acid and sour sweat. "We need to climb to the roof. The fire escape leads to the maintenance catwalk—" "Six flights of stairs? In the dark?" Mireya yawned, resting her chin upon a pale, unblemished wrist. "I would sooner accept state execution. Savina, grease the entry threshold. The pork lard under the sink has gone rancid enough to serve a defensive purpose." Savina Rask barked a frantic, half-strangled laugh, but the factory forewoman was already moving. Fear had stripped the bureaucrat out of her, leaving only raw shift-boss muscle. She dragged a twenty-pound tub of solidified lard toward the apartment door, slathering a glistening slick across the parquet tiles with a broken wooden spoon. "And the hallway?" Savina demanded, panting. "When they kick through the timber?" "Angle the simmering kettles," Mireya instructed from her horizontal redoubt. She pointed one manicured nail toward the iron heating lines along the vestibule wall. "The pressure valves on the preserved brisket broth are sitting at three atmospheres. Unhook the counter-weights. Janna, string your copper line across the baseboard. If you tie the live battery lead from Drazan's service pack to the doorknob, anyone who touches the brass will become an impromptu conductor." Janna blinked through grease-smudged lenses. "That won't create a lethal voltage. A lead-acid battery only outputs twelve volts!" "Then run it through that enormous, useless capacitor bank you insisted on lugging up here," Mireya murmured, resting her head back against the velvet. "The one you swore would reinvent the television receiver. It stores a charge, does it not? Use it. Or do not, and perish standing up. Personally, I intend to survive while lying down." Behind them, Drazan stood near the interior archway. His left shoulder was wrapped in fresh linen, crimson seeping through the weave, but his gray eyes remained locked on Mireya with an intensity bordering on religious idolatry. In his right hand, he casually hefted a rectangular, eight-pound cast-iron meat press. "My wife has an exquisite strategic mind," Drazan said softly, his voice a gravel drag across stone. "Your wife is an idle lunatic!" Janna snarled, but her hands flew across the scavenged hardware anyway. She twisted thick copper strands around the heavy 1978 rectifier tubes, linking the ceramic terminal to the iron door hinge and the apartment's main steam-pipe loop. The heavy door shuddered under a massive boot heel. *Crack.* The wood split near the latch. A gloved hand shoved through the splintered gap, fingers groping for the internal bolt. Instead, the intruder's palm clamped directly onto the brass fitting Janna had wired. A horrific blue pop illuminated the pitch-black hallway. The bulky vacuum tube clamped against the baseboard exploded with the crack of a pistol shot, discharging hundreds of stored volts directly into the intruder's wet leather glove. Sparks showered the parquet. The man had no chance to scream; his muscles locked in an instantaneous convulsion that jerked his entire torso through the broken panel. His head bounced off the oak jamb, his skull producing a dull, hollow thud before he collapsed backward into the corridor like an empty sack of grain. Janna stood frozen, holding two stripped wire ends. Her mouth fell open. "It... it actually discharged. The cathode held the surge!" "Look at you," Mireya drawled from the cushions, turning a page of her requisition ledger. "A genuine contributor to local security. Do shut the lower bolt, Savina, the draft is freezing my ankles." Before Savina could reach the latch, the entire door blew inward off its top hinge. Two men in heavy gray wool coats tumbled through the breach. The first hit the lard-slicked parquet instantly, his boots flying out from beneath him with comical violence. He skidded across the hallway floor on his back, colliding with the iron heating conduit just as the over-pressurized brass valve blew its seal. A jet of boiling, garlic-infused brisket broth erupted directly into his face. He shrieked, thrashing on the tile as the scalding grease soaked his collar. The second gunman was faster. He leaped clear of the puddle, his heavy snub-nosed service revolver coming up in a straight line. His gaze swept past Janna, ignored the cursing forewoman, and locked onto Mireya reclined comfortably upon the emerald sofa. He thumbed the hammer back. "For Rurik," the man spat. Mireya stayed still. Her grip on the ledger never slackened. She met his gaze with supreme, haughty boredom. Drazan moved. Wounded shoulder notwithstanding, the enforcer crossed the room in an explosive, silent blur. Before the killer could pull the trigger, Drazan's bulk crashed into his flank. The heavy cast-iron meat press came down with sickening, hydraulic precision against the gunman's wrist. Bone shattered with the wet sound of snapping celery. The revolver clattered harmlessly onto the wool rug. The wounded intruder dropped to his knees with a high, keening wail, cradling the mangled, flattened mess of his hand against his ribs. Drazan caught the man by the throat with his uninjured arm, hauling him off the floor until his toes barely brushed the floorboards, slamming him backward against the concrete wall. "You pointed steel at my wife," Drazan growled, his voice dropping into a register that made the window glass rattle. "Give me a reason not to feed you through the Zelen-Tier refuse chute piece by piece." "Wait," Mireya said from the couch, remaining prone. She reached out with the tip of her velvet slipper and nudged the dropped revolver away from the puddle of broth. "Do not kill him yet, darling. Blood is impossible to lift from wool, and this rug cost two months of meat allocations. Ask him why Rurik sent three men when he had twenty in the square." Drazan squeezed the throat. The captive gasped, his face purpling, veins bulging against the crushing grip. "Speak," Drazan ordered. "He... he didn't send twenty up!" the man wheezed, spit flecking his split lips as he clawed uselessly at Drazan's iron forearm. "The stairs... were just a diversion... to pin you here!" Savina stepped forward, gripping the splintered spoon. "A diversion? Then where is the rest of the shadow-ring?" The broken intruder let out a wet, rattling laugh, staring past Drazan toward the broken pipe still hissing scalding vapor into the room. "Rurik isn't coming up the stairs," the man choked out, grinning through bloody teeth. "He went down. He's in the sub-basement boiler vaults right now, welding the pressure releases shut on the central steam main—to blow this entire high-rise into the sky!"

The Couch Defense