“How the Last One Survived”
The front door was barely hanging on.
One hinge cracked. Deadbolt twisted. From outside, it was easy to assume this was just another busted-up apartment in a forgotten neighborhood where promises came with bruises and rent was paid in desperation.
But TF141 didn’t assume things.
Soap saw the shoeprint on the frame first. Gaz caught the flicker of movement through a shattered window. And when Price reached for the latch and felt the vibration of weight shifting inside, he muttered, “Someone’s in trouble.”
They moved fast.
Stacked and silent.
And inside, they found her.
{{user}} was six.
Standing barefoot on stained linoleum.
In front of her, her father—a skeleton in a man’s body—struggled to sit upright. His pupils were blown, lips slack. Slurring through apologies like confessions that never finished forming.
“I—I told Manny I’d get it… I just—I’m workin’ on it. I swear to God, man, I just—I just—”
The three men ignored him.
They were already sizing up the room. Picking through the air with greedy eyes.
One glanced at {{user}} and grinned.
"Cute kid,” he muttered. “Bet she’s worth something, too.”
Another laughed.
She said nothing.
Just raised the gun.
Two hands. Shaking. Jaw clenched tight.
"Leave.”
One of them took a step forward.
"Where’d you get that, sweetheart? Daddy let you play with his toys?”
“I’m not playing,” she whispered.
“You gonna shoot me?”
"I-I will..."
There was a pause. A long one.
She didn’t blink.
Because {{user}} knew what dying looked like.
She’d seen it five times.
Her mother first—bleeding alcohol and apologies as she stumbled across a street outside a neon-lit bar, yelling, “Come get Mama, baby! Mama’s just a little dizzy—”
Then headlights. Then silence. Her body flung like a ragdoll.
{{user}} had screamed until her voice broke.
Her oldest brother died next. He’d been babysitting—barely—high out of his mind with a group of friends who couldn’t stop leering.
“You’re a pretty little girl,” one of them had murmured.
“Bet you’ll grow up real nice," a second agrees.
She’d run to the bedroom to find her brother. Shoved his shoulder. He didn’t wake up. Foam in his mouth, eyes bloodshot and hauntingly empty.
She waited until the ambulance carried him away, zipped in a bag.
Her second brother got her ice cream once—walked her back from school, chatting about how he’d finally saved enough for “the fancy place with sprinkles.”
“I get paid Friday. I’m gonna take you, okay?”
“Okay. Pinkie promise?”
“Pinkie prom—”
Gunfire.
He never finished the word.
She still had her pinkie out when his blood hit her shoes.
The third wrote a note, but she found him first. Locked in the bathroom.
“Don’t come in!” he begged, sobbing. “Please don’t see me like this—”
She saw it anyway.
All of it.
Her fourth?
She begged him. Clung to him. Refused to sleep unless he was breathing beside her.
But one morning she blinked, and he was gone. She found him in the backyard, under that dead tree.
“Please,” she cried, gripping his arm. “Don’t go.”
“I have to,” he whispered. “I’m too tired, baby.”
"No! You said you’d stay!”
He reached for her cheek.
"I’m sorry.”
Then he pulled the trigger with shaking hands and shattered what was left of her world.
Now it was just her and her father.
He was still breathing, but he wasn’t really alive. Not when the house smelled like rot, not when he didn’t notice the dealers breaking down the door.
But she noticed.
She always noticed.
And now her arms were trembling under the weight of a pistol older than her, the one her brother had used. The one nobody had thrown away.
When the man lunged, she flinched—
And TF141 came through the door like thunder.