Summary: [VIGNETTE] Ellie doesn't know how to give up. And so she won't. DS3.

Disclaimer: I don't own it.

Rating: T

A/N: A quick change from Isaac's point of view to Ellie's. And I have a real problem when authors shit all over everyone else's parade.

Out of the Fire

Unbearable heat cloaked her. It saturated her skin and she felt baked. Fumes choked her, her eyes watered, her lungs burned. Her jumpsuit would melt before long, and even as she leaped to the top of Rosetta's stand, scrambling when her feet slipped, she knew the flames would cut her off.

Isaac and Carver were at the doors to the elevator, holding it open. Calling for her. Through red-hot licks of fire and smoke and the waves of heat, Isaac's stricken face, his wide eyes, were what she saw. He was all she could focus on. She stopped, her heart telling her to dive for it, her brain knowing better.

"Isaac…go on!" She covered her nose and mouth with a hand. They were close, they had waited. This damn heat! "Go!"

"Ellie!"

"You've got to finish this. I…I love you."

A burst of flame flared upwards, separating them. And then the door was closed. The cool part of her brain told her Carver, who'd been quick to cut the cable on Santos, had shut the door. Carver, the practical one. Ellie backed away as the gas crawled and ate closer to her boots. She couldn't think of what to do. She was going to die in this inferno.

She didn't want to. Not like this.

Sweat poured in rivulets down her face, her eyes streamed, blurred her vision, and she couldn't breathe through the acrid smoke. A deafening roar made it impossible to think. Under her feet, Rosetta's stand creaked, and metal groaned with the unbearable heat. She looked around, fighting the panic that clutched at her. There was no salvation. And then over her head, she noticed a grate that had been warped in the hell.

Desperate, she reached up and got purchase with her fingers. Using a strength bred from fear and hope, she yanked as hard as she could. The grate popped free and clattered to the floor. Smoke and flame and skin-cracking heat had nothing on her now.

Limber, a spurt of adrenaline energizing her, she used her arms and what strength she had to hoist herself into the vent. Scrabbling for purchase, her legs swinging, her skin roasted from heat, she managed to haul the rest of her body into the narrow space. Keep going. Keep going. God, she was exhausted. Fumes dizzied her as she crawled forward, her arms screaming with pain. She didn't care where it went as along as it was away.

Behind her, metal whined and warped and melted. She heard explosions as technology bowed to terrible nature. She did not look back and stared into the claustrophobic blackness ahead. Even if she didn't make it, she thought, Isaac would. He would. Not even an attack from Robert had been enough lay him low. Inch by inch she crawled forward, her sweaty forearms slipping on the smooth metal. The air was clearer here, but the heat rushed after her, gobbled her from behind.

Keep going. Keep going, she chanted. Make it one more meter.

The darkness made her crawl interminable, but after some time, the darkness gave way to a tiny window of light. She made for it, not caring where it was, where she ended up. Anything was better than being charred to cinder. Closer and closer by inches. Cold, frigid air blasted into the vent. She sucked it in and reveled in how good it tasted, how it soothed her irritated soft tissues. All she could smell at this point was smoke- -smoke and burned plastic.

She didn't know if she had the strength to pry the thing open, so she lay with her fingers poking out, breathing through the stitch that hollered in her side. Every muscle ached, and she thirsty enough to drink a lake. A good pint of lager would be divine. She closed her eyes to collect her strength. When would this ever end? She was so tired.

A door whished opened somewhere in the room beyond the grate, the tread of heavy boots, and then a flashlight beam blinded her.

"In here, sir," a man said. "Stand by for extraction."

What the…? Was she hallucinating? Patiently, she waited for the grate to be removed and rough, strong hands slid her free from the ventilation shaft. She couldn't resist even if she had wanted to. She hissed with pain and the grip gentled. Then she saw the white jumpsuits and the painted-on red Marker symbols. Everything was so disjointed. She was thrown prone on the cold floor. One of them checked her for weapons.

"She's clear."

Afterwards, they bound her hands behind her back and popped her, sitting, against a metallic crate. Indifferently, she monitored the shuffle of white legs and listened to one give terse orders. Then one of them stuck a straw between her cracked lips. It was water and it was delicious. She drank until it was yanked away, then a medic (or who she assumed was one) shined a light in her eyes.

The one in charge said, "Danik wants to speak with her a-sap. How long'll this take?"

"Give her a half a second," said the medic. "She's barely conscious."

"For Chrissakes," Elle mumbled. She had leapt out of the frying pan and into the fire. "Just get it over with."

The one giving orders barked a laugh, but the medic was humorless. She couldn't tell his expression through his helmet visor, but she assumed he didn't agree with her. Danik was the last man in the universe she wanted to deal with, but deal with him she must. Slung between two Circle officers, she stumbled out of one circle of hell and into another.

A/N: Short and sweet. Also, this was written out of spite as enormous, gleeful, double middle-fingers. I'll be happy to explain the reason why if you PM me.