Too many and too organized, Logan realizes suddenly. They have been waiting for us. It is a trap.
He fights with a ferocity he does not know he possesses, lost in a haze of smoke and ash, in the staccato rip of automatic weapons fire, and the harsh scream of his own desperation. He shoots at everything that moves and at the same time keeps moving himself. He does not know how long the fighting continues, but it seems endless. Twice he is wounded, but neither injury stops him. At one point a rush of once-men overwhelms him, and he loses losing his grip on the Scattershot as he fights to break free. Someone—he never discovers who—comes to his aid and tears them away. Even so, he is left dazed and battered and weaponless. He scrambles about on his hands and knees, searching for the Scattershot, for any weapon at all. He thinks that this is the end. He thinks that this is the day he will die.
Then suddenly everything quiets. The shooting is all distant now, off in the other buildings and outside. Low moans and cries for help reach out to him from close at hand, but the smoke trapped inside the building is so thick he cannot find anyone. His ears ring from the weapons fire and bomb concussions, and he feels disoriented and weak. He stumbles about, still searching for the Scattershot, needing to feel a weapon in his hands. He finds it finally, lying not five feet away. When he picks it up, the barrel is so hot that the heat radiates down through the wood grips of the stock.
He gropes his way through the smoke. Where is everyone?
Then he trips over Jena, lying face up on the floor, her eyes open and staring. He finds most of the others close by, all dead. There is no one left, he thinks. He has lost them all.
The moans and cries continue, and he makes his way blindly toward the sounds. He comes up against a cage, and inside the cage are dozens of imprisoned humans, a part of Midline’s slave population. Faces press up against the steel mesh, eyes and mouths beseeching, begging. He pulls away from the hands and fingers that seek to hold him and gropes his way along the mesh in search of the cage door. The smoke is beginning to thin now, and outside the shooting has quieted to a few distant discharges punctuated by shouts and cries. The battle is ending. He must hurry.
He finds the door secured with a heavy chain. He looks around for something he can use to break the lock. He locates a metal bar that will snap the chain—and suddenly Michael appears through the smoke. “What’s happened?” he demands. “Where are the others?”
He is bloodied from head to foot, a walking nightmare, a corpse come out of the grave. It is impossible for Logan to tell if the blood is Michael’s or not. One arm hangs limp, the sleeve of his heavy jacket shredded.
He carries his Ronin Flechette cradled in the other, smoke curling out of its short, wicked black barrel.
“Did you hear me?” he snaps at Logan, angry now.
“All dead, I think,” Logan answers. “I’m not sure. I haven’t had time to check.”
Michael shrugs. There is a dangerous glint in his eye. “Wilson’s group is gone, too. Mine is hacked to pieces. They really made a mess of us.”
He looks at the prisoners, shakes his head, and mutters something unintelligible. Taking it as an indication he should continue with his efforts, Logan places the iron bar back inside the chain loop and starts to apply pressure. “Leave them!” Michael orders instantly.
Logan turns, not sure he has heard correctly. “But they—”
“Leave them!” Michael roars. He flings his injured arm toward the cage with such force that droplets of blood fly everywhere. “Leave them where they are. Leave them to rot!”
Logan shakes his head in disbelief. “But they’re caged.”
The other stares at him blankly, and then starts to laugh. “Don’t you get it? They’re where they deserve to be!” The laughter dies into something that might be a sob. “All we do for them, all we give up, and for what? So that they can run like sheep to be gathered up again? So that they can go back to being stupid and helpless? Look at them! They make me sick!”
“Michael, it’s not their fault—”
“Shut up!” Michael screams at him, and all of a sudden the Ronin is pointing at his midsection. “Don’t defend them! They killed your friends, your comrades, all the people who made a difference in your life! They killed them just as surely as if they pulled the trigger!”
Logan doesn’t know what to do—except that he knows not to make any sudden moves with the Ronin pointing at him. He could argue that it is Michael who has chosen to attack Midline. He could point out that they all came here willingly, knowing the risk. But Michael’s face tells him that he isn’t going to listen to those arguments. He is barely listening to anything at this point.