THIRTY
Talus is right about one thing, though. I know about efficiency. Escobar has been trying to confuse me, and I've been party to it enough times over the centuries that I should know better, but I let him get under my skin. Inside my head. This is the trouble with fractured memories—with all memory—you seek order. You seek structure. One of the most dangerous things an Arcadian can do is let himself be convinced something is true, because that's what will happen. We'll make it true. Our brains will fix these words—these images—into an unassailable truth.
Their mistake is to think that this confusion will be enough, but I've been a soldier too long. I don't think about fighting any more. It just happens.
Even before the jacketed rifle round makes a mess of Talus's head, I'm in motion. I kick at Escobar's chair, knocking it spinning. He's still half in it, and the sudden weight of the chair against his legs knocks him sprawling. I still have a hand on Mere, and I drag her with me as I back-pedal away from the mess that Talus's headless body is making on the hardwood floor.
Another tiny circle of glass falls out of the windows and Alberto spins around, roaring in pain.
I run parallel to the windows, toward the shelter afforded by the book-filled partitions. It's not Alberto I'm trying to hide from; if it were just him and me, I would stay and slug it out. No, I'm getting away from what I know is coming up in the elevator behind him.
He and Talus weren't going to kill me. They weren't going to risk getting hurt themselves. They were going to use Mere to hold me off until the strike team could arrive. And, as she and I reach the safety of the partitions, I hear the elevator ding and the sound of many boots on the floors. Alberto starts screaming at them to go after me.
The partitions are double-sided bookcases about three meters long with thick steel casters. Heavy, but mobile. Not a bad solution for breaking up large warehouse spaces. Useful if I was trying to build a fort.
The billiards table is equally impressive. Walnut frame with marble legs. The green wool cloth like a pristine glade of new grass. The balls are solid ivory, and I take several, stuffing extras into my pockets. The cues are nice too—solid pieces of lathed ash—but impractical against guns.
Mere, to her credit, is right behind me. I spot a hallway leading away from the billiards room and I jerk my chin toward it, telling her to lead the way.
The men are talking to each other as they approach the partitions, and I hear Alberto's voice in the background, maligning their inability to move quickly enough.
The trouble with rent-a-troops: it doesn't matter how well trained they are, Arcadians will always think they move too slowly. The strike teams come at us through two of the gaps in the partitions, and the first pair open fire as they spot me on the far side of the billiards table. Their bullets wreck a number of the television screens arranged along one of the few fixed walls in the penthouse as I run for the hallway.
The book-filled partitions form an L-shape, running from the windows for ten meters or so before making a right-angle and connecting with the wall. The narrow gap between the last partition and the wall allows access to an actual hallway, and I know it is a dead end, but it's a better space for Mere and me to be in than hiding under the billiards table, hoping no one will notice us.
Immediately on my left as I enter the hallway is a walk-in closet nearly the same size as the rec room, and a capacious master bath. The hallway turns to my right several meters ahead, and at the turn is the master bedroom. Around the corner are several other bedrooms, and Mere is standing in the middle of this hallway, looking at me as if I know which door will lead us to safety.
I wave at Mere to stay close to the wall while I peek in on the master bedroom. It's impressive, and worth a more measured look, but behind me is the long and straight hallway back to the rec room. Standing here, gawking, is going to be bad for my health. I sense motion behind me, and I throw one of the billiard balls as I dart out of the doorway. The ball hits one of the strike team members and he goes down heavily, and the way he sprawls on the floor suggests he's not getting back up.
We're behind the elevator shaft now, on the opposite side of the floor, and there are four doors off this hallway. Two that will undoubtedly lead to guest rooms with good views, the one on the opposite side will mostly be a windowless—joyless—utility room of some kind. The last one is at the somewhat abrupt end of the hallway.
“They're behind us,” I hiss at Mere. “We can't go back. These rooms”—I gesture around me—“they're not going anywhere either. We have to go forward.”
She nods, still in shock. But she's still thinking. “It goes around, doesn't it? There's got to be a way through—a way back to the kitchen. He wouldn't build a place like this without a way to walk around, would he?”
“Let's hope not,” I say.
The doors are all closed, which doesn't surprise me terribly if they aren't in use, but the door at the end of the hall shouldn't be there. According to my mental map, I'm not even halfway across the floor. There should be another space—the same size as the master bedroom, these other rooms, and the rest—on the other side of that door. So why is there a door at all?
I step back to the turn in the hallway and risk a peek. The gunmen are alert, and all I get is a quick glimpse before someone starts shooting. A fusillade of bullets pepper the wall around the frame of the master bedroom door.
But I get a head count. Four. And I only have two billiard balls left. I'm going to run out of ammo before I run out of targets.
“There's no stairwell either,” Mere says. “What happens when the power goes out? Does Montoya stay up here until someone turns the power back on?”
“He's not that stupid,” I say, thinking about the number of men who are stalking us. Five doesn't seem like enough. “There's got to be another exit.” And then I realize why the number seems off. “They're coming up the stairs,” I say.
“Who is?”
“The other team.” I point at the way we came. “These guys are driving us toward this door. They haven't rushed us yet, and they haven't thrown any gas or flashbangs. They want us to go through that door first. Into a kill box.”
Mere nods that she understands what a kill box is.
“How many do you think are on the other side of that door?” I ask Mere, flashing her a quick smile.
“I don't know, Silas.”
“Guess.”
“Fifty,” she says.
I nod back in the other direction. “There are five back there. Which seems like better odds?”
“That way,” she says, pointing back the way we came.
“Then that's the way we'll go.” I take her hand and we start sidling along the wall. The door at the end of the hall is inset in the wall, and there's about a meter on either side. If I have to trust one or the other to be thick enough to stop bullets, I'm going to bet on the wall. As we approach the turn in the hallway, I stop and put my mouth close to her ear. “When I tell you to, start screaming,” I whisper. “Give it all you got, okay? Think of being skinned alive or something.”
“Or something?” she hisses back.
“Something that takes a little while. And is truly awful, okay?”
She looks at me.
“What?”
“Can I think of something pleasant first?”
“Sure,” I say, leaning over and brushing my lips across hers. They're warm and soft, and all I can think is that I'd rather keep doing this than kill five men. “But don't think about it too long, okay?” I say as I stop.
“Okay,” she says. A second later, before I've even had a chance to position myself to peek around the corner, she lets loose with an unholy blood-curdling shriek.
The penthouse is on the twelfth floor. The dance club is on the fourth. In between, it's nothing but luxury condos. The tenants are all sheep, and they start flooding for the exits when I pull the fire alarm.
After Mere's distraction and my subsequent judicious use of billiard balls, we found a distinct lack of Montoya family members in the main area of the penthouse. The elevator never arrives, and our jaunt down eleven flights of stairs is fraught with a number of frightened residents who are either surly or terrified by the fire alarm that Mere pulled on the eleventh floor. It's good cover, and we ride it out to the street and the plaza around the building. The first of many fire trucks arrives, as well as a number of police cars, and the whole area becomes a hotbed of sirens and lights and activity.
Mere and I slip away. We walk four blocks north and catch a cab. It's as simple as that.
Which makes it too easy.
She presses herself against the door of the cab, shivering—both from chills and trauma. I offer her my coat, and she doesn't seem to register its presence around her shoulders. I don't push it. I let her sit and shiver and think, clutching my coat around her shoulders.
I lean against the other window and watch the city go by. I've got some things to think about too.
Phoebe was on the other rooftop. She's the only person I know who could have made a shot like that. And she took it, blowing Talus's brains all over Montoya's fine hardwood floors.
I'm more than a little curious as to why.