Chapter Twenty One
It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.
Astra, Notes From a Life.
* * *
Multiple shocks announced the re-closing of the shaft above us as hatches sealed each level. No, No, No! The elevator doors opened
onto the empty residence level, and I practically threw Kitsune out into the hall and the arms of a startled Willis as I mashed
the ground-floor button.
“Damnit, let me up!”
“Astra,” Lei Zi called in my ear. “You are to secure Kitsune, exit through ET-3, then engage as you see fit. Understood?”
“Secure, Exit ET-3, engage, got it!”
“I can secure our guest, miss,” Willis offered. “You’ll be needing this?” He handed me a mob-kit and I laughed.
“Thanks Willis!” I called back as I flew down the hall. Right, left, right, pop hall-panel and crack hatch, down the tunnel and
then straight up, ignoring the rungs. I grabbed the latch and twisted, blowing the seals, and popped out and onto the avenue just
around the corner from the portico doors.
Tourists fled in all directions and protest-signs littered the ground. A loose terrier bounded across the grass, barking
hysterically. At least I didn’t see any bodies, and I found Gabe and his partner in the portico. His partner couldn’t sit up,
but Gabe had pulled himself to his knees. No blood. Picking Gabe up, I gently set him down, protesting, on grass fifty feet back
around the Dome, then did the same for his partner. If things went our way, I didn’t want anyone blocking the exit.
“Astra at the main doors!” I reported. “Outside is clear, going in!”
“Roger, Astra,” Blackstone replied. “Lei Zi, Rush, Seven, The Harlequin, Riptide, Artemis, Galatea engaging. Watch your tags.”
Tags? I shrugged, and flew through the doors.
A storm of bullets met me and I dropped for the floor, trying to see through the smoke. Here there were bodies—our armored team,
two of Platoon—crumpled behind their station, torn and burned. No civilians, thank God. The shooters, in black jumpsuits and
hooded facemasks, poured auto-fire on me like it would do more than sting. Every one of them had a spectral green tag floating
beside him, reading Flash Mob: Redux-type, temp-clones; swing away.
Tags. “Shelly!” I laughed; she always hijacked my senses to make herself real through our neural link—now she was using the
ability to give me a heads-up tactical display.
“Tagging them as I call them!” she sang out through my earbug. “Green means engage now, blue active, red stay away! Kinda busy!
”
“Thanks!”
I launched myself into the gunmen, swinging. They went down like dominoes, the hard-hit ones vanishing as they hit the wet floor.
The smoke and steam made it hard to count, but I guessed a couple-dozen and there didn’t seem to be more popping up. Some ignored
me, shooting downrange away from me, and at the far end of my vision I saw Rush’s blur—two sets: odd, but he had to be pulling
civilians.
I kept swinging until all of Flash Mob was gone, then headed further in.
And smacked right into the floor. I lifted my head off cracked marble paving, guts heaving, too dizzy to focus. What the hell?
“It’s about time.” Another black-masked figure rose from behind the shattered reception desk—this one red-tagged Warp: remote
attack, vertigo-nausea; fragile.
Red-tagged. Thanks for the warning, Shell.
“Don’t fight it,” he said. “And we won’t need to be hard on you.”
“This is easy?” I wanted to vomit, couldn’t.
“Easier. You’re not who we’re here for.”
“Good to know,” I gasped, pulling a flash-bang grenade from my pack.
“Bright light,” I whispered, counting on Shell to pass the warning as I pulled the pin and threw myself at the desk.
BANG!
I landed as the stun grenade flashed a million candela in my hand and beat the air with 150 decibels, blinding and disorienting.
Even my ears rang, and my hand stung, but I grabbed for Warp as I fell off the edge of the battered desk. I missed, but Artemis
came out of the mist and shot him with both of her elasers, crack crack.
Her leather catsuit was sliced up, straps and buckles dangling, and somewhere she’d lost her skull-mask, but she was laughing.
She helped me sit up, found the glue-tape in my kit, and started wrapping while my stomach settled and the world stopped spinning.
“You okay?” she asked. I nodded, wincing as she used a couple of strips to securely blindfold Warp; removing it would take away
hair. She patted his shoulder cheerfully. “He can’t attack what he can’t see. Move your tiny ass—the tough guys are further
in.”
“Right.” My vertigo fading fast, I launched myself towards the back of the atrium. “Positions?” I queried, and Shelly passed
it on.
“We’re dealing with Tin Man and some kind of clay thing outside of Dispatch,” Lei Zi responded calmly. “Blackstone reports
penetration of the main elevator shaft by an Atlas-type. Take it.”
“Main elevators, on it!” I confirmed. Titanium hatches, and someone was penetrating? I ignored the sizzling snap of Lei Zi’s
bolts off to my left, almost drowned by the wailing alarms, and found the elevator bay. The security doors had slammed down,
sealing the bay the instant the alarms had tripped, but they’d been ripped aside.
Someone had forced the doors to the center elevator open, exposing the shaft. The emergency lights had cut out, filling the shaft
with darkness, but I could see someone down there; his body-heat lighting him up in the black. The floating green tag read X:
Atlas-type, unknown class. Ringing strikes echoed up the shaft as he hammered on the first hatch.
Anyone that could go through the security doors could take what I dished out: I looked back into the Atrium, then stepped into the
shaft and dropped feet-first, helping gravity speed me along. My impact burst the first hatch and flattened us against the second,
but the villain I’d landed on recovered faster and heaved, smashing me against the shaft wall. Steel-reinforced ferroconcrete
refused to yield, and my half-healed ribs screamed.
“Stay down!” he snarled. “I’m not here for you!”
“I heard!” I bounced back up, bringing my head down to smash his masked face.
He howled but he grappled me, grip like steel clamps, arms like cables. “Bitch! You can’t win!” Unable to break his hold, I
flew us into the wall behind him, hammered him with repeated short knee-kicks to his gut and chest, smashed him in the throat with
my elbow when he let go. I was screaming.
“Can’t? I trained with Ajax, you moron! Get! Out! Of! My! House!” He swung us into the opposite wall, but my elbow crushed his
nose and now he screamed, launching us straight up. I tried to spin us, but he got me above him and when we hit the top of the
shaft my world exploded. I let go.
Fifty feet down to the second hatch, and it rang like a gong when I hit. Move! I told myself, but I wasn’t listening. One breath.
Two. Nothing. The world slowly came back, but he was gone. I sat up, only to whimper and grab my side while the world spun some
more.
“Lei Zi?” I took a breath and tried again, louder.
“Status?” She sounded mildly interested—like I’d interrupted a card-game.
“The shaft is clear. Do you need me?”
The Dome shook and the overpressure blast popped my ears. “Negative,” she said. “Stand down.”
“Yippie,” I whispered, dropping back. The cool titanium felt wonderful.
* * *
Flying didn’t hurt, so I didn’t stay down long. Back up the shaft, the Atrium was a wreck; water covered the floor—Riptide had
been busy—and burning bits of Tin Man’s latest mecha-man creation lay about, smoking and steaming. The final concussive
explosion had ripped apart the inner wall separating the Atrium from the office section, but it looked like the museum doors were
intact. The smell of scorched metal and burned flesh hung in the air, and I found Tom, dead at his post; somehow I’d missed him
when I fell over the reception desk. Since he was one of Platoon, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Lei Zi put me on perimeter-watch as the Dome’s alarms went silent, giving way to the rising whoops of landing emergency vehicles.
I went outside to check on Gabe and his partner, waving the EMTs in as they unloaded their gear and came running. Steel Drake and
Bolt, two Chicago Guardians and the guys who‘d airlifted the pair of ambulances, trotted up to me.
“You look hammered, A,” Drake said bluntly. “What can we do?”
I hesitated, looking around. “Could you check the park? But stand by for airlift.” When I’d taken Kitsune downstairs the Atrium
hadn’t been empty—as fast as Rush had moved, there had to be civilian casualties inside. He fired off a salute and they flew up
and around. I found Gabe and Officer Ryan where I’d left them, white as sheets and painfully bent from retching spasms, and
helped them up. Together we took up positions at the portico doors and watched the incoming tide of emergency vehicles, city
police, and newsies.