Abram lunges. Black Tie cracks him across the face. He reels backward and would fall over if not for Sprout steadying him from behind.
I brace myself for another fight, another series of shocks to my already throbbing brain, but while I’m still debating my first move, the stairwell door bursts open and three soldiers spill out, rifles trained on us through the cell window. Julie’s fist is clenched and cocked, always quicker to decisions than I am, but she freezes as the soldiers rush into the cell, their eyes to their rifle sights, jumping from target to target to show that we’re all covered.
“We hope you’ll choose not to endanger yourself any further,” Blue Tie says. “Once we stabilize the branch, we look forward to making you all members of the Axiom family.”
One of the guards presses his rifle barrel against Abram’s forehead while the other reaches behind him to grab Sprout’s arm.
“Get off!” Sprout shouts, wriggling and kicking; the guard subdues her long enough for Yellow Tie to cinch a zip tie around her wrists.
Abram’s fists clench, but he’s pinned. Sprout stops struggling and shoots a teary glance over her shoulder, first at her father, then at Julie.
“Well,” M sighs, pulling himself up off the floor, “fuck it.”
He rushes the nearest guard and slams his head into the wall, rips the rifle out of his hands, shoots him in the chest, spins around and shoots the second one in the head. Black Tie grabs the gun and wrenches it aside while Blue Tie sticks a Taser into M’s back but M ignores it, uses the resulting muscle spasm to launch an elbow into Blue Tie’s face, head-butts Black Tie, shoves him back, and lands three skull-cracking punches before the third guard shoots him.
Bright red blood erupts from his shoulder, then his stomach. M falls to the floor.
In the time it takes for all this to happen, the rest of us have managed to take about five steps forward. M is impossibly quick for his size. The remaining guard blocks the doorway, his rifle still trained on Abram, who trembles with rage that could break the bonds of reason at any moment.
“We apologize for this disruption,” Blue Tie says as he and Black Tie follow Yellow Tie to the elevator. “Unfortunately, violence does become necessary when authority channels are bypassed.”
The guard snatches cards and keys off his two dead coworkers, locks our cell door, and joins the pitchmen.
“The Axiom Group is working toward a more stable world,” Yellow Tie says. “We hope you will live long enough to understand this.”
She smiles maternally as the elevator doors close.
The cell is silent except for the wind. The subtle creaking of glass and steel.
“Sorry, Abe,” M wheezes. “I tried.”
The guard he shot first is beginning to twitch. Abram looks down into the man’s lifeless brown eyes and watches them turn gray. Then he stomps the man’s head against the floor until his boot goes through.
“My name is Abram,” he mumbles, wiping speckles of blood off his face. “My name is Abram Kelvin.”
He returns to his corner of the room and slumps to the floor.
Nora drops to her knees next to M and pulls his shirt up to examine his wounds. She says nothing and her face is all stern professionalism, but her nostrils flare with rapid breaths.
“What’s . . . diagnosis, Doc?” M says. “Is it bulletosis?”
“Shoulder’s okay,” she mutters. “Grazed the clavicle and went out the back. The gut shot . . .”
She trails off.
“Really bad time to trail off,” M says.
But Nora’s eyes are oddly empty as she stares at the hole in his belly. She blinks again and again.
“Nora?” Julie says.
Nora gives her head a hard shake. “Sorry. I was . . .” She lifts M’s hip a few inches off the floor, revealing an exit wound, then drops him back, not gently. He grunts.
“Bullet went through. It’s off to the side and there’s plenty of fat so it probably missed any important organs. But I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
“God, Nora,” Julie says, shaking her head. “Your bedside manner . . .”
Our cell door creaks open. H. Tomsen peeks through the crack. “Is he okay or is he going to die? I don’t like watching people die.”
“Are there still any office supplies on this floor?” Nora asks her. “Like a stapler, maybe?”
Tomsen runs into one of the empty conference rooms and returns with a heavy-duty stapler.
“Perfect.” Nora pinches the hole in M’s stomach together and snaps a thick staple into the seam.
“Fuck!” M shouts, in surprise as much as pain.
“Have to find something to sterilize it later, but for now, this’ll slow the bleeding.”
Another staple.
“Shit!” M shouts.
“God damn it!” M shouts.
And so on, anesthetically.
I go to the window and press my face to the glass. The neighboring building and its grinning billboard blocks any view of the city at large, but I can see the narrow street below. Axiom employees are rushing out of Freedom Tower like a swarm of beige ants, loading crates into trucks, people into buses—evacuating.
A blast of wind hits the window and I feel it in the glass like an angry shove.