“Help!” he called. “Help them. Please.” He turned and fell into Reese, and she caught him, realizing the blood on his arms wasn’t from his earlier wounds but welling from his stomach and chest.
She saw the enforcers in his mind. They were in the chamber where the sick children lay. In the image, a sketch now frozen inside her, she saw one man staring mockingly down into a pleading face . . . and firing.
“They killed them all,” Cooper rasped. “They’re dead, all dead. Your friends too. I’m sorry.”
His body went completely limp, threatening to take Reese down with him to the floor, but Jaxon was already pulling him away. He lay the man on his back in the corridor, his unseeing eyes staring upward.
Kentley reached them. “What happened?” He placed his hand on Cooper’s chest, closing his eyes as if mentally feeling for a heartbeat.
“Enforcers,” Reese said, “They’re inside.” She struggled to maintain composure, though the sketch burned at her. “He said they’re shooting everyone.”
“Can you help him?” Jaxon asked Kentley.
The doctor shook his head. “He’s gone.” He put his hands over the man’s eyes, pulling the lids shut.
“Is there any other way out?” Jaxon asked.
Kentley shook his head. “Not that we could get through. Just the sea. But there is barely a strip of sand, and the tide’s coming up. It’s too dangerous. We might be able to hide.”
Jaxon shook his head. “We’d better get out now while they’re spread out and searching. Otherwise we’ll get trapped.” He looked at Reese. “You okay?”
She nodded. And she was. The horror still resonated inside her, and she felt the urge to draw, but the panic was gone. By contrast, the doctor was shaking. Reese put an arm through his and dragged him to his feet.
“Lead the way,” she told Jaxon.
Jaxon hurried to the next bend, where he signaled that two enforcers in full battle gear, blues plus helmets, were coming their way. Jaxon and Reese retraced their steps and hid in another hallway until the men passed. They’d gone only a few meters when they found another bloodied victim—a woman this time, lying on her side in a fetal position.
Kentley didn’t even check her pulse. “Gone,” he whispered.
A shot whizzed past them, barely missing Reese, but Jaxon was already firing. He hit the enforcer in the chest, and the force of the shot in his body armor slammed him into the wall. Jaxon pounced on him, punching the bit of exposed face again and again until he lay still. Another enforcer skidded around a corner, and Reese blasted him with three shots. He fell and didn’t get up, though his suit would probably save his life.
They were moving again, but Kentley was a dead weight. His shaking was worse now, and he began sobbing softly to himself. “We have to get him out of here,” she said. “He’s taking in too much emotion.”
Jaxon leaned over Kentley and said, “Doctor, you need to focus. We’re trying to get you out of here. Are we going the right way?”
Kentley’s eyes fixated on him, as if trying to process the words. Finally he nodded. “Always to the right from here. We’re almost to the infirmary. After that, it’s only a short hall before the exit.”
They ran softly up the passageway for a good stretch. Then Jaxon skidded to a stop, holding up a fist. His eyes were glazed and unfocused, as if seeing something only he could see. One, two, three heartbeats passed until Reese wanted to scream with the inaction. Abruptly, Jaxon fired as an enforcer rounded the bend. He followed with a jab of his rifle into the man’s face that sent him crashing to the floor. They hurried on.
Jaxon picked off two more enforcers in the same way as Reese struggled to pull the doctor along. She understood that somehow with the doctor’s presence, Jaxon had gained a temporary control over his premonitions, perhaps dampening them until they were only useful glimpses that didn’t incapacitate him.
The path back seemed to take far longer than Reese expected, but they finally stood outside the infirmary in the hallway leading to the entrance. “We have to save them,” Kentley said, his words coming in short gasps.
With a grimace, Jaxon pushed open the infirmary door, and they stepped inside. Reese dropped the doctor’s arm as he stumbled to the first bed, but one look had told Reese there were no survivors. Even the short fringer, the man who had stroked his son’s face so lovingly, lay draped over his son as if trying to protect him. Fury built in Reese, and she pointed her gun at the door, almost willing the Special Forces leader to enter. She knew he’d made this call because local enforcers would have arrested and sent them to the colonies.
Jaxon grabbed the doctor, who had fallen to his knees clutching his head and moaning, and hauled him to his feet. “Let’s go,” he growled.
Kentley let himself be pushed toward the door. The short hallway leading to the entrance was still empty. As they reached the end of it, Reese noticed the doctor had stopped trembling and carried the pistol in his hand as if finally serious about using it.
Jaxon closed his eyes briefly, then raised two fingers. Reese nodded.
They rounded the bend together. Two enforcers stood guard before the metal door that was pulled halfway upward. One leaned over the bodies of two dead fringers, rifling through their pockets. Neither got off a shot before Reese and Jaxon peppered them with enough bullets to cut them down.
Kentley also fired, and Reese turned to see an enforcer staggering under the hit in the hallway behind them. She let off a burst from her assault rifle as he tried to fire back. He stumbled and fell. Shouts and the sound of running feet reached them as she and Jaxon grabbed Kentley and rushed to the metal door, ducking under it. The iTeevs of the men they shot would be registering their conditions, whether dead or unconscious, and reinforcements and detection drones would be on the way.
They ran as fast as they could drag Kentley through the rubble of the empty zone, and the farther away from the cave, the more he kept up. “Go right,” he said as they reached a particularly large mass of twisted metal. “There’s an opening under this that goes for several kilometers. Used to be a sky train rail. It’ll confuse the drones.”
They dived into the small hole, wiggling under the metal. Pounding feet ran by and Reese was sure she heard the buzz of one of the larger drones.
“This way,” Kentley said.
The direction was pointless as forward was the only option. For some time, they had to crawl, dust clogging their throats and rocks digging into their hands and knees, but the way soon opened up and they were able to crouch over and run, making better time.
The trail came out suddenly in open space, where Kentley lifted a hand, asking them to stop. His face was flushed with physical effort, but he seemed to be stable emotionally now. “I need to warn Debs and the others at the house, in case someone at the cave told the enforcers about them.” He began texting on his iTeev.
Reese’s stomach clenched. “Cooper said our friends were dead,” she remembered. “That he was sorry.” She hadn’t let herself dwell on that until now. How much had he told enforcers before they’d shot him?
Jaxon surveyed the rubble-strewn area, his rifle ready. “Are you sure your message won’t be detected?”
“Drones will be able to pick up the emissions if they’re nearby, but the message is encrypted. We have a relay that’s piggybacked on the Teev. It doesn’t allow voice calls, but we get texts through. After I’m finished, I’ll turn it off.”
Whatever Kentley was doing, it was taking too long. Reese felt exposed and anxious. She watched the sky for drones, though if enforcers used the smaller ones, any sound warning would come too late.
Color bled from the doctor’s face. He sat down heavily, missing a boulder and sliding into the dirt. “No one is answering. They always answer. I think we’re too late.”
Chapter 14
LAUGHTER PIERCED EAGLE’S awareness. Clud! he thought. His head was pounding, and his chest felt as if a huge rock compressed his lungs. Had he passed out in the empty zo
ne when something fell on him?
No, he’d fallen on the stairs, but they’d carried him somewhere. He’d heard them talking.
The room gradually came into focus with the help of his special glasses, the ones he’d created to allow him to see as his vision decreased. He could “see” people in the room now, even with his eyes shut. The glasses translated everything they recorded and sent the information through the connection in his temples. Opening his eyes did help some, but he was so close to blind that it wasn’t all that important, except his brain seemed to like his eyes open when the glasses were on.
With the numerous paintings and image receptors staring back at him as they had done in the hallway, he felt dizzy. Colors assaulted him, colors he knew were different from what others saw with their naked eyes. Some things simply glowed. His brain calculated how many of the images there were, how far apart, and the sizes of the frames. Every centimeter was diagrammed. He could even tell the exact weight if he correctly guessed the composition. But he had to signal the glasses with a few eye movements to block some of the infrared on the spectrum until his brain was fully functional and his senses could catch up.
“He’s awake!” Nova moved toward him and knelt beside the couch where he lay. “How are you feeling?”
“Head hurts, and it feels like someone’s been using me as a punching bag, but besides that, I’m fine.”
“That good, huh? Well, you’re supposed to drink lots of water.” She reached for something out of view and came back with a plastic skin.
He took a gulp while lying down, only because he couldn’t imagine moving. Water sloshed out of his mouth and dribbled down his face to the couch. He closed his eyes. He could still see the room in his mind and calculate each section.
“Is he going to die?” asked a child’s voice, a little girl.
“No, silly,” Nova said. “Go back and deal those cards. It’s your turn.” To Eagle, she added. “The doctor fixed your internal bleeding and gave you something to help you make more blood. I think that’s where the water comes in. The more you drink, the better.”
Eagle could feel Nova starting to move, but he put his hand on her shoulder without opening his eyes. “Wait. Help me sit up.”
“Are you sure?”
Eagle nodded and then wished he hadn’t. “Yes.” He slowly opened his eyes and looked around the room. The assault was less now, as the habit of filtering out light and sound waves that didn’t matter kicked in. Nova pulled him up none-too-gently, and he stifled a groan. He had to remind himself that she was only fourteen.
Now seated, his brain perfectly flipped the schematic it had drawn, so the original dizziness didn’t recur. His brain also began dimming the brightness of the infrared, so the glasses didn’t have to. No one understood how he could see so much with the dark glasses, and he’d given up trying to explain that they were simply a way to bypass his eyes to give his brain the information it would have ordinarily received. The glass lenses themselves didn’t “fix” his eyes, as they did for people as they aged.
“I’m going back to play the game, okay?” Nova said. “Let me know if you need me.”
Eagle traced her steps back to the table. Twelve steps for Nova, though it had been fifteen for the little girl, and five point four eight meters for both of them. Thane was there with a young boy, and they were playing some kind of game with cards that looked similar to cash credits. He calculated the size of the cards, noted their color as a dark purple that the children would translate as pure black, then took another deep gulp of the water. The pounding in his head was easing, and he did feel stronger than when they’d arrived. The internal bleeding must not have been too severe, or he would have collapsed sooner.
With his fingers, he tested his back ribs. He could feel bruising, but not the cutting pain he’d experienced before. He drank again.
The old woman, Debs, appeared in the doorway. Eagle recognized her more for her body measurements than for her face, as light from the sun and the holo emitters outside angled through the window, partially masking her features. By habit, he calculated the angle of light and how it would look a minute later.
“So, you’re up,” she said, stepping forward out of the direct light. “Would you like something to eat?”
Nausea choked Eagle’s throat. “Thank you, but not now.”
“You really should eat,” Nova said from the table. “Her food is amazing.”
Did the woman’s wrinkled face soften? Eagle could see that it did. She liked Nova, at least, though the feelings didn’t extend to him.
“I’ll bring you something,” Debs said, “and you can eat it when you do feel like it. You look like you could use a cup of brew too.”
Eagle nodded agreement, and when she brought the tray, with cut apples, raspberries, broccoli twigs, pungent cheese, and soft bread, he suddenly was hungry. The brew was bitter, but he’d expected that, and downed it in two long gulps despite the heat. As he ate, Nova filled him in on finding the doctor and where he’d taken Jaxon and Reese.
“How long have they been gone?” he asked.
Nova frowned. “At least an hour. You think that’s too long?”
“I don’t know.”
When Debs came in to collect the tray, nodding in satisfaction at his short work of it, he asked, “How long does it usually take to visit the place where my friends went?”
“The doctor is always gone several hours, but that’s when he’s treating patients. They should be back any minute.” She set the nearly empty water skin on the tray. “I’ll get you more to drink.”
“Thank you.”
She had barely returned with the skin when the front door opened and one of the men who had been guarding the fence hurtled into the house, passing the doorway in his haste before seeing them and backpedaling. He leapt more than walked into the room.
“Enforcers!” he said. “They’re cutting down the gate. With something strong. We have only a few minutes. Maybe a bit more until they pass the holo emitters and find the house.”
Debs gasped. “Where’s Namon?”
“He’s letting out the beast. That might give us more time.”
Beast? Eagle thought the way he said it was ominous.
“I’m going to hold them off with Namon until you’re out,” the fringer added.
“No, come with us,” Debs pleaded.
For an answer, he shook his head and rushed from the room. Debs stared after him for a few seconds, her face one of pure agony. Then it was gone. She clapped her hands. “Children! Grab the packs. Run to the back gate and wait for me there. This is not a drill.” Her gaze fell on Eagle. “You’re welcome to come, but you’ll have to keep up and carry your own things.”
Nova was already grabbing one of the bags. Eagle pulled his rifle from the other one, slinging the strap over his shoulder, and started to pick up the bag. Nova thrust hers at Thane and grabbed the straps of the second bag from Eagle.
“I got it.” She sounded determined enough that he let her do it.
The children led the way down the hall, and Eagle turned to see Debs pouring something from a large green container. He went to help her and the stench of accelerant filled his nostrils.
“Just go!” The woman shouted at him. “Keep your gun ready. The beast will be attracted by their noise, but it might attack the kids.”
Attack the kids? What kind of beast was it?
He hurried after the children, down the hall, through a tiny kitchen, and out the back of the house. From there they cut right, running along a path near a garden that was verdant with greens even in mid-October. Beyond that was a squat greenhouse bordered by apple trees.
“Where’s Debs?” the little boy shouted when they reached the gate to the inner wire fence that surrounded the house and yard. Thane was already opening it.
“There!” Nova shouted.
Debs ran toward them, fire blossoming in the windows of the house behind them. The old woman didn’t so much as look at the gar
den or the greenhouse but ran with her eyes fixed on the children. An oversized pack bounced against her back, until Eagle wondered if it might knock her over.
Eagle heard an explosion beyond the front of the house, and then shouts. The enforcers were through the metal outer gate, or would be in a few seconds.
“Go, go, go!” Debs shouted as she ran toward them. “You know the way.”
Thane ran across the open space, curving further right. Eagle wondered if he was heading toward the hole they’d entered because if so, they would probably be seen by the enforcers.
All thoughts fled as an inhuman roar sliced through mortal shouts. The sound made Eagle’s skin crawl and his blood pound in his ears. What in Breakdown is that?
Thane darted around a bush and began pushing on what looked like a patch in the outer metal wall. Nova surged forward to help. “It won’t open!” her voice was panicked.
Debs caught up with them and threw herself at the door scraping and pulling. “It’s fused shut. I can’t open it.”
By Eagle’s calculations, they were thirty meters from the other opening but only a few meters from where he’d heard the explosions. The shouts they heard were coming closer.
Eagle tried his hand at moving the top piece of metal, but he had no success either.
“We’ll have to go through the front.” Debs voice was defeated.
“No,” he said, reaching for his bag and pulling it from Nova’s shoulder. “All of you, step back behind the bush. Now!”
It took him three seconds longer than he’d hoped to find the least powerful of his plastic explosives but less time to set it. Given the size and the composition, he needed exactly two centimeters to loosen the door. Any more than that might twist the metal, making it impossible to open. He slapped in a fuse and stepped back, blowing it.
The loud boom! was muffled by another ferocious, otherworldly scream coming from the front of the compound.
Eagle jumped forward and pushed back the metal patch, revealing an opening as tall as his waist. “Hurry!” he urged.
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