by Ashanti Luke
Cyrus elbowed the man writhing beneath him and then hopped to his feet. The soldier rolled feebly toward him, but Cyrus kicked him in the side of his head to halt his advance. Cyrus turned as Davidson collapsed, a sparkle of electricity dancing across his chest. The soldier on the left that had zapped Davidson from across the lobby moved his thumb across the black box. Even though he was several meters away, the soldier looked nervous as he tried to pick his next target. Milliken, who had rushed toward the other soldier on the right, dropped to the floor just as the soldier in front of him fired his own box. The bolt streaked over Milliken and left a blue scar in the air as Milliken’s momentum carried him into the soldier’s legs. Milliken grappled the man’s legs with his own and then twisted his body to the right. The man collapsed, extending his arms awkwardly to break his fall. There was a loud pop as the man attempted to brace himself with his arm but failed. The soldier’s body went limp in mid air, his arms collapsing awkwardly beneath him, allowing his head to smack against the tiled floor. Even as his body collapsed, and as the sickening snap from the man’s shattered arm still resonated through the lobby, Milliken continued his roll, drawing in his left leg and extending it into the back of the soldier’s head. The left soldier, realizing he was about to be flanked as Milliken rolled to his feet, was stymied. He turned back to his right quickly and aimed the box at Cyrus. After losing consciousness once, even for a moment, Cyrus knew that above all else, he had to stay on his feet if they were to make it out of here. The thought sent a tremor through his body as the black box faced him. His eyes focused on the man’s shoulders because the shoulders always move first, but the man was too far away, and his clothes were too baggy. As Cyrus dove to his right, he wasn’t sure if the man was about to press the button, or if he had already pressed it.
The box had begun humming in Torvald’s hand, and in the time before it discharged, Milliken had taken out his guard, and the other guard had turned, aiming his own box at Cyrus. Cyrus stood directly in front of Torvald, blocking his shot, and Torvald felt a bitter heat in his throat as his stomach compressed. Cyrus dove out of the way, drawing the other guard’s attention. Then, as Cyrus’s body stretched and then compressed into a ball like a pouncing house-cat, Torvald’s box discharged, sending a bolt into the ribs of the guard just as his own box fired. The guard’s body twitched violently then stiffened and fell as the bolt streaked toward Cyrus.
Cyrus had stretched out and had rolled past Toutopolus between two unconscious soldiers. When the guard had fired at Milliken, the distance had made the electric crackle come just after the blue streak had coursed from the black box, but Cyrus heard the snap of static almost simultaneous with the blue flash in the corner of his eye, and he was sure he was going down. But as he dipped his shoulder and flattened across the floor, he saw the hair stand on the already unconscious soldier next to him, and he could smell the metallic twinge of ozone as tendrils of dissipating current danced across the body that had shielded him. Cyrus lifted his knees and rolled backward, standing at the end of the roll. Cyrus flattening against the wall as the guard that had fired at him spun and fell awkwardly, static electricity leaping across his own chest and face. Cyrus looked around. Everyone he had involved in the plan was up except Davidson. Rousseau, Tsuchiya, and Koresh were down, and Qin was huddled in the corner shielding his head. Bin Hassan stood frozen in place yelling in Arabic.
“Get Davidson and head to the dock!” Cyrus yelled, pointing to Davidson’s fallen body.
“What about the others?” Toutopolus asked.
“Just get to the dock. They are coming and I need to distract them!” Cyrus heard footfalls coming down the stairs, “Go now goddamn it!” He knew the soldiers could probably hear him, but the roar of the sprinklers probably muffled his commands. Besides, it probably would not matter anyway.
Cyrus launched himself off the wall toward the stairwell door. Torvald turned, tossed Cyrus the black box, and yelled, “Charge it first! Green fires,” then turned to help scoop up Davidson.
Winberg sat in a surveillance room that was on the same floor of the barracks. A series of holomonitors displayed the events of the escape attempt as they unfolded. What had initially looked like an imminent slaughter now looked like a possibility. Winberg could see these soldiers had no idea what they were doing. The only one who seemed to understand how to quell more than a riot of belligerent teens was Denali—and he was now on his way to the infirmary on a gurney.
These men wanted to believe this band of wayward and confused scientists were spies, and Dr. Chamberlain was doing a good job of convincing them of such. Hell, with the exception of some awkward hesitation here and there, Chamberlain and his cronies looked like they had been trained for this sort of thing. And so far, it was all working in Winberg’s own favor.
Denali seemed sharp, but it seemed like a distinct lack of demand for real soldiers had reduced the acumen of his charges to that of mere peacekeepers. This particular melee was, in fact chaos, but the chaos had been organized and manipulated; Dr. Chamberlain was more than a pugnacious muckraker, more than a renegade chimp jockeying for belly room. Winberg could feel a certain amount of respect engendering within him as the escape played out. He still despised the man’s lack of refinement, his plebian mannerisms, but he could see an inkling of what made these men, who had been soft-cultured in the halls of academia, fling themselves at armed soldiers as if the mere fact that Chamberlain had said they would be okay made it so...
...but sitting here, hearing the second-in-command issue the order to lock down the louvers and release the uberhounds, Winberg knew it would not be okay.
When Winberg had offered his assistance to the Ashans, he had been fully prepared to use Dr. Chamberlain’s reckless indignation to further his own plan at Chamberlain’s expense. But now, he could see the indignation was not as reckless as he would have liked to have believed, and he felt like a coward for not having seen it sooner. “No, that’s exactly what he wants you to do! You’ll be playing right into his plan!” Winberg belted as he lifted his hand to halt Quadrad Chaldea. It no longer felt like sacrificing Chamberlain and his adherents was acceptable, but that had little bearing, at least at the moment, on the success of his own plans.
“Yamina!” Go right, Uzziah had yelled at the bottom of the stairs. As soon as he had thrown the door from the stairwell open, it felt as if every hair on Tanner’s body stood on end. Jang stood to the left of the door with his back to the wall as a bolt of what looked like lightning streaked between him and Tanner. But Uzziah had already gone through the door, hurling the rifle at whomever or whatever had fired the bolt. Tanner flashed across the doorway to Jang’s side and caught a glimpse of Uzziah reaching for a guard opposite Jang on the other side of the wall and of two guards positioned several meters away in front of the door. One looked as if he was falling, but it was hard for Tanner to discern out of the corner of his eye. Another bolt flashed behind Tanner, seemingly coming from the two figures at the edge of his vision, but he was already across the doorway. He stopped in front of Jang, spun, and charged through the door on the side opposite Uzziah, where he was sure another guard would be waiting.
Uzziah threw his left hand toward the guard who lifted one hand from his rifle to block. As soon as their wrists connected, Uzziah lifted his leg and extended it into the guard’s midsection. The guard stumbled backward, but stabilized himself. The guard planted his feet, and then stepped forward, swinging the butt of his rifle around in an arc—but Uzziah had expected this, and he lunged forward himself, landing beside the man outside the swing of his rifle. Uzziah blocked the follow-through with his right hand, pulled the man toward him slightly by his elbow, and then turned, driving a knee into the man’s kidney. As the man’s body buckled, Uzziah was already behind him, pulling the man’s right arm behind his back into a chicken wing. Uzziah reached around, gripped the man’s left hand over the handle of the rifle, and pulled the rifle back into his throat. Uzziah tightened his grip and pulled the
man closer as he gagged. How unlikely and unfortunate for this man, Uzziah thought, that we are both left-handed. It was however, fortunate for Tanner, Jang, and himself, because it was going to be their way out of here.
The man had lifted his rifle as Tanner vaulted out the door, but Tanner moved to his left, grabbed the rifle barrel with his left hand, and pulled as he brought his elbow up and across the nose of the soldier. The soldier had stumbled backward, blood erupting from his nose, but remarkably had held his footing. Tanner had let his momentum carry him into a spin, bringing the back of his left elbow around into the man’s face again. The man’s body had crumpled, and Tanner had finished his spin, bringing his right fist around like a club across the back of the man’s neck. The man’s body had slumped to the floor and a pool of blood had begun spreading from the man’s face. Tanner had turned, prepared to dive across the floor to avoid whatever the men were shooting at them, but he saw Uzziah, using one of the guards as a shield, covering the two men in front of the door. One of them was picking himself off the ground, Uzziah’s original rifle on the ground next to him, while the other stood tough, but from the look in his eyes, clearly stymied.
“Drop your weapons!” Uzziah ordered, moving closer to the men and adjusting the rifle to point at them, conveniently shifting the tension on the strap to keep pressure on his hostage’s neck. “Tikra le Jang, kach ekdach, ve lech!” he said to Tanner. Get Jang, get a gun, and go!
Cyrus stood to the right of the stairwell door as heavy footfalls echoed through the stairwell. He shifted the black box into his left hand and pressed the blue button. His breathing was exaggerated, but every time he took notice of his breathing he remembered, ‘In through the nose, out through the mouth.’ His heart pounded against his insides, vibrating his entire body in an allegro rhythm, but it was not a disadvantage. He was nervous, on edge, and with at least four men coming down the stairs a meter or so away, he needed it—because it kept him sharp, his muscles ready, and most importantly, because it incensed him into doing something as egregiously stupid as he was about to do.
As soon as the door creaked, he launched himself into the mix. In their midst, it would be hard for them to get a good hit, but easy for him. He slammed into the guard that was about to enter first, checking him against the jamb of the door. Cyrus fired a kick back into the door, hoping the soldier that had opened it was still holding onto it. They had been staggered in a two-by-two formation, but he had expected that. He could see the other two were still on the landing, caught off-guard by his advance, but even now, must have been steadying themselves for a shot with their lightning boxes. The soldier against the jamb lifted his knee up into Cyrus’s midsection and Cyrus felt his insides convulse. He began to tense the muscles in his abdomen to hold back the convulsion, but then he let it release. He threw his head forward as his body wretched, driving his forehead into the guard’s nose as vomit erupted into his own mouth. He had eaten only enough to ensure his blood sugar levels could sustain some effort, and now the acidic chyme from that food burned through his chest and the back of his throat as it filled his mouth. The other guard must have been holding the door, because he had hesitated, but was now bearing in on Cyrus. Cyrus spun, bringing an elbow across the temple of the guard next to him as the other guard reached for his throat. Cyrus blocked the man’s advance, but grappled his wrist and yanked him in. The man followed with a right, leaving his rifle to rest on its strap, but Cyrus ducked. The attack caught the guard behind him, who had been dazed by Cyrus’s initial attack. Cyrus drove his knee up into the advancing guard’s ribs, and as the air in the man’s lungs escaped his mouth and nose, widening his face and eyes, Cyrus expelled the contents of his mouth into them in a mist and brought his left elbow backward into the face of the man behind him.
Cyrus spun the soldier in front of him into a chokehold as the man flailed at his stinging eyes and nostrils, screaming. Cyrus fired the black box under the man’s arms and caught a guard on the landing in his chest as another bolt streaked out toward him. The bolt caught the flailing guard in his stomach and Cyrus immediately pushed the man’s body aside as static yanked at the hairs of his own beard. Cyrus bounded up the stairs as the last soldier dropped his black box and forgoing his rifle, lifted his leg.
Cyrus jumped to the right and realized he was a several centimeters higher than what he, or the soldier, had expected. He rebounded from the wall and extended his body into a punch, but even off-guard, the man was quick enough to block. Cyrus pulled his left foot beneath him and kicked with his right, but the man turned, catching Cyrus’s shin with the side of the metal rifle. A splitting shock shot up Cyrus’s leg, through his knee, and into his groin, but he ignored it and fired a jab and then a body punch. The man blocked both and followed by lifting his own knee. Cyrus side-stepped and they faced each other again with the stairs to Cyrus’s right. Cyrus was sure he could beat this man—Milliken was this fast on a good day—but there wasn’t time for this. The man threw another jab and Cyrus blocked, but as the man followed with his right, Cyrus knew what had to be done. He stepped in, let the punch hit him, rolled with it, and then grabbed the guard’s collar and dropped. As Cyrus dropped, he pulled the man on top of him. The man was unable to resist due to the momentum of his own punch, and Cyrus, planting his foot in the man’s ribs, kicked out as soon as they hit the floor, launching the man down the stairs. Cyrus rolled quickly to his feet and bounded up to the next floor.
Tanner ushered Jang through the front of the building, covering the outside with the assault rifle as they barreled through the glass door. The rifle felt cold and awkward in Tanner’s hand. He would have preferred a staff or a sword, but this clunky, callous piece of metal would have to do. As the door closed behind them, Tanner saw spots as his eyes adjusted to the artificial night outside the building. There was a writhing mass of people gathered on the opposite side of the ave and there seemed to be guards here and there among them. These guards appeared to be more municipal than soldiers, and they seemed unaware of the chaos inside the building Tanner and Jang had just left.
Tanner followed the eyes of the throng upward to the convoy of levs and lorries that were converted into various shapes and were floating by several meters above their heads.
One of the levs spewed flames, inciting cheers from the crowd as they looked on. Tanner took notice of the dragon-shaped float as it approached. He heard Jang ask something like, “How are we gonna get up to them?” but he had already flipped the assault rifle onto his back and was leaping onto one of the titanic statues that flanked the entrance to the building. The leap carried him several centimeters higher than he had expected, but he still managed to get a foothold on the statue. Clambering up the statue to its arm was much easier than Tanner had expected. When he reached the arm, he had only a second or two to position himself to jump onto the back of the float. As he landed, Tanner swung the assault rifle under his arm. He caught it clumsily, but with enough authority to scare the men riding on the back of the float into submission. Tanner checked over his shoulder to make sure the sniffers on the street were still preoccupied with the crowd. He was not comfortable with his current position, but he had been less comfortable in the custody of half-wits. After the men on the float sat with their hands above their heads, Tanner leaned the assault rifle barrel into the window. “Set it down over there or I finish you!”
As the lev descended to where Jang was standing, Tanner kept his eye on the men on the float to make sure they didn’t have any twinges of heroism. Had he really been reduced to a common levjack?
No.
These men would go home to their families, and eventually they would get over whatever shock they were feeling at the moment. It may have been a little selfish, but it was miniscule next to whatever fate awaited them all if they stayed. There was no guarantee whatever life they might have outside the custody of their captors would be better, and there was no guarantee that they would not be captured again, but at least, on the outside, they could hav
e the illusion that their fate was their own. An illusion that these frightened men in front of him already had. So, as the lev set down next to the entrance, and Uzziah, assault rifle blazing, came backpedaling through the front door, Tanner swallowed his distaste for this whole situation.
And then, by the time the magistrates monitoring the parade had figured out something was amiss, Jang was already raising the lev to the upper dock at a speed that pinned Tanner and Uzziah to the dragon’s back.
Dr. Villichez stood in the midst of the chaos, briny water cascading over him as grown men, educated men, who after weeks of confinement and bewilderment had been reduced to their lowest common denominator, had lost what little composure they had left. He stood, unable to move, horrified by the degenerating humanity around him. Dr. Winberg had been ushered around the corner by two soldiers, while two Flying Monkeys held Villichez, Dr. Cohn, and Dr. Murphy at gunpoint. Dr. Cohn stood, his hands clasped on top of his head, whimpering among the bodies of unconscious guards, some stirring as the cold sprinklers whelmed them back to consciousness. Dr. Murphy had sat on the ground against a wall, his mind taking him to a place he could actually bear, oblivious to the commands for him to stand. There was a clamor inside the stairwell, and there was some sort of commotion at the edge of the dais that Cyrus had leapt over using the guard commander’s head as an anchor point. The second guard had turned his attention over the dais, and had aimed his gun at something when Villichez heard dogs barking. That was when the gunfire started.
Torvald and Toutopolus had scooped up Davidson with alarming ease and were already through the doors to the dock when they heard the barking. Whatever miracle Cyrus had in the works had not happened yet, and as the three uberhounds bounded down the corridor toward them, Toutopolus wondered if it ever would happen. He had fumbled the black box and had almost dropped it before pressing the blue button to charge it. Then, as the uberhounds had fanned out in the lobby to flank them, Milliken had stepped back through the doorway, and he had a rifle.
