THE AFTERNOON WARMTH had just begun to fade when Samantha heard the trucks arrive.
She knelt amid dappled sunlight beside a sack half-full of freshly picked jackfruit that still glistened with clinging raindrops from a brief morning storm.
From below came the rapid-fire sound of doors thudding closed. A dozen or so, she guessed, feeling her stomach twist into a knot. Grillo had brought the cavalry, which could mean nothing good.
An image forced its way into her mind. Seven dead Jacobites, facedown in that dirty road in the Narrows. What else could he be here for?
The idea of running, of sliding down the back of the hangar and loping off through the weeds and into the Maze, came to her first. A glance in that direction dispelled the idea as quickly as it had formed, however. Two outriders on electric motorcycles ambled along the fence line, rolling to a stop once even with the hangar. Their white Jacobite ponchos took on an orange hue that matched the perfect disk of the sun, now kissing the tops of the buildings to the west.
She stood with a groan, pressed one hand to the base of her sore spine, and drew the other across her sweaty brow. Briefly she toyed with the idea of pretending she hadn’t heard them, of making Grillo climb up here to speak with her. This idea she also discarded. Every time he’d made a visit to the hangar she’d made it a point to meet him at the door. A change in behavior now might be exactly what he was looking for.
Besides, this could just be another spur-of-the-moment mission. Or perhaps he’d simply learned of her visit to Vaughn and had come to voice his disapproval. She swore under her breath at the thought of once again making him the subject of Grillo’s attention. But this, at least, she thought she could argue her way out of. There’d never been any explicit order to stay away from the man.
Decision made, Sam left her spade and hand shovel where they lay and climbed down the ladder. It led to a door that entered into the hangar’s second level. Inside, the cavernous room was very dark. A few lights were on near the massive sliding doors where her two constant guards had been watching a sensory. One was frantically trying to turn off the display while the other waited at the door control.
Neither had noticed her entrance, even as her boots hit the catwalk that ringed the interior of the building. It wasn’t until she’d marched to the halfway point that one of them glanced up at her, relief visible even from that distance. One of them should have been watching her, and now they would appear to have been doing just that.
A vertical line of light appeared as the huge doors began to roll aside. Soon the shadows of a dozen people, cast long by the late afternoon sun, began to stretch across the concrete floor.
Sam hopped down from the catwalk onto a stack of wooden pallets, then to the floor itself. She gathered herself and forced the knot in her gut to one corner of her mind. Belatedly she realized her clothing bore fresh soil stains. Likely her face did, too. Not that Grillo had ever shown the slightest interest in her or anyone else’s appearance. His own flawless presentation often came across as an unspoken demand that others do the same. Oh well, she thought, and hoped her state of cleanliness would imply a casual, innocent state of being. She continued toward the center of the room as Grillo and his men began to file in.
It took every shred of willpower she had to keep walking as the group came into full view. Grillo stood just off center, and standing beside him was a man with a black hood covering his head. His faded gray T-shirt sported a dribble of blood right down the center.
Grillo had to urge the man forward. It became clear the hooded figure’s hands were bound, and that he was in pain. Or, at least, the anticipation of pain. He walked with pure apprehension, as if being forced into a furnace.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Who’s your friend?”
In answer Grillo stopped and yanked the hood from his captive’s head. The black cloth settled to the floor between the two men in a tidy little heap.
“Do you know this person?” Grillo asked, voice level.
Pascal.
She should have known from the clothing, the posture. She swallowed, and hoped against hope Grillo had not seen the recognition on her face.
Stalling, Sam tilted her head. Dried blood trailed from both of Pascal’s nostrils, giving the pilot the odd appearance of having a red mustache and goatee. Other than the bloodied nose, he seemed to be unharmed.
Sam’s mind raced. Had he already talked? Had they interrogated him and learned everything? She knew what kind of violence Grillo was capable of. Pascal, though, she did not know terribly well. They were friendly, but Sam had no idea how far the man would go to protect her, or to hold on to the truth of what had happened on that street. Even if he did harbor the kind of loyalty that required, was he the type of man who could withstand the sort of interrogation Grillo likely employed?
Suddenly his inclusion in their adventure to the Narrows seemed ill-advised. Stupid, in fact.
Maybe no interrogation had yet occurred. Maybe this was about something else entirely. She tried to bury the flood of worries that coursed through her under a façade of calm.
“Well?” Grillo asked.
“Of course. Yeah. He’s Pascal, one of the better pilots here on the strip. The blood threw me off. What happened, a brawl down at Woon’s?”
“I’m afraid not,” Grillo said. He released the pilot’s arm and let one of the flanking guards take over the job of holding the prisoner. With calm, fluid motions Grillo removed a white handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his hands. He looked at Samantha very deliberately then, not breaking the gaze until her eyes had met his. When they had, he turned, and walked back out through the wide hangar doors.
Sam followed, as she knew he’d expected her to do.
When they were out of earshot of the others, he wheeled on her. “Are you aware of what transpired two days ago in the Narrows?”
There’d been some talk at Woon’s. She’d listened like a spy to the conversations and all of it had the ring of rumor. The only common thread was that a Jacobite squad was ambushed. Some said in retaliation for the brutal crackdown on a Han game a few nights earlier. One drunkard claimed more subs had made it inside the aura and that they were only targeting the cult members. This had drawn howls of laughter.
Someone had even speculated that the vaunted, secretive private army of Prumble the Fence had finally reemerged to challenge Grillo. The guards had perked up at that comment, but it died out quickly. Prumble hadn’t been seen in two years, and the scavenger crews had all but written him off as dead.
She shrugged. “Nope. What happened? And what does it have to do with Pascal? He’s harmless.”
His gaze bore into her like a scalpel. Sam met it and held it, barely.
“An entire patrol of guardians are missing.”
“Jesus.” She covered her mouth. “Sorry, I mean—”
Grillo’s eyes narrowed. He worked his jaw for a moment before speaking again. “I’m low on patience today, Samantha.”
“I’m just shocked. Again, sorry.”
He pointed vaguely toward Pascal. “Your friend borrowed a truck from the gatehouse captain. The vehicle was seen in the area, and it’s been in some sort of accident.”
“You think he ran them over or something?”
Grillo studied her for a long moment. “What I think is irrelevant. He’ll tell us exactly what transpired.”
“I’m sure he will.” The knot in Sam’s stomach twisted with the cold realization that she meant it. She had to leave, she knew. Or silence Pascal somehow. She felt her pulse quicken. “Do you want me to talk to him?”
“You’ll forgive me if I decline that offer.”
She knew then, with absolute certainty, that Grillo knew more than he was letting on. But whatever he’d learned, it wasn’t yet enough to simply walk in and execute her.
Grillo’s thin mouth twisted into something approximating a smile. “Protecting your friend here, though understandable, is pointless. We have witnesses, on their way to Lyons now.”
She glanced at Pascal, forcing herself to turn her head slowly, as if trying to recall a forgotten conversation. The pilot would not meet her gaze, and this unsettled Samantha more than anything Grillo had said.
“Samantha, I’m giving you one last chance here to tell me what you know.”
Footsteps from the direction of the airport gate broke the tension. A boy of ten or eleven years strode up. He worked the cap spooler behind Woon’s, and twice a day during lulls he would run requests from outside to the scavenger crews. Sam had given him specific instructions the prior morning. Notes of a certain color, left in a certain place, were to be brought directly and immediately to her.
The boy held out his hand, a folded piece of red paper pinched between thumb and forefinger.
“For me?” Sam asked.
The kid smiled, revealing a jumbled mess of teeth.
She plucked the paper, swallowing with difficulty under the intense stare Grillo had leveled on her.
The note was from Skadz. Not wanting to further risk word of his presence, and more to the point his immunity, reaching Grillo, he’d taken to passing himself off as a desperate swagman. He would approach the airport fence well away from the main gate and push messages for her into the chain link like all the other pathetic requests, using distinctive red paper and a crude code hastily worked out two days earlier.
This exchange occurred four times in the forty-eight hours following their battle in the Narrows. Skadz learned that Jaya’s shop had been closed the day after the attack. The move to the basement at Selby Systems had been accelerated in the wake of the attack, apparently. Grillo might not know what happened, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
The latest message was simple:
2AM COFFEE. SUNDAY BEST.
The words opened a door in her mind. A door that led to a decision.
“Thank you,” she said to the kid. “There’s jackfruit on the roof. You can take two.”
“Three,” the kid said.
“We’re in the middle of a conversation here, young man,” Grillo said. “Return later for your payment.”
“Three,” the kid repeated.
Grillo started to raise a hand.
“Three,” Sam agreed. “But later, okay? After dinner.”
The child, oblivious to how close he’d come to a savage backhand, nodded and darted away.
“Is everything all right?” Grillo asked her.
Sam folded the note and slipped it in her pants pocket. “Fine. Just a jilted admirer, trying too hard.”
“Perhaps we could return to the matter at hand?”
She smiled at him now, finding confidence in the newfound clarity in her mind. “There’s really nothing else to say. Please, though, go easy on Pascal. Good pilots are hard to find.”
“That’s entirely up to him,” Grillo said. He studied her for a moment longer, then wheeled and went back to his truck. The entourage he’d brought followed suit. Pascal did not look at her as they stuffed him into the back of one of the vehicles. Within a minute the small fleet pulled away, scattering crews along the runway as they made their way to the gate.
She left the hangar after dinner, slipping down a ladder at the back. The rendezvous was still hours away, but she had a lot to do. Forcing herself to look casual, she waved at the guards posted outside and strolled down the runway looking for an aircraft recently returned from the Clear. Only one fit the bill. Sam approached the ragged scow, dubbed Radar Malfunction, and walked straight up the cargo ramp like she owned the thing. The captain, a brute of a man with all the character of the run-down ship itself, was mopping the deck, his back to her. His sweat-soaked undershirt clung to a disturbingly hairy torso thick with muscle and rounded by a healthy appetite for cider.
“Cervantes,” she said.
He stiffened, but didn’t turn. “Jesus. What now? We just got back for fuck’s sake.”
Sam looked past him. The forward crew compartment appeared to be empty. The door to the head was open a crack, so she doubted anyone was in there.
Cervantes put the mop into a scarred white bucket, oblivious to the dirty water that sloshed back onto the bare metal floor. He wiped his hands on a towel slung casually over his shoulder as he turned to face her. “If you want to borrow Nguyen, she’s down at Woon’s with everyone else, trying to drink away the stench.”
“Stench?”
He glared at her. “You can’t smell it?”
Sam sniffed the air. She caught a faint chemical odor, like sulfur.
Cervantes shrugged. “I guess the worst of it aired out, but they were stuck back here with the load for two hours. Even through our suits we could smell it. I don’t know what the hell Grillo needs all these chemicals for, but it’s nasty work, Sam. It’s a miracle no one yacked.”
Satisfied they were alone, Sam punched a button on the wall and waited for the hydraulic door to close and seal.
“The hell is this?” the man in front of her said.
“Too many Jakes about,” she said, allowing the slang for the sake of talking down to her audience. “I need a favor.”
“Shit. Just my luck. What is it?”
“Pretty simple. You go into the head, shut the door, and wait for five minutes.”
The squat man scratched at his shaggy beard and turned slowly toward the bathroom door, then back to her. “The hell are you on about?”
“Trust me, the less you know the better.”
“What’s in it for me?”
Sam narrowed her eyes. She felt the words of a threat trying to escape and steadied herself. “The choicest missions for an entire week.”
“A month.”
“Done.”
His eyebrows crept upward. Then he turned, walked into the small bathroom, and slid the door closed.
“Turn the fan on,” Sam said loud enough to ensure he heard. When the whir of the ventilation fan came on, she knelt and took her backpack off. From inside she produced a nylon duffel bag, spread it out, and opened it. Then she went to the lockers on the sidewalls of the cargo bay and threw the steel doors open wide.
Samantha spent a minute studying her choices. Cervantes and his crew were known for their crude approach to things, a reputation reflected in the equipment they stocked. None of his people were ex-military, and though the etiquette was to avoid asking people about their life before SUBS, Sam had heard interesting things about enough of the crew to know there were criminal pasts there. The pilot Nguyen, in particular, had apparently moved drugs between Darwin and Hanoi under the guise of a private executive flyer. A sour woman, but capable enough that Sam had sequestered her on a few of Grillo’s more ambitious actions.
Still, despite the lack of military-grade gear, they packed plenty of firepower. Four minutes later, Sam had her duffel filled with what she hoped would be enough to pull off what Skadz and Prumble had planned.
Finished, she went to the bathroom door and spoke loud enough for the occupant to hear. “I’m leaving now. I’m going to mumble some shit about borrowed tools when I go, and you’ll respond ‘No problem.’ Got that?”
“Again, best if you don’t know. Suffice to say, I can’t use my own stuff on account of the Jakes.”
“My crew is going to be pissed.”
“They won’t be for the month that follows, believe me.”
“Goddammit, Sam. Please don’t take any of Nguyen’s stuff. She’ll flay me alive.”
Sam turned and went to the door.
At the bottom of the ramp, Sam stopped on the tarmac and set her bag of borrowed gear down. She inhaled deeply, and a sudden wellspring of memories came sharply to mind. Hundreds of missions flown. Twice as many nights spent on a stool at Woon’s trading stories of the Clear with whoever would listen. Stories of success and failure and death. Death dealt, more often than not. Years of her life spent cleaning, prepping, sleeping, and fucking away the time between the dangerous forays out into the wastes beyond Darwin. And all the camaraderie that came with it.
Then the last two years, in charge. Generally hated. Grillo’s handpicked girl, dishing out orders to former friends who’d lost almost everything under the Jacobite’s rule that made this dangerous, difficult life one worth living.
“Goodbye,” Samantha whispered, unsure if she was about to ruin their lives utterly, or make things right.
“Oy,” Skadz said. He hefted a small machine gun from the bag and turned it about in his hand. Tiny skull-and-crossbones symbols were etched into the side of the pistol-sized device. The magazine sticking out the bottom of the grip was longer than the gun itself. “What gang did you roll to get this kit?”
Sam glared at him. “Cervantes.”
“Ah,” Skadz said, the matter settled. “He always did have a flair for this kind of shit.”
“I couldn’t exactly unload the weapons locker at the hangar.”
“Easy, Sammy. It was a smart play. This’ll do fine. Besides, if all goes well none of it will get used.”
Prumble eyed the selection. “You’re sure about this, Sam? Maybe Pascal won’t talk. You could be back in bed before dawn if you returned now.”
She shook her head. “You weren’t there. Grillo knows something, and he’ll find out more tonight if he hasn’t already. No, it was time.”
“Once they realize you’re missing …”
“I left a note for Woon, saying I’d decided to follow in Skadz’s footsteps and explore the Outback for a while.”
The black man slapped a clip of ammunition into his gun. “Brilliant idea. It really clears your mind, if you smoke the right leaves.”
Sam tried to smile but found she could not.
“It’ll make you look guilty,” Prumble noted. “Persona non grata.”
“Yeah, but Woon and a few others will say they saw me go, carrying a heavy backpack with all my belongings, headed for Aura’s Edge. Even if Grillo thinks I left just to save my skin, he’ll still think I left.”
“Unless you’re seen tonight, or in the days that follow. Maybe you should remain here, Samantha.”
From a zippered pocket on her thigh she removed two items. A pair of scissors, and a packet of black hair dye.
“That won’t disguise your stature.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Prumble groaned before offering a grudging, defeated nod. Then he returned his focus to the weapons laid out on the table. He hesitated for a few seconds before settling on two simple pistols, the kind people would buy for basic home defense. He stuffed them in his leather duster along with a handful of spare clips. Lastly, the big man grabbed three antique hand grenades. He winked at Sam as these disappeared inside his coat pocket.
Once the two men had made their choices, she removed the sawed-off shotgun she’d picked out for herself and loaded it with slugs. The barrel had an attachment for holding ten extra rounds, which she filled as well. On a whim she grabbed the last two grenades, returning Prumble’s wink. She gave one to Skadz and hooked the other on a belt loop before pulling her shirt back over the gear.
“Right,” Skadz said when she zipped the duffel bag closed. “Here’s what I had in mind …”
Selby Systems Ltd. was a dull gray building four blocks south of Grillo’s stadium-turned-airfield. The four-story structure had a manufacturing floor at the bottom and offices above, along with an assortment of chemical storage spheres at the southern end. The metal spheres, which varied in size from just a meter in diameter to almost ten, were all piped into the facility via a spaghetti maze of steel and plastic conduits. Scattered along these pipes were valves and welded junctions, some of which dripped fluid or vented gasses. A razor-wire fence surrounded the entire area.
Lights were on inside the building and throughout the supply apparatus. From the vantage point Skadz had found atop a nearby abandoned office complex, Sam could see Jacobite guards at every entrance. At least two patrols were covering the facility: one that circled the entire perimeter and another that focused solely on the spherical storage units.
Sam frowned. She’d heard from both Skadz and Jayateerth before him that the place was well guarded, but this seemed beyond paranoid. What, she wondered, was Grillo so worried about? A knot formed in her gut when a possible answer arose.
“Do you suppose he’s got the object here?” she asked.
Skadz held up a finger. He had a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes, and his mouth moved in a silent count of seconds passing. “A bit over three minutes for the main patrol to circuit,” he said. “What, Sam? No, Kip says the object is in Nightcliff.”
“Maybe Kip’s wrong.”
Skadz shook his head. Sweat gleamed on his dark skin. “I don’t think so.”
“So why so many guards here?”
“Protecting his assets,” Skadz said. “If what we heard is true, he’s got a bunch of space stations that have been moved around a lot recently, something they don’t normally do. This is the only place in Darwin, which is to say the only place left on the whole damn planet, that makes the fuel they need. If they’re not resupplied soon they might never be.”
“And now he’s got Jaya working here, too,” Prumble added. “A lot of eggs in one tidy basket.”
Tiny droplets of water began to pepper the roof around them. Sam felt the warmth as the light rain began to dapple the back of her neck. Far to the north the sky lit up with a scattershot of lightning flashes, a storm just over the horizon. If only it had been down here, Sam thought, we’d have some cover.
As if he’d heard her, Skadz opened the black briefcase he’d hauled along on their walk through the city. He hadn’t said where he’d acquired it, or explained the contents, but when Sam saw the telltale reflection of light off graphene fiber, she knew.
It only took Skadz thirty seconds to assemble the rifle.
“Jake would have liked to have that,” Sam said, admiring the high-end weapon. It looked brand-new.
“Not true,” Prumble replied. “I offered it to him, but when he declined I found a place to store it until he changed his mind. One of the few little prizes I hid around the city that was still unmolested.”
“Jake loved that big old stick he carried,” Skadz added with more than a little nostalgia. “I swear you stand that thing on its end and it’d be taller than you, Sammy.”
She grunted, realizing the truth in both their words. This gun, though much more modern, was barely half as long. Where Jake’s had a scope the size of a wine bottle, this one had a beer-can-sized sight. “I guess it’s time to decide who’s on sniper duty,” she said.
They all looked at one another, hoping someone else would volunteer.
“It should be you, Sammy,” Skadz said. “Grillo still thinks you’re the tea and biscuits. If one of us gets caught, you don’t know us. You can still carry on with this madness.”
She shook her head. “I’m a terrible shot. Prumble should do it. He’s slow and fat.”
Skadz winced.
Prumble threw a hand across his brow. “You wound me. I merely have delicate feet and a family of lemurs living in my coat.”
“Well, you two work it out,” Skadz said. “As a man of color I’m gifted with stealth and speed, among other advantages.”
Sam rolled her eyes, then stared at Prumble until he reluctantly picked up the sniper rifle and snapped the targeting legs into locked position. He began to position it on the edge of the roof.
“Let’s go, Sammy,” Skadz said.
She clapped Prumble on the shoulder and followed Skadz to the fire escape ladder they’d used to reach the roof. On the street below she took point, keeping to the shadows only when confident no surprises awaited. A quarter-moon near the horizon provided plenty of dark places, but the terrain was unfamiliar and she knew a trip and fall would be just as disastrous as being spotted.
Ten meters from the fence she ducked behind a low planter wall. Weeds choked the narrow basin, providing ample cover. She moved in far enough to let Skadz take the place at the end of the wall, and watched him. He leaned out, his attention split between his wristwatch and the active factory.
Sam could hear sounds of activity from the building clearly now. The rush of chemicals through pipes, the venting of pressure or excess gas. Electricity hummed through the apparatus, flowing up from a mini-thor somewhere below. Skadz had discovered when he scouted the site that the facility had originally relied on public power sources, and when it switched to a thorium reactor the private source had been routed into the same junction. A cheap and effective way to leave the public grid, with one nasty drawback: a single point of failure.
Skadz turned back toward Prumble’s vantage point and winked his flashlight twice.
Prumble fired the sniper rifle four seconds later. One single deafening crack and the street went dark.
“Go, go,” Skadz said.
Sam was already moving, letting adrenaline take over in a familiar addictive mental state she’d craved for so long. She’d felt it the day before on that street in the Narrows, but this was different. This was an assault on a guarded facility, not a sudden street brawl. It wasn’t hard to pretend she was somewhere outside Darwin—in Japan, or Israel maybe—pushing in on a choice site crawling with subs, Skyler at her back and Jake watching them from some distant perch. For the first time in months, she felt absolutely in her element, and she reveled in it.
Sam rounded the corner and surged forward toward the fence line. Cries of alarm were already echoing off the flat surface of the factory. Off to her left she saw the power junction box, a lick of flame roiling up from a hole in its side. Flashlights began to play across it. Two or three guards were already there, calling for a fire extinguisher. With any luck, they’d assume the crack of the sniper rifle had actually been a failure of some component within. Though Sam didn’t think it would take them long to notice the puncture went inward and not outward, a few seconds was all they needed.
She raced toward the southeast corner of the fence and looked for the stone Skadz had placed there the previous night. There. She angled toward it, lowered her shoulder, and burst through the fence in one swift motion. Skadz had cut the chain links in a perfect vertical line, then arranged the two sections of fence so they still appeared to be whole. Someone would have noticed eventually, but for their short-term goals the ploy worked perfectly.
He’d chosen the best possible location for their entry. Two rows of tall, rectangular steel boxes formed a passage of sorts. Sam moved more slowly now, having only the reflected light of the guards’ flashlights to illuminate her path. Cables as thick as her arm snaked around on the ground. She didn’t make any effort to quiet her footfalls with all the guards running about, but the footing was still treacherous.
At the end of the aisle was a simple maintenance door. Sam gritted her teeth as she approached, hoping to find it unlocked. She’d never find out, because three meters from the door it opened from the inside. Sam pulled up so fast that Skadz plowed into her back. If not for the nearby steel box she used to steady herself, they both would have fallen.
In the darkness it was hard to tell for sure, but she thought the person who emerged from the door was a factory worker, not a guard. She saw no hint of a gun or any weapon for that matter, just an average-sized man. His focus was on the electrical fire, and after only a short pause he rushed out toward it.
Samantha leapt forward and caught the door just before it clicked closed. She yanked it open, letting Skadz hold it so it wouldn’t swing shut against her back, and went inside.
When Skadz came in behind her and the door did close, the space went completely black. “Flashlights,” she whispered, turning on the one she’d attached to her shotgun with black electrical tape. Skadz held his in one hand, the miniature machine gun in the other.
A long hallway ran north, closed doors in regular intervals along each side. Down at the far end she saw a sudden flare of warm yellow light. A match being lit, then the glow of a candle.
“Stairs,” Skadz said. He gestured toward a door to their right. “Jaya said the basement.”
The door handle turned when she tried it. Sam pulled it open and cringed as the hinges creaked. She went in and down, two flights to the end of the stairwell and a lone door. This one was locked. “Shit,” she said.
“Kick it in,” Skadz said. “They’ll be on to us any second.”
“Can’t. It opens this way.” There was only one other choice. She leveled her shotgun at the handle and braced herself for the noise about to come. Her finger tensed on the trigger.
Then she let up.
“What—”
Sam placed a finger on Skadz’s lips. “Listen,” she whispered. “Footsteps.”
The shuffling sound of shoes on carpet, and getting louder. She pushed Skadz back a few steps and pressed herself against the wall behind where the door would open.
When it did, Sam grasped it and pushed back slightly, raising her shotgun in the same motion. In the heat of the moment she’d forgotten to turn off her flashlight, a realization that came too late. The person who’d come through the door stopped on the first step of the stairwell and turned around.
Sam was about to fire when she recognized Blink.
“I know you,” the girl said, bewildered and half asleep.
“Where’s Jaya?” Skadz asked.
“He went home.” Her facial tic began to manifest as she became fully awake. Hard, reflexive blinks.
“Good,” Skadz said. “Do you know where the special suit is? The big one he’s been working on?”
“I’ve been working on. I made it.”
Sam smiled at the doe-eyed child and gripped her by the shoulder. “Tell us where it is, honey.”
Blink pointed at a door a few meters down the hall, a flicker of fear starting to show on her face. Sam knelt down in front of her. “Do you know where Jaya lives? Where he’s staying?”
Her face became stern, as if suspecting a trick. “They gave us some space at the stadium.”
“Go to him now,” Sam said. “Don’t look back, okay?”
The girl stared at Sam until her blink reflex broke the spell. She nodded once, shrugged out of Sam’s grip, and took off down the hall like a spooked cat.
In the room she’d pointed out they found the custom-made environment suit laid out on a work table. The outfit was a patchwork of different-colored materials—yellow, red, black. Sam had to stifle a laugh as Skadz loaded the suit into a backpack. Prumble would look like an overweight parody of some lesser comic-book hero when he donned it. She could hear his protests already.
“Let’s go,” Skadz said, hoisting the backpack’s straps over his shoulders.
Sam took point again and retraced their route back to the first floor. Power to the building had yet to be restored, but she heard much more activity above as they climbed the steps. The first-floor hallway was well illuminated now by candles and LED lanterns as people moved about. Their hushed voices and urgent pace meant they now suspected foul play. On the last few steps Sam turned off her own flashlight and readied her gun.
She opened the back door just as a guard was coming through. A skinny man, Pakistani, she thought. His eyes went wide when he saw her. He started to yell something, the sound choking off when she slammed her forehead into his nose. A feeble gargling sound escaped his lips as he fell backward. Samantha immediately surged out into the yard, her focus on the gap in the back fence.
“There!” The cry of alarm had an odd tone. A youth to it, a feminine pitch. Strange enough that Sam glanced right as she ran forward, and there was Blink. The girl was on one knee, her hair caught in the fist of a Jacobite guard. Four, no, five others stood around. The child looked terrified, the guards full of wrath.
Before Sam could react, Skadz fired. His tiny machine gun hummed, dispensing rounds so fast it sounded like one continuous expenditure. Sparks and tiny explosions of dirt flew from the pipes around the guards. The one holding Blink dropped to his knees, then toppled over to one side. The girl, smartly, lay flat on her stomach and covered her head.
The other guards dispersed. One more had been wounded, but not so bad that he couldn’t move. Skadz’s gun could rain bullets, but their small caliber had little stopping power. Sam, on the other hand, carried the opposite. She hefted her shotgun and fired at the nearest guard. He’d partially covered himself behind some pipes. Her slug burst the tube in a spray of yellow liquid, then continued on into the chest of the man. He slumped. Sam pumped another round into the firing chamber.
A crack of thunder boomed from down the street, and another guard fell. Prumble, a better shot than he’d let on. Sam grinned as she fired again, missing. Skadz moved behind her and then, on her left now, sprayed the rest of his clip in the general direction of the guards. When the hail ended Blink suddenly got up and sprinted away. Good, Sam thought. She didn’t want the girl caught in the crossfire.
“It’s that pilot!” someone shouted. “The immune!”
Oh, fuck. She couldn’t place the voice; it sounded farther off. She saw someone running off into the maze of pipes and machinery, fired in that direction, and missed badly. Fuck, fuck.
Finally the guards started to shoot back. Sam heard a bullet whiz past her head and dove for the cover of the corridor of metal boxes that led to the fence.
“We’re nicked,” Skadz said.
“Plan B,” Sam replied, hefting a grenade from her vest.
“Oh, bloody hell,” he replied. He was up, then, sprinting for the fence.
She pulled the pin and hefted the explosive around the corner. Every ounce of suppressed disgust she’d felt working for Grillo the last two years seemed to flow out her fingers with that toss. Her sense of captivity, the constant guilt she felt when facing her comrades at the airport, her shame for having helped Grillo earn his position of power. All of it melted away as the grenade sailed into the air, unstoppable, a point of no return. She’d be her own woman again. She’d be free of the glorified slumlord and his flock. Free, and hunted relentlessly.
Sam ran.
The grenade exploded.
Something else exploded, too.
One of the chemical storage tanks, or one of the pipes. She had no idea. All she knew was she was off her feet, a blinding wash of heat searing her right side as the shock wave threw her into a steel box on the left. Her shoulder took the brunt of the impact. Sam stumbled, used one hand to steady herself and push back up, and then she was running again. Skadz waited at the back fence, holding it open with one hand, the other clamped tightly on a primed grenade.
She dove through the hole in the fence as a third, smaller explosion rocked the supply yard. People were screaming now. There was sporadic gunfire mixed in there, too, but they must have been shooting at shadows because no bullets fell near her as she rolled on the asphalt beyond the fence and came up.
Skadz’s grenade exploded between the back door of the building and the aisle of metal boxes. Sam shielded her eyes and felt the punch of the explosion in her rib cage, then she raised her shotgun and unloaded the remaining rounds she had in the chamber.
“Go!” she shouted to Skadz, and he did. He raced past her into the darkness. Sam threw the spent shotgun to the ground and drew her backup pistol. Movement caught her eye, on the street outside the fence. Jacobite guards, a patrol maybe, running around the side of the building toward her. She ran perpendicular to their path and kept going when she cleared the edge of the fence. Pistol raised, she pulled the trigger as she ran across the street, firing for effect as her gaze fell squarely on a dark alley. They were shooting back, bullets peppering the side of the building that formed one side of the alley’s mouth. Something tugged at her leg but no pain came with it. She barreled into the alley’s mouth running full speed, hoping in the total darkness that nothing would trip her.
Light filled the space, sudden and bright as the sun itself. She heard the explosion—no, explosions—a split second later like a rapid drumbeat. More chemical tanks going up. Or maybe Prumble’s three grenades. All of it at once? Even around the corner and five meters into the alley, she felt the heat of it on her back. The whole damn place must have gone up, she thought.
Every instinct she had told her to keep running, but she stopped anyway and dropped to a knee. A fire consumed the Selby Systems building, providing enough light for her to reload her pistol and check her leg. The bullet had passed through the back of her pant leg. In one side, out the other, without so much as touching her skin. Sam realized she’d been holding her breath and exhaled. Her hands began to shake, the impact of everything that had just happened collapsing on her all at once. She sucked in a breath as if trying to pull courage from the very air itself.
“Run, Sam. Fucking run,” she muttered through clenched teeth. She’d taken an alley at random and had no idea where she was. Skadz and Prumble were fuck-knows-where. Through sheer force of will she rose to her feet again and moved farther down the alley.
It was a dead end. A block concrete wall with a happy face spray-painted on it. She looked at the single-story buildings to the left and right, hoping for a ladder and finding none.
“There!” someone shouted from the mouth of the alley.
Sam reacted instantly. She ran the last few steps toward the wall, threw her pistol over the top, and then jumped. Her fingertips just managed to gain purchase, and she grunted with effort as she pulled herself up and over, not even looking at the ground on the other side as bullets began to slap against the concrete where she’d just been. Her feet hit something soft. A pile of dirt had accumulated against the wall on the other side. She hit it and toppled forward into a lame attempt at a roll. The soft mound had cushioned the fall, but it had also swallowed her gun like a rock thrown in a pond. She took one step back toward the pile, struggling to see now with a wall between her and the light of the fire.
Voices came from the alley she’d fled. Sam gave up on the gun and ran into the night.
Into the Maze.