Felix stood just inside the foyer of Piraeus University’s main building and tried to hold back a scream. Bullets obliterated the glass doors, spraying shards all over the floor. The broken glass glittered in the moonlight that pooled at the foyer’s edge, but Felix stood in darkness, breathing in the shadows and praying they would make him invisible if the anarchists managed to get past Chapel and Bingham.
The two presidents were pressed against the wall nearby. Kirkham stood with them, gun in hand, though compared to the two Tin Men—or to the dozens of anarchists who had pinned them down—the last Secret Service agent seemed almost pitiful.
Not last, Felix told himself. Syd may still come back.
He glanced along the pitch-dark corridor where he’d last seen Syd but the shadows remained stagnant. No movement at all.
“We can’t stay here!” Felix said, his voice a rasping stage whisper. “We’ll die!”
Rostov turned toward him. Hard as the man’s features were, the Russian president managed a gentle look.
“It always seemed likely, Professor,” Rostov said. “We would have needed better luck than we’ve ever had to make it out of this.”
Felix shook his head. “I can’t accept that.”
He stepped away from the wall, far enough to get a glimpse through the ruined front doors. Chapel and Bingham were still in front of the university building. The lights on their chests were off—why make themselves even better targets? They were moving from side to side, using decorative stone columns as cover. Felix could hear them shouting to each other even amidst the rain of bullets that fell upon them, ricocheting off the bots or just plunking against their metal skins.
“Police car, three o’clock!” Chapel shouted.
Bingham turned to her right, spotted the abandoned cop car just up the road and the shooters behind it. She took aim and fired twice, killing an anarchist who stood by the trunk and another who crouched at the other end of the car, peering around it. Felix flinched at the sight—head shots, both of them—but in his mind he urged her on, and Chapel as well. They were so badly outnumbered, with more anarchists arriving in the street beyond. The Tin Men were such extraordinary marksmen that he knew they could have killed every anarchist if only they’d had enough time and ammunition, but both were quickly running out. There were too many anarchists—fifty or sixty by now—and soon they would get inside the university from some other entrance.
Anxious, he glanced around for signs of incursion.
Bullets sprayed through the shattered doors, tearing apart the viewscreens and vending machines and the information desk in the foyer. One bullet struck the floor only inches from his feet, embedding itself there. Felix hissed out a breath and took a step back.
As a girl, his daughter had loved to play soccer. For the team to really work well together, she had said, they needed to be like a family, to be able to predict each other’s choices on the field. They had to forge a bond, united by a single purpose—winning. Kate had been eleven years old when she gave him that speech and he ought to have known that very moment that she was destined for a military life. But how could he have envisioned that this eleven-year-old, tall-for-her-age girl with the wild hair and those lovely purple eyes would go to war? How could he have imagined that the girl who had so loved to run would lose her legs?
He had missed more soccer games than he would have liked, and he had long felt guilty about that. But he had gone to every one of the father/daughter dances at her school. They had been held in the school gymnasium on the first Friday of December. What had they called the dance?
Yes, he remembered now. The SnowBall.
The little girls had never had much use for their fathers at these dances, clustering in groups and giggling or racing around like lunatics. But once during each dance, the DJ would call a time-out to their antics and play a song specifically for the fathers and daughters to dance together. Kate had held him awkwardly, all too conscious of her peers surrounding her, never understanding that they were all holding their fathers in precisely the same way. He had loved that special dance even with its halting discomfort.
As she grew older, Kate had pushed him away. Only later did he realize that he’d chosen not to fight this, had accepted the growing distance between them because it was convenient for him. The less involved he was in her life and the more time he spent away from home, the less effort he made to bridge the gap forming between them. He had told himself that she didn’t need him, never realizing how much he needed her.
“Felix, get back!” Matheson shouted.
A bullet grazed his shoulder. Felix blinked as if coming awake but still he barely moved. Imminent death had become a kind of mirror for him. He stared at his reflection, even if only in his own mind, and he found himself revolted not because he had so rarely been a part of his daughter’s life but because much of the time he had been relieved to keep his attention on his work. The angrier she grew, the more alienated she could be made to feel, the fewer demands she’d place on him.
This is it, he thought. This is where I die.
“Alone,” he whispered to himself, the word lost amidst the gunfire. “You sad old son of a—”
A powerful hand grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. He stared into Rostov’s stony eyes.
“Idiot,” the Russian president said as he shoved Felix back toward the wall where Matheson took cover, with Kirkham protecting him.
Felix stumbled over his own feet and went sprawling across the floor, nearly colliding with Kirkham’s legs. Rostov called him an idiot again, a heartbeat before a fresh fusillade of bullets stitched the floor of the foyer. Cursing loudly in his native tongue, Rostov dove into cover, slamming to the ground only feet from Felix, who stared at the grim-faced man, thinking again of how surreal the world had become. The Russian president had just saved his life.
Chapel barreled through the glassless entry doors.
“Incoming!” he roared.
Felix stayed down. Kirkham dragged Matheson to the floor. He heard the scream of the rocket even as Bingham careened through the door behind Chapel, feet crunching glass. The rocket struck the other side of the entrance and exploded, destroying part of the outer wall. The blast blew Bingham off her feet. She tumbled and skidded through the garden of moonlit glass shards.
Felix’s ears were ringing and he shook his head to clear them. When he looked up, Chapel was above him.
“Up!” Chapel barked. “Let’s go!”
“We’ve got to move!” Bingham said. “I saw at least four assholes with launchers out there!”
As if on cue, another rocket screamed through the open foyer and struck the far wall. Felix rose as the two Tin Men used their bodies to shield Matheson and Rostov. Kirkham clutched his gun like some kind of talisman, but he looked as if he had never felt more useless in his life.
“We’re going!” President Matheson said, pushing against the Tin Men and starting toward the corridor where Syd had gone on recon.
The Tin Men stepped into moonlight and began firing through the door at the anarchists, covering their retreat deeper into the building. Felix hurried to keep up with Matheson and Kirkham, with Rostov right behind him. The darkness slowed them down. Felix reached out and ran his hand along the wall, hoping he didn’t run into anything. He imagined that the faculty and many of the students had left school to go find their loved ones earlier in the day, before night had fallen, but where were the rest now? All of them out in the street?
One of the Tin Men clanked up behind them. Only when she turned on the light on her chest plate did Felix see that it was Bingham. She said nothing as she rushed past, guiding them through the darkness. Chapel caught up a second later and they ran along the hall past offices and what might have been a classroom or two, until they came to a spot where corridors branched left and right and stairs led both up and down.
“Which way?” Felix asked.
Matheson did not hesitate. He went left and no one argued. It seemed the option that would take them farthest from the attack on the foyer.
Footfalls came from the stairs they’d just left behind. They all turned, guns raised, and Kirkham fired once. Thankfully the shot went wide, otherwise he’d have killed the only other human member of the president’s Secret Service detachment.
Syd had her hands up, gun in her right. Now she stared at him.
“Please try not to shoot at me again,” she said. “Your aim might not always suck.” She gestured down the stairs. “This way. And running. I found an exit only a few of them are watching, but with no return fire back at the main entrance they’ll know we’re making a break for it.”
“Well done,” Matheson said, but nothing more.
They rushed down a flight of steps and then headlong down another corridor, which seemed to run the length of the building, heading south, taking them closer to the marina. Bingham’s guide light shone ghostly yellow upon the walls as she ran. Felix felt exhaustion fall upon him, as if the Earth’s gravity had suddenly doubled. Weariness dragged at him and his chest ached with the thunder of his heart and the rasp of his breathing. His age dogged him.
Then Bingham’s light picked out a narrow set of steps straight ahead. As the bot slowed, Syd raced past her and up the steps, where they found a wide metal fire door with mottled glass sidelights.
“You’re on point,” Chapel told Bingham. “We’ll go out together, try to clear a path. From here we’ve only got a block or two to the marina. We get clear and we run for it.”
Rostov uttered a grave little laugh.
“This is funny?” Felix asked.
“Have you ever seen the end of the American film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?” Rostov asked.
Felix felt nauseated. “I wish I hadn’t.”
“Go!” Matheson shouted.
Bingham kicked the door. With a screech of tearing metal it flew open and then she and Chapel hurtled into the street outside. Matheson didn’t wait. He ran out, with Kirkham and Syd on his tail, trying to get in front to shield him. Rostov and Felix followed, rushing at an angle off to the left, to the corner farthest from the main entrance. The smell of the sea filled the night air and Felix thought they would make it.
Kirkham’s head snapped back and the rear of his skull exploded in a spray of blood and gray matter. Syd shouted at Matheson to get back but the president kept running for the opposite corner, knowing as Felix did that retreat meant certain death. Syd, Chapel, Bingham, and Rostov returned fire but Felix had no idea where the bullets were coming from. He focused on the corner of the building across the street, thinking if he could just reach it there would be some cover there.
“You said four!” Chapel shouted.
“There were four!” Bingham replied.
“I count at least eight!”
“Rocket! Rooftop at nine o’clock!”
Felix ran, the world closing in around him. He tried to think himself small, as if by will alone he could make himself a more difficult target. Ahead of him, Syd stumbled, twisted around, and nearly fell. Her momentum carried her forward and then he saw the bloodstain spreading from the bullet wound in her back—left side, just beneath her shoulder. He called her name, thinking of the people out there in the world who loved her. She had her own father; someone needed her to survive.
Please, God, Felix prayed, don’t let her die.
It had been so long since he had really prayed for anything and he feared that if God existed, He had already turned his attention elsewhere. But as Felix reached the far corner and ducked behind the edge of the building, he nevertheless prayed.
Matheson knelt by Syd, who sat against the building with her eyes shut from the pain. Rostov spotted two anarchists farther south along the street, held his gun in both hands, and fired three times, killing one and wounding the other. He pulled the trigger on an empty clip and tossed the gun aside.
“Weapon!” he shouted, and Syd held hers up to him.
Rostov took it, even as the other anarchist started firing at them.
Bullets strafed the anarchist’s chest and he went down. Felix pressed himself to the edge of the building and glanced around the side. Chapel and Bingham were in the middle of the intersection, under fire, trying to kill as many anarchists as they could. Felix counted more than a dozen. A rocket streaked down at Bingham but she dove from its path, the blast making her hit the street and roll before she sprang up again.
“Chapel!” President Matheson shouted. “Trouble!”
Felix whipped around and saw half a dozen anarchists fanning out just to the south, where the other two had been killed. The ones in the intersection had no shot at the two presidents, but these guys had a clear view and they knew it. Arrogant, they marched up the street, weapons ready.
“Shit,” Syd groaned.
Rostov aimed her gun at the nearest one and put a bullet in his chest. The man staggered back but did not fall. Unlike the others, he had to be wearing body armor.
Felix glanced around the corner again, scanned the street for open doors or an alley, but he knew it was too late. They had nowhere else to go.
His regrets were so heavy on him that he forgot to breathe.
Gunfire ripped the air and he flinched, steeled himself for death, yet it did not come. Bullets went astray, chipping at the building behind him and shattering windows. Then the guns to the south went silent, replaced by screams and grunts and the sounds of close combat.
Confused, Felix glanced up from his fearful posture to see Tin Men killing anarchists in the street. Five of the six men who’d appeared to the south were on the pavement, broken or dead, blood glistening black in the moonlight. The sixth tried to fight back as a robot soldier stripped him of his weapon, turned it on him, and shot him with his own gun.
“But…” Felix managed.
He saw the hopeful expression on President Matheson’s face and the bleak smile on Syd’s, but still he could not make sense of what he’d seen. There were three Tin Men out there, but they had emerged from the Metro station with only two. He stood up, pressed his back to the building, and stole a glance around the corner, where Chapel and Bingham were out of ammunition and had taken to close combat themselves. Bingham’s carapace had been splashed with blood.
“Up on the roof!” Rostov said. “Look!”
Felix glanced up just in time to see two more Tin Men rushing along the opposite rooftop, robot frames almost golden in the moonlight.
“Where did they come from?” Rostov asked.
Felix only smiled, not daring to hope.
Farther up the street, past the university building where the student revelers had scattered, a group of the anarchists came around the corner and he knew there would be more—the entire coterie of killers who’d hemmed them in on the other side of the building before they’d made their escape.
An escape still in progress.
“Syd,” Felix said, reaching down to grab her arm. “Get up. We’re running.”
Pale but steady, hand clutching at her shoulder wound, Syd slid her back up the wall until she managed to stand.
“Not sure about the running, but let’s give it a shot,” she said.
Matheson smiled at her, nodded, and then turned to Rostov. “We go.”
With the battle still unfolding around the corner, they left Chapel and Bingham to the fighting and hurried into the street to meet the newly arrived Tin Men. Felix glanced southward. They were so close now that he could see the marina and the dark, moonlight-tipped waves beyond it.
Then they were among the Tin Men and his view was blocked by a robot with a target painted on his abdomen.
“Mr. President,” one of the other Tin Men said. “Come with us, sir. We’ve got a boat waiting.”
Felix made a tiny sound. It surprised him, coming from deep within him. He knew that voice. As President Matheson replied, Felix could only stare at her, this robot soldier whose carapace had been charred so black that he could barely make out the devil horns painted on her skull and a tiny pitchfork on her left cheek.
“Is it you?” he asked, his voice very small.
The bot shifted her eyes only slightly, then returned her full attention to the president. The other Tin Men watched her and Felix realized that she was in command.
“Get us all out of here,” Matheson said. “President Rostov and I have work to do.”
She saluted. “Yes, sir.”
A rocket seared the air, shooting into the face of a nearby building. The explosion sent glass and rubble flying. They all turned from the blast, peppered by bits of debris. Glass cut Felix’s arm and stone struck him on the back. A chunk of debris hit Rostov in the temple and he swore in Russian, clapping a hand to his face as he went down on one knee. Matheson went to his aid, calling for him to run with them. Rostov glanced up and Felix felt ice trickle along his spine when he saw the bloody ruin where the man’s left eye had been.
“Here they come,” one of the Tin Men said.
The rocket had been fired from the midst of the battle around the corner. Now the rest of the fight followed. Five robots came racing out of the side street, Chapel and Bingham among them.
“Run for it!” Chapel roared. “We’ll cover you!”
Felix caught one glimpse of the dozens of anarchists rounding the corner behind them. Six rocket-men knelt in the street, away from the rest, and shouldered their launchers.
A robot hand closed around his wrist and then Felix found himself running.
“It is you, isn’t it?” he asked. “Katie?”
“Run for it, Dad,” she said, one hand on his back, hustling him along.
The presidents were ahead of them. One of the other Tin Men had picked up Syd, her blond hair hanging over his arm as he carried her toward the marina, running effortlessly despite the burden. Felix’s chest burned as he ran and his legs felt numb and rubbery, but he kept going. All he had wanted was to live to see his daughter again and fate had granted him that wish—though not at all in the way he’d imagined. Now he wanted more than just to see her. He wanted to know this woman she’d become—he had much to atone for.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” he said, his voice breaking as he ran toward the marina in the distance. “And I never thought I’d see you like this.”
“This is who I am,” Kate said, and her voice seemed as cold and mechanical as the robot she piloted.
Humphreys Deep Station One was a sprawling complex. Air could be drawn from aboveground but once the anarchists had attacked the airfield overhead, defense protocols had kicked in. For several days—Aimee didn’t know how long—the air underground would be filtered and recycled to protect against the possibility of some kind of gas being pumped down into the Hump from above. An air-conducting system that large and that powerful required ducts and vents equal to the task.
“This is stupid,” Aimee said, crawling on her hands and knees inside the tunnel of metal ductwork. “You don’t think they’ll look for us inside the air vents?”
North followed behind her, moving smoothly and quietly. She would have felt his presence even if she couldn’t hear his breathing—his urgency and malice gave off a kind of dark energy that made her want to move faster.
“They’ll look here,” North admitted, “but they won’t look here first.”
The duct was not tall enough for them to stand but not small enough to force them to shimmy or drag themselves through. Still, Aimee felt the metal constricting around her.
“I can’t breathe,” she said, hating how pitiful her voice sounded. “It’s like we’re trapped.”
“Just keep going,” North said. “It won’t be long.”
“What if I—” she began.
“There’s a junction coming up. Turn left,” North said. “Meantime, breathe. You’ll be out of this soon. When the anarchists get in here, I’ll make sure you’re not hurt. Just play ball, Aimee. I can’t save everyone but I can save you, as long as you don’t try anything stupid.”
She faltered, pausing on her hands and knees.
“Keep moving,” North warned.
“No, listen,” she said, trying to twist around to see him in the darkened duct. “Just tell someone. Turn yourself in now and—”
“They’ll execute me the first chance they get,” North said, eyes narrowed.
“Maybe before the Pulse, but now?” Aimee replied. “I don’t think they’d be in such a hurry to kill a guy who has intel on the enemy.”
North glared at her. “Just crawl, please. I wouldn’t like to kill you, but don’t think I won’t.”
She exhaled, thinking of her mother in her little kitchen at home, worried about how long the food that had been in the refrigerator would last. The milk would already have soured. Meats would go bad quickly. Elena Bell would be feeding the neighborhood, trying to keep herself occupied so she wouldn’t dwell too much on her daughter’s safety. In the back of her mind, Aimee had an image of her mother that reminded her of Auntie Em in The Wizard of Oz, appearing in the witch’s crystal ball, so worried for Dorothy.
You’re not Dorothy, honey, she thought to herself. And this isn’t Kansas. Dorothy had killed the witch by happy accident. Aimee knew that when she got her shot at North she would not hesitate, and it would not be an accident.
“Go,” North said.
Aimee went, crawling on all fours, and when she came to the junction she turned left, just as North had instructed.
Biding her time.
By now the bodies of Major Zander and the MPs had been found. The hunt would be on for the escaped prisoners. If the techs hadn’t gotten the internal cameras working yet, they would manage it soon. Not long after that, she and North would be discovered and whoever had taken command would order them both shot on sight. Her only chance at persuading them otherwise would be to get away from North and lead them to him.
Cool air blew all around her and she shivered.
“Turn right,” North instructed.
Aimee did as she was told, though this new duct was smaller and narrower than the others and she had to scramble forward on her belly. Her knees thumped the metal duct and she slowed, afraid that the noise would give them away, afraid to be found with him. After only a minute of this shuffling crawl, she came to a grate that barred her way.
“Roadblock,” she said, thinking North must have some kind of tool to remove the grate.
“Knock it out,” he said.
“What?” Apparently she was the tool he’d had in mind. “You know how much noise that will make?”
“Better move fast, then.”
Aimee cursed under her breath but she didn’t hesitate. Lying on her belly she reached out and slammed the grate with both hands, once and then again. Bracing herself against the smooth bottom of the duct with the toes of her boots, she slammed her palms against the grate a third and fourth time, pulling screws out of the wood and plaster around the vent. The grate dangled by a single screw and she hit it one final time, knocking it to the floor with a clatter.
The room ahead was dimly lit. Nothing but goods piled on shelves, with pipes and hanging light fixtures on the ceiling. Aimee peered at the nearest shelf and saw KETCHUP printed clearly on a box. She furrowed her brow in confusion. What did North think he could accomplish from here?
“Go,” he said behind her.
Aimee fought the urge to kick him. She crawled forward, pushed her head and shoulders out through the vent, reached up for a pipe overhead, and seared her hand on its hot metal. Swearing, she grabbed the one beside it, this one cool enough to soothe her burn, and hauled herself out of the vent. Dangling, she dropped to the floor and then she took off running.
The first bullet took a chunk out of the concrete floor. The second struck a shelf just ahead of her. So many shelves, and no idea where the exit might be, she darted to the right, into another row of shelving, breath coming fast. She heard North drop down from the vent and land on the floor.
“I told you I would shoot you,” he said as he hurried after her.
“Maybe I don’t mind,” she said. “You put a bullet in me and they’ll know I’m not on your side.”
“I’m sure that’ll be a comfort to your mother when they bury you.”
Aimee froze. She took a deep breath full of fresh hatred for him.
“You just sit tight,” North went on.
With her back to a shelf full of cereals and other dry goods, she listened as he moved through the stockroom. After a moment she heard a clanking and then the sounds of North grunting as he moved boxes, piling them somewhere. Then came the screech of metal on concrete as he dragged a shelf across the floor.
“Fuck it,” she whispered.
With a glance around the corner, she set off in the opposite direction. The storeroom seemed enormous but she soon discovered it was not an endless warehouse floor. Forty feet along the aisle in which she’d hidden, she came to a wall and turned left for the simple reason that she could see a corner to her right. She raced along until she came to an open space with two doors set into the wall. One of them opened into a cubicle with sheaves of paper on a desk, an empty coffee cup, and a computer workstation.
The other turned out to be not one door, but a ten-foot-wide freight elevator.
“You can hack this station.”
Aimee spun to face North, who had quietly slipped behind her. His face looked flushed from effort but his grip on his weapon did not waver. He held the gun aimed at her chest.
“You blocked the door into the kitchen,” she said.
“And jammed it,” he agreed. “But the first thing you’re gonna do when you hack in is reset the coding so none of the kitchen staff’s keycards will let them in here. Then you can get to the real work.”
“What if I can’t hack into the defense protocols from this station?”
“Don’t bullshit me, Aimee. Freight elevator goes all the way to the top. There isn’t a way out of the Hump that doesn’t have defense systems in place, which means the workstation here has got to be wired in. If I had the time, I could hack it. Which means it should be no problem for you. Get into the system—”
“They’ll have locked me out by now,” she argued, sweat dampening the back of her neck. “My access codes will never work.”
“You’ll get in.”
“I’m telling you—” she began.
North strode over to her and pressed the gun to her forehead, pushed her back until her skull thunked against the elevator doors.
His eyes were full of emotion. More pain than cruelty, she thought, although North seemed to have deep reserves of both.
“You will get in,” he said.
He was right, of course. She could hack the defense protocols from here. At the very least she could bypass them and unlock this one elevator. The only question would be how long it would take. How long could she take, she wondered, before North would realize she was stalling and decide he didn’t need her anymore.
A clock on the wall inside the workstation booth ticked loudly. It felt as if the hands of that clock were counting down the last minutes of her life.
How many minutes? she wondered.
How many seconds before the bullet?