SEVEN

 

 

NYQUIST DIDN’T WANT to go back in that house. The whole thing looked unstable, not like a block of row houses at all. They had toppled inward against each other, roofs caved, walls leaning precariously against each other—or against nothing at all.

He recognized Alvina’s only by the emergency workers still working on the officer in front of the door.

Not that he could go in that way anyhow. Debris had fallen in front of that door, and it opened inward.

He was going to have to crawl through that window and over that body one more time.

He crossed the yard quickly, and stopped in front of the window, feeling a bit stunned. It was higher than he expected. He didn’t remember such a far drop to the ground, but he had to have made it.

He placed his hand on the sill and levered himself upward, balancing precariously. Then he hoisted himself over the edge, careful to step down as near to the wall as he could to avoid the drying blood.

The wall felt wobbly. He wondered if it truly was wobbly or if that was his imagination working extra hard now that he knew what condition this place was actually in.

He paused long enough to listen to see if he heard anything. A moan, a rustle, anything. He hoped to hear a moan from Palmette, and he didn’t want to hear anything else. He didn’t want Alvina to have gotten loose from her cuffs and come after him.

He heard voices from outside, over the sirens, but nothing from inside, at least that he could tell. He stepped back over the debris pile, then made his way to the kitchen.

He glanced at Palmette. She hadn’t moved, which was a bad thing. He wanted her squirming, maybe trying to get to the door. But she hadn’t done anything.

Still, he had to go past her to check on Alvina first.

Alvina was still splayed face down near the table. She didn’t look like she had moved either, and he wasn’t sure if the splotch of blackness he saw on the floor near her head was a growing puddle of blood, or something else entirely.

He didn’t go near her to check. The last thing he wanted was to get close enough to have her grab at him, pull him down, or use some hidden shard of glass as a weapon.

Instead, he went back into the kitchen and crouched near Palmette.

She was still breathing. Her skin was clammy and she was even paler than she had been before. Despite his efforts, she was losing blood.

She was dying.

He grabbed the kit, slid health gloves over the protective material he already wore on his hands, and then grabbed the AutoBandages. Only one was big enough for that stomach wound.

He pulled up her shirt and hesitated for just a moment: remove the cloth he had stuck in the wound or leave it there? He had no idea which would be better or worse. He wanted to download the information through his links, but he didn’t have it.

He was alone on this.

Finally, he gave it a bit of a tug, figuring if it was loose, he would pull it out, and if it wasn’t, he would leave it.

It was loose.

He pulled it out. It was barely recognizable as cloth, and it dripped as he cast it aside. The kitchen already smelled so bad he couldn’t tell if the stink around him came from the bandage, the wound, or the garbage in the room.

So he just ignored it all. He opened the AutoBandage, held it over the wound like he had done a dozen times before for other officers down in the line of duty, and then pressed.

AutoBandages attacked the skin and the wound, binding to it almost immediately, becoming part of the injured person’s body. He had no idea how doctors got the damn things off or if they just managed to reverse the process somehow, and he didn’t care.

All that he cared about was that it staunched the blood flow.

He used the rest of the bandages on the rest of her wounds, and hoped he got everything in the dark and the dust.

Then he took a deep breath, pulled off the gloves, and tossed them into the pile that was the kitchen. He pushed a path to the door, knowing that taking a few minutes now might save him a lot of grief while he carried Palmette. The last thing he wanted to do was fall on her, or drop her on something sharp. That would only make matters worse.

He shoved debris away from the door, then he went back for Palmette.

She still hadn’t moved, but she didn’t look worse—so far as he could tell, anyway. He apologized to her as he scooped her in his arms. He had to be hurting her. He hoped she couldn’t feel it.

He would have draped her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, but he was afraid of making that stomach wound worse. He hoped this would work.

She was heavier than she appeared, and her clothes were sticky with blood. Her head tilted back, her arms trailed down the side, and her legs hung free. He staggered a bit, trying to get his balance—he was tired, which surprised him—and then managed to move forward along that path he had carved.

Sometimes her feet grazed the debris. Once he bumped her head against something and he apologized again.

But she didn’t move, and if it weren’t for her shallow breathing, he would have thought he had already failed, that she was already dead.

As he picked his way across the dirt, he found himself mentally apologizing for all the bad thoughts he had had about her ever since he heard he would have yet another new partner, all the bad expectations, all the horrible plans he had for dumping her as quickly as possible.

He hadn’t been fair to her, and it hadn’t been her fault. She had done the best she could following his instructions—better than any other new partner—and she had waited as long as she could before seeing if she could get involved in the investigation, following department protocols.

It wasn’t her fault that she got injured. It was his. He should have been watching out for her, instead of trying to keep her away.

He made it to the door. He juggled her form, bracing it against one side of him as he reached for the latch. He managed to pull it open, startling the emergency workers outside.

The officer on the ground was covered in bandages as well. It looked like they were operating on him on the spot.

“Can one of you guys help with this?” Nyquist asked.

He must have looked a fright, covered in dirt and dust and blood.

But one of the emergency workers stood and took Palmette from him.

“We have an ambulance,” the emergency worker said, “but right now the streets are blocked. The dome sectioned, and we’re trapped here. There’s no hospital in this section.”

It took Nyquist a moment to understand what “the dome sectioned” meant. It meant that the dome’s protective walls came down, here at least, and maybe all over the city.

“There’s been a breach?” Nyquist asked. That was the only thing that he knew of which would cause a dome’s protective walls to come down.

Although he had heard, after that Moon Marathon disaster, that the city itself could order parts of the dome partitioned off from other parts.

“We don’t know,” the worker said. “Our links are down. Nothing’s working. We assume so, though, given the smell.”

The burning chemical smell. Nyquist hadn’t gotten used to it, but he had started to ignore it.

“You sure that’s not happening in this section?” he asked.

“We’re not sure,” the worker said. “But it hasn’t gotten worse in the last hour, and that’s a positive at least.”

A positive. They were searching for positives. Which made Nyquist even more worried than he already was.

“Well,” he said, “Do what you can for her. I have a prisoner in the back that I have to get into some kind of custody.”

“A prisoner?” the other worker asked.

“The reason we all came here in the first place,” Nyquist said. “The woman inside that house murdered a man in the front room.”

He didn’t add that she might have murdered his partner as well.

“I think she’s better off in there,” the worker said.

Nyquist shook his head. “Too many possible weapons,” he said. “Besides, she’s our responsibility if the building collapses.”

The back of the squad could be modified into its own tiny jail cell. He was going to use that.

Provided she didn’t kill him first.

“Wish me luck,” Nyquist said, and went back inside.