GID stared at the spot where Nunes had gone down. The guy splattered with her blood stared, too, his face pitched down and shock erasing everything from his face except a pasty-green cast to his skin.
Jude shifted his grip until only his hand was locked around Gid’s arm, but she forgot to fight him. Her heart pounded as loudly as the pain in her head, and something that felt like a scream stuck in her throat.
“…die if we don’t get outta here.” Jude’s mouth moved, but the words were like pebbles against the wall of noise inside the club.
Jager stumbled from the crowd at the front of the club and onto the dance floor. She looked toward the guy wearing Nunes’s blood and then down. Her eyes rounded, and the corners of her mouth twisted.
Gid’s insides twisted, too, and she remembered what she’d been doing. With a renewed burst of determination, Gid wrenched away from Jude.
“Gid!” Jude snatched at her and missed. “Damn it, girl! We need to—”
Gid stopped long enough to look back at Jude. “People need us. Grow a pair and help.”
When Gid faced forward again, a Protector stood behind Jager. Dark splotched his uniform. Gid couldn’t tell if it was blood or burn marks. His eyes were white in the black field of his face, and his rifle barrel swung in an unsteady arc.
Probably he was looking for the LM4 who was blowing up tables—flames and shrapnel and blood. Gid tried not to think about the club-goers trapped in that madness along with the APS.
Another ghost shouted in the chaos, an unearthly edge to its voice that resonated distinctly from living voices even though there were so many more of those. Maybe it should be funny, Gid thought, how she’d heard the sound of an LM4 in action more in the weeks since she’d met Daria than she had the rest of her life.
Another sound rose, a high-pitched whine. The Protector behind Jager kept waving his rifle. Gid wondered if he even knew it was charging. Was he thinking, or had a numb, slow-motion cloud settled over him, like it had her?
“No,” Gid whispered to Jager—to all the people still clawing their way off the floor. She expanded the whisper into a shout. “Get down!”
Gid couldn’t see the heat, but she felt it, a slow motion hot wind that blew the hair back from her face. She wrenched to the side and shoved Jude. He fell, and Gid fell after him.
Out on the floor, Jager didn’t bother to look around. She just dropped. There was something blonde and bloody on the floor where she landed. Beyond her, the Protector jerked. His arms flung wide.
His rifle warbled. Boomed. Blue-white energy flashed. Against its stark light, the Protector darkened like paper thrown onto a fire. His skin crisped and curled. Flames shoved from his flesh, flaring hungrily. Gid tried to close her eyes, but the Protector burned, blackening.
Gid hit the ground. No. She hit Jude. Her hip crashed against his, and pain claimed her attention.
Jude grunted and then curled up, dragging Gid into his fetal position, covering her head. Above them, voices were shouting now about terror attacks. They sounded like they didn’t know who to be more afraid of, the Protectors or the LM4.
It’s a fair question.
The rifle fire stopped. The explosions stopped.
The screaming didn’t. And there was a new sound now, a crackling, sizzling rustle. The air tasted like ash and metal and it didn’t smell like bitter almonds, not really, but Gid imagined she tasted that, too.
Gid could hear her own breathing, a ragged sound. Jude was breathing, too, waves of warm air down Gid’s cheek.
“I’m OK,” Gid mumbled, and she shoved away from him.
The club was mostly clear—of moving people, at least. At the front of the room, flames licked, tossing streamers of smoke toward the ceiling. With a series of tiny pops and a steadily-expanding hiss, the club’s sprinklers activated. Crimson flames gave way to gray smoke that mingled with mist and steam as water met fire.
Jager lay on the floor beside Nunes. A third body was there, too, and for a second Gid couldn’t comprehend where that one had come from. Then she recalled the guy who’d been standing behind Nunes when she was shot, the one who’d been wearing Nunes’s blood.
He wore more than just hers, now. Gid’s mind refused to process exactly what it was seeing, but his head was half the size it should have been and all the wrong shape. Beyond him, the Protector who had shot him had become a blackened, smoking man-sized lump.
Jager sat up. The first thing she did was to reach for Nunes.
“We need to go.” Val was beside Gid. He hooked his fingers under Gid’s arm and helped her stand. “They’ll send more Protectors.”
“You think?” Gid muttered. Her head felt like she was watching a camera feed from a distance, witnessing but not really there.
Jager shoved a shoulder under Nunes. Nunes’ head lolled, her forehead against Jager’s temple.
Jude stumbled as he stood, stomping Gid’s toes. More pain. Pain was good. It cleared Gid’s head.
“Some shit,” Jude muttered. On stage, guitar in his hands and lips pressed against a mic, he was a god, infused with brilliance and power. Right then, he just looked scared and confused.
“We need to get Nunes out of here.” Gid couldn’t tell if Nunes was even alive. But it was something to do—something she could do—and she latched onto it.
Jude followed Gid’s gaze. A second later, he lumbered toward Jager and Nunes, gently moved Jager aside, and hoisted Nunes into his arms. In the process, he edged back toward god status again.
Val’s fingers remained on Gid’s arm. She recalled thinking how cute Val was, not so very long ago, and nausea swept her.
She shook off Val’s hand. “What is it with you people and fire?”
The venom in her own voice startled Gid. Val must’ve heard it, too. His jaw tightened.
“‘You people’?” he repeated. Val always sounded serious. Right then, his voice was like the low snarl of a cornered dog. A dog with a lot of teeth.
“You killed people.” Almonds and unmoving bodies and the headache lancing like a fine-tuned laser through her skull. This happened because we were here. We brought this. “People died.”
Val stared at Gid. The corners of his mouth pulled down. “You thought we’d raise a few protests, and the bad things would quietly go away? That’s not how it works.”
At the front of the room, a pounding began, rapid and uneven at first but quickly settling into a steady rhythmic boom.
“The main door,” Val said. “I sealed it. That won’t keep them out forever.”
Jude hurried past, face compressed with effort and Nunes over his shoulder. Jager jogged at his heels. Gid took a backward step after them.
She forced herself to look at the wreckage. Minutes ago, this club had been filled with raw music, with life. Now it was deathly still. The only thing moving up front was smoke. Gid reminded herself that it was not Val who had changed that. Not only Val.
“They’ll never stop coming.” Val’s jaw clenched even harder. His eyes were laser-thin beacons, as intense as the music that had been snuffed out. “We have to be willing to not stop, too.”
Another backward step and Gid turned, away from Val, away from the Protectors pounding down the door. She followed Jude and Jager toward back exits and escape passages.