There weren’t many video feeds left in the security station, but the few there were showed Feeney’s gang running loose through the station. Panicked calls came in from the remaining Morlocks belowdecks about his soldiers banging on doors and demanding to search their homes. Angelica’s gang stayed holed up in their casino, content to let Feeney’s rage burn itself out. After hours of rampage, the calls stopped coming in. The video feeds showed empty corridors. They partly raised the outside shutter, just enough to see out, and the galleria was empty.
Only six security personnel were left, and they all remembered the Miner. They had only been slightly relieved when she put up her hands and said, “I’m turning myself in.”
Corbell they hadn’t recognized, which was probably for the best. They’d found a uniform for him, and the Miner was pleased to see that he’d ducked into the back and put it on. Doc Mills arrived at the back door, summoned by someone – the Miner never found out who. He examined her while her eyes were still glued to the feeds.
When the violence subsided, the Miner turned to the six cops. They were all in uniform still, looking tired but determined. To her surprise, they had not all predated McMasters; one of them was the fake Rommel, even, Fergus something. Everyone else, they said, had shed the uniforms and either gone to hide out or join one of the sides.
The Miner surveyed them, and Corbell. “It’s going to be a bumpy few days,” she said, “but their leaders are exhausted and their sides are in disarray. We’ll need to call back anyone who’s willing to come. I know a lot of Shine’s people went to ground instead of joining sides, and they’re armed. We can beat those two.”
“Not you,” Mills said. “You’re in no shape to fight. If you try to exert yourself, those combat implants of yours will tear you apart.”
“Turn them off,” she said. “Everything except the pain regulators.”
He tried to do it, but after twenty minutes he had to admit failure. “The control module’s damaged and in emergency mode. It’s all or nothing.”
She allowed herself a single, quiet sigh. “Turn them all off, then.”
He did.
The dulled pain didn’t all come back at once. It grew, starting at her hands and legs. Her right hand burned where she hadn’t been careful of the broken bone. The knee she’d injured in the galleria blazed. Pain radiated up her arms, caught her in the ribs. She’d been punched in the stomach repeatedly and damn could she feel that now. The electrical burns on her neck, the repeated blows to the face. It all came rolling back over her.
They watched as she struggled to master it. As she breathed deeply and clenched her jaw. She opened her mouth to speak, stopped herself to be sure, and then repeated, “It’s going to be a bumpy few days.”
The nervous chuckle around the room stopped suddenly. One of the cops, an older woman with a scar parting her hair, went to the window and peered out. “Something’s up,” she said.
“Angelica!” Feeney’s crew had come out of the hotel en masse. They stood quietly and grimly, with only Feeney’s voice with its megaphone behind them. “Come out of there, traitor! Give me back my granddaughter!”
The casino doors opened, and yellow-white smoke emptied out. Angelica’s fighters poured out with it, clutching cloths to their mouths and coughing.
“Angelica! Get out here!”
Her fighters stumbled, dazed. Angelica herself, doubled over with coughing and wheezing, scrambled out of the front doors. Behind her, the dice rolled snake eyes.
“Where’s Mary, goddamn you?” Feeney’s voice boomed.
“I don’t have her!” Angelica held a pistol in one hand like she didn’t know why it was there. “She left the station!”
“Lies!”
The crowd around Feeney had parted, and the Miner finally saw the old man and what he was wearing: an old combat carrier suit, mechanical-assist legs and arms and a bulletproof apron. And she saw what he was carrying, why he needed the suit: an eight-barreled black minigun, trailing a long belt of ammunition. The Miner paled.
“I swear to God, John, I don’t have her!”
“Yes you do!” He fumbled the megaphone and dropped it, leaving his own reedy voice above the din. “I know you do! Give her to me, you viper!”
“I don’t have her!”
“Bring me my granddaughter! And bring me that snake Mickey Mouse!”
The entire galleria fell silent, and in that silence the lone stifled snicker echoed. Someone else laughed, and it spread.
Feeney screamed incoherent rage, and the minigun roared.
The wall of lead sounded like the monsoon. It smothered every other sound, drowning out the casino windows exploding in glittering shards and smoke, smothered the screams of the wounded and dying as they fell in a red mist. Feeney swiveled as the belts swept smoothly though the machine, and the palm trees jerked and spasmed as he edged too close; bark and splinters flew.
Angelica had taken the full brunt of the spray, falling backwards and squeezing off a single shot to ricochet off the dome. She fell and lay still in a spreading pool of crimson. All around her, bodyguards and fighters and stooges fell dead or dove in vain for cover.
The thunderous static suddenly cut out, and the Miner heard spent shell casings spilled to the ground like poured from a bucket.
Feeney’s chest heaved and he dropped the minigun, its barrels ruddy with heat. Half sobbing, half screaming, he tried to take a step in the tangled mechanical suit and fell to his knees.
“I beat you!” he screamed. “I beat you, you witch, you traitor! I beat you all! Give me Mary! Give me my granddaughter, you snakes!” Behind him, stunned and clutching their ears, his gang stared at the carnage and the broken and screeching old man. They stumbled to part once more for a tall, thin man with a top hat and a black tailcoat, whose bared chest bore a giant tumor-like lump that blinked blue and red through his stretched-thin skin.
The tall man stopped behind Feeney, who raised himself up and drew in breath for another shriek of rage. And then Nuke drew his pistol and shot his grandfather in the back of the head.