Dusk (31 page)

The box had begun humming in Torvald’s hand, and in
the time before it discharged, Milliken had taken out his guard,
and the other guard had turned, aiming his own box at Cyrus. Cyrus
stood directly in front of Torvald, blocking his shot, and Torvald
felt a bitter heat in his throat as his stomach compressed. Cyrus
dove out of the way, drawing the other guard’s attention. Then, as
Cyrus’s body stretched and then compressed into a ball like a
pouncing house-cat, Torvald’s box discharged, sending a bolt into
the ribs of the guard just as his own box fired. The guard’s body
twitched violently then stiffened and fell as the bolt streaked
toward Cyrus.

Cyrus had stretched out and had rolled past
Toutopolus between two unconscious soldiers. When the guard had
fired at Milliken, the distance had made the electric crackle come
just after the blue streak had coursed from the black box, but
Cyrus heard the snap of static almost simultaneous with the blue
flash in the corner of his eye, and he was sure he was going down.
But as he dipped his shoulder and flattened across the floor, he
saw the hair stand on the already unconscious soldier next to him,
and he could smell the metallic twinge of ozone as tendrils of
dissipating current danced across the body that had shielded him.
Cyrus lifted his knees and rolled backward, standing at the end of
the roll. Cyrus flattening against the wall as the guard that had
fired at him spun and fell awkwardly, static electricity leaping
across his own chest and face. Cyrus looked around. Everyone he had
involved in the plan was up except Davidson. Rousseau, Tsuchiya,
and Koresh were down, and Qin was huddled in the corner shielding
his head. Bin Hassan stood frozen in place yelling in Arabic.

“Get Davidson and head to the dock!” Cyrus
yelled, pointing to Davidson’s fallen body.

“What about the others?” Toutopolus
asked.

“Just get to the dock. They are coming and I
need to distract them!” Cyrus heard footfalls coming down the
stairs, “Go now goddamn it!” He knew the soldiers could probably
hear him, but the roar of the sprinklers probably muffled his
commands. Besides, it probably would not matter anyway.

Cyrus launched himself off the wall toward the
stairwell door. Torvald turned, tossed Cyrus the black box, and
yelled, “Charge it first! Green fires,” then turned to help scoop
up Davidson.

Winberg sat in a surveillance room that was
on the same floor of the barracks. A series of holomonitors
displayed the events of the escape attempt as they unfolded. What
had initially looked like an imminent slaughter now looked like a
possibility. Winberg could see these soldiers had no idea what they
were doing. The only one who seemed to understand how to quell more
than a riot of belligerent teens was Denali—and he was now on his
way to the infirmary on a gurney.

These men wanted to believe this band of
wayward and confused scientists were spies, and Dr. Chamberlain was
doing a good job of convincing them of such. Hell, with the
exception of some awkward hesitation here and there, Chamberlain
and his cronies looked like they had been trained for this sort of
thing. And so far, it was all working in Winberg’s own favor.

Denali seemed sharp, but it seemed like a
distinct lack of demand for real soldiers had reduced the acumen of
his charges to that of mere peacekeepers. This particular melee
was, in fact chaos, but the chaos had been organized and
manipulated; Dr. Chamberlain was more than a pugnacious muckraker,
more than a renegade chimp jockeying for belly room. Winberg could
feel a certain amount of respect engendering within him as the
escape played out. He still despised the man’s lack of refinement,
his plebian mannerisms, but he could see an inkling of what made
these men, who had been soft-cultured in the halls of academia,
fling themselves at armed soldiers as if the mere fact that
Chamberlain had said they would be okay made it so...

...but sitting here, hearing the
second-in-command issue the order to lock down the louvers and
release the uberhounds, Winberg knew it would
not
be
okay.

When Winberg had offered his assistance to the
Ashans, he had been fully prepared to use Dr. Chamberlain’s
reckless indignation to further his own plan at Chamberlain’s
expense. But now, he could see the indignation was not as reckless
as he would have liked to have believed, and he felt like a coward
for not having seen it sooner. “No, that’s exactly what he wants
you to do! You’ll be playing right into his plan!” Winberg belted
as he lifted his hand to halt Quadrad Chaldea. It no longer felt
like sacrificing Chamberlain and his adherents was acceptable, but
that had little bearing, at least at the moment, on the success of
his own plans.

“
Yamina!
” Go right, Uzziah had yelled
at the bottom of the stairs. As soon as he had thrown the door from
the stairwell open, it felt as if every hair on Tanner’s body stood
on end. Jang stood to the left of the door with his back to the
wall as a bolt of what looked like lightning streaked between him
and Tanner. But Uzziah had already gone through the door, hurling
the rifle at whomever or whatever had fired the bolt. Tanner
flashed across the doorway to Jang’s side and caught a glimpse of
Uzziah reaching for a guard opposite Jang on the other side of the
wall and of two guards positioned several meters away in front of
the door. One looked as if he was falling, but it was hard for
Tanner to discern out of the corner of his eye. Another bolt
flashed behind Tanner, seemingly coming from the two figures at the
edge of his vision, but he was already across the doorway. He
stopped in front of Jang, spun, and charged through the door on the
side opposite Uzziah, where he was sure another guard would be
waiting.

Uzziah threw his left hand toward the guard who
lifted one hand from his rifle to block. As soon as their wrists
connected, Uzziah lifted his leg and extended it into the guard’s
midsection. The guard stumbled backward, but stabilized himself.
The guard planted his feet, and then stepped forward, swinging the
butt of his rifle around in an arc—but Uzziah had expected this,
and he lunged forward himself, landing beside the man outside the
swing of his rifle. Uzziah blocked the follow-through with his
right hand, pulled the man toward him slightly by his elbow, and
then turned, driving a knee into the man’s kidney. As the man’s
body buckled, Uzziah was already behind him, pulling the man’s
right arm behind his back into a chicken wing. Uzziah reached
around, gripped the man’s left hand over the handle of the rifle,
and pulled the rifle back into his throat. Uzziah tightened his
grip and pulled the man closer as he gagged. How unlikely and
unfortunate for this man, Uzziah thought, that we are both
left-handed. It was however, fortunate for Tanner, Jang, and
himself, because it was going to be their way out of here.

The man had lifted his rifle as Tanner
vaulted out the door, but Tanner moved to his left, grabbed the
rifle barrel with his left hand, and pulled as he brought his elbow
up and across the nose of the soldier. The soldier had stumbled
backward, blood erupting from his nose, but remarkably had held his
footing. Tanner had let his momentum carry him into a spin,
bringing the back of his left elbow around into the man’s face
again. The man’s body had crumpled, and Tanner had finished his
spin, bringing his right fist around like a club across the back of
the man’s neck. The man’s body had slumped to the floor and a pool
of blood had begun spreading from the man’s face. Tanner had
turned, prepared to dive across the floor to avoid whatever the men
were shooting at them, but he saw Uzziah, using one of the guards
as a shield, covering the two men in front of the door. One of them
was picking himself off the ground, Uzziah’s original rifle on the
ground next to him, while the other stood tough, but from the look
in his eyes, clearly stymied.

“Drop your weapons!” Uzziah ordered, moving closer
to the men and adjusting the rifle to point at them, conveniently
shifting the tension on the strap to keep pressure on his hostage’s
neck. “
Tikra le
Jang,
kach ekdach
,
ve lech!
”
he said to Tanner. Get Jang, get a gun, and go!

Cyrus stood to the right of the stairwell
door as heavy footfalls echoed through the stairwell. He shifted
the black box into his left hand and pressed the blue button. His
breathing was exaggerated, but every time he took notice of his
breathing he remembered, ‘In through the nose, out through the
mouth.’ His heart pounded against his insides, vibrating his entire
body in an allegro rhythm, but it was not a disadvantage. He was
nervous, on edge, and with at least four men coming down the stairs
a meter or so away, he needed it—because it kept him sharp, his
muscles ready, and most importantly, because it incensed him into
doing something as egregiously stupid as he was about to do.

As soon as the door creaked, he launched
himself into the mix. In their midst, it would be hard for them to
get a good hit, but easy for him. He slammed into the guard that
was about to enter first, checking him against the jamb of the
door. Cyrus fired a kick back into the door, hoping the soldier
that had opened it was still holding onto it. They had been
staggered in a two-by-two formation, but he had expected that. He
could see the other two were still on the landing, caught off-guard
by his advance, but even now, must have been steadying themselves
for a shot with their lightning boxes. The soldier against the jamb
lifted his knee up into Cyrus’s midsection and Cyrus felt his
insides convulse. He began to tense the muscles in his abdomen to
hold back the convulsion, but then he let it release. He threw his
head forward as his body wretched, driving his forehead into the
guard’s nose as vomit erupted into his own mouth. He had eaten only
enough to ensure his blood sugar levels could sustain some effort,
and now the acidic chyme from that food burned through his chest
and the back of his throat as it filled his mouth. The other guard
must have been holding the door, because he had hesitated, but was
now bearing in on Cyrus. Cyrus spun, bringing an elbow across the
temple of the guard next to him as the other guard reached for his
throat. Cyrus blocked the man’s advance, but grappled his wrist and
yanked him in. The man followed with a right, leaving his rifle to
rest on its strap, but Cyrus ducked. The attack caught the guard
behind him, who had been dazed by Cyrus’s initial attack. Cyrus
drove his knee up into the advancing guard’s ribs, and as the air
in the man’s lungs escaped his mouth and nose, widening his face
and eyes, Cyrus expelled the contents of his mouth into them in a
mist and brought his left elbow backward into the face of the man
behind him.

Cyrus spun the soldier in front of him into a
chokehold as the man flailed at his stinging eyes and nostrils,
screaming. Cyrus fired the black box under the man’s arms and
caught a guard on the landing in his chest as another bolt streaked
out toward him. The bolt caught the flailing guard in his stomach
and Cyrus immediately pushed the man’s body aside as static yanked
at the hairs of his own beard. Cyrus bounded up the stairs as the
last soldier dropped his black box and forgoing his rifle, lifted
his leg.

Cyrus jumped to the right and realized he was a
several centimeters higher than what he, or the soldier, had
expected. He rebounded from the wall and extended his body into a
punch, but even off-guard, the man was quick enough to block. Cyrus
pulled his left foot beneath him and kicked with his right, but the
man turned, catching Cyrus’s shin with the side of the metal rifle.
A splitting shock shot up Cyrus’s leg, through his knee, and into
his groin, but he ignored it and fired a jab and then a body punch.
The man blocked both and followed by lifting his own knee. Cyrus
side-stepped and they faced each other again with the stairs to
Cyrus’s right. Cyrus was sure he could beat this man—Milliken was
this fast on a good day—but there wasn’t time for this. The man
threw another jab and Cyrus blocked, but as the man followed with
his right, Cyrus knew what had to be done. He stepped in, let the
punch hit him, rolled with it, and then grabbed the guard’s collar
and dropped. As Cyrus dropped, he pulled the man on top of him. The
man was unable to resist due to the momentum of his own punch, and
Cyrus, planting his foot in the man’s ribs, kicked out as soon as
they hit the floor, launching the man down the stairs. Cyrus rolled
quickly to his feet and bounded up to the next floor.

Tanner ushered Jang through the front of the
building, covering the outside with the assault rifle as they
barreled through the glass door. The rifle felt cold and awkward in
Tanner’s hand. He would have preferred a staff or a sword, but this
clunky, callous piece of metal would have to do. As the door closed
behind them, Tanner saw spots as his eyes adjusted to the
artificial night outside the building. There was a writhing mass of
people gathered on the opposite side of the ave and there seemed to
be guards here and there among them. These guards appeared to be
more municipal than soldiers, and they seemed unaware of the chaos
inside the building Tanner and Jang had just left.

Tanner followed the eyes of the throng upward
to the convoy of levs and lorries that were converted into various
shapes and were floating by several meters above their heads.

One of the levs spewed flames, inciting
cheers from the crowd as they looked on. Tanner took notice of the
dragon-shaped float as it approached. He heard Jang ask something
like, “How are we gonna get up to them?” but he had already flipped
the assault rifle onto his back and was leaping onto one of the
titanic statues that flanked the entrance to the building. The leap
carried him several centimeters higher than he had expected, but he
still managed to get a foothold on the statue. Clambering up the
statue to its arm was much easier than Tanner had expected. When he
reached the arm, he had only a second or two to position himself to
jump onto the back of the float. As he landed, Tanner swung the
assault rifle under his arm. He caught it clumsily, but with enough
authority to scare the men riding on the back of the float into
submission. Tanner checked over his shoulder to make sure the
sniffers on the street were still preoccupied with the crowd. He
was not comfortable with his current position, but he had been less
comfortable in the custody of half-wits. After the men on the float
sat with their hands above their heads, Tanner leaned the assault
rifle barrel into the window. “Set it down over there or I finish
you!”