Dusk (30 page)

The hard metal that had collided with his
shoulder, evidently aimed for his head, reinforced this demand for
his attention. He stumbled from the unexpected blow into a guard,
but as that guard shoved him back the other way, he found himself
spinning and lifting his left leg as if he were in Sifu Tanner’s
dojo. Unlike in the dojo, as he brought his leg around in an arc
incident with his assailant’s head, he tried to shatter his
target’s temple with his heel.

The guard, evidently woefully unprepared,
took the heel to his head and dropped straight down. Torvald
continued his motion but dropped as a second piece of metal,
another rifle butt, whiffed through his hair, rubbing against his
scalp but doing nothing to slow his momentum. Torvald planted his
left foot and whipped his right out and around, sweeping the other
guard’s legs from beneath him. The guard’s body inverted, and as
Torvald stood, the back of the man’s head smacked against the
ground. Torvald continued his motion, stopped his right foot,
lifted his left knee, and brought his heel down into the man’s
torso. Torvald felt the guard’s breath expel and his ankle rolled
slightly on something in one of the guard’s front pockets. Then
Torvald stood there stunned with vision blurred, frozen on the
man’s chest like an image of a hunter with his trophy as the
scrapes on his scalp and shoulders protested against the cold
washing over him. Rousseau and Qin had earlier turned and sheltered
their heads from the commotion behind them but now stood staring at
Torvald in frozen awe. Torvald saw past them to the two khaki forms
moving through the rabble toward some tussle at its head. There was
a bizarre hissing above him, and for a moment he tried to discern
what it was until he saw the khaki forms stop moving and heard
someone yell “Desist!”

That was when he knew Cyrus was in danger.

Had Cyrus known the level and intensity of
the pain that would wash over him as he lunged, dislocated shoulder
first, into the back of the unsuspecting guard, he might have
chosen another course of action. But now, his knees gave out
beneath him as the sickening pop from his shoulder resetting still
resonated in his ears. It felt as if his spine was being ripped out
of his side. As the ground engulfed him, and a thick black frost
spread through the void left by his seemingly excised backbone,
Cyrus wondered if the man he had checked into the wall had managed
to maintain his own consciousness...

...the warmth of a jaundiced sun was an
alarming contrast to the apathetic chill that had brought him here.
He was moving quickly, as if he was riding a mag-cycle, but the
movement was too bumpy, more organic. Maybe it was a nanohorse.
Either way, the sense of urgency rushing through his veins like a
poison made the nature of his conveyance irrelevant—whatever he was
riding was not fast enough.

He rode faster and faster but it was still
not enough to appease his anxiety. But then he saw his destination.
It was a small point on the horizon, barely visible in front of the
setting sun, but he instantly knew what it was. It was a child, a
little girl, but she had the face of a woman, a woman who had lost
something very dear to her—she had the look of a mother in mourning
for her child.

That was when the clouds began to coalesce
and swirl in the sky behind her, but she was oblivious to their
formation or their intent—or so it seemed. She was too far away for
him to have gleaned this and yet he knew it anyway. He pressed on
harder, rode so hard he began to sweat, but the clouds continued to
form—thick, unctuous billows that seemed to have issued from
despair itself. Talons formed, and then sinewy arms, and then a
ghastly visage that eclipsed the pallid sun. The form reared back,
the girl still in either ignorance or apathy, Cyrus still too far
away. It lunged forward, teeth bared and mouth gaping, to devour
its prey...

...but Cyrus was snatched from his mount by
his neck. The surreal horror before him faded and gave way to very
tangible disorder.

Toutopolus was pulling Cyrus to his feet by
his collar, but had been too focused on the resuscitation to see
the rifle butt arcing toward his own head. It smacked against the
side of his head as someone yelled “Desist!”

Cyrus stood into a kick but his vision and
balance failed him. He stumbled, and even though he was still sure
the guard’s head was in the path of his foot, he only managed to
knick the soldier’s wrist and catch part of his rifle barrel.

But that had been good enough to set the
guard off balance. Toutopolus reeled away from the guard, and he
clutched the side of his head, revealing another guard training a
gun on them both. The ground was still wobbling beneath Cyrus’s
feet, but he allowed his body to stumble with it into the guard he
had tried to kick. They both clambered to the floor in a sprawl,
but Cyrus managed to regain enough awareness to bring his forehead
down hard on the guard’s nose as the ground broke their fall.

Cyrus rolled onto his back, still on top of the
guard, to see a gun barrel aimed at his head. “Move again and I
finish you!”

Uzziah had pushed past Tanner and Jang on the
second landing. By the time they had reached the fifth floor, two
floors down from where they started, their chains had fallen away,
but Uzziah kept holding the rifle like a bat. The Ashan rifle was a
design very similar to the assault rifles he was accustomed to:
top-loading, safety catch in the same place, and no shell ejection
port because the rounds were most likely caseless. He could use the
weapon as had been intended, but he didn’t hold it like a gun. He
held it like a polearm because firstly, his captors had foolhardily
never suspected him of having any military training, and secondly,
because something was amiss. The chaos that had ensued had been a
crossfire nightmare, but he knew, before he had followed Tanner and
Jang out the door, that at least one of the guards had a clear shot
at him. There had also not been a single report of gunfire echoing
down the stairwell. The guards had obviously been given orders not
to shoot, and a man wielding a rifle as a Kantistyka racket was
less likely to elicit unsanctioned gunfire.

As they had reached the fourth floor, the door had
opened in front of them, and Uzziah had kicked it back and had kept
running, pulling Jang along with him. Tanner had scuffled with
someone at the door when it had opened again, and he had somehow
barred the door and continued to follow.

Dr. Rousseau had moved out of Torvald’s way
as he rushed forward, but he had to shove Dr. Qin and Dr.
Eisenhertz to the side. Eisenhertz fell to the ground hard, but
Torvald had not been concerned. He had been concerned about the
khaki form that had been moving toward the front of the chaos as
someone had yelled, “Move again and I finish you!”

Dr. Qin had been between Torvald and his target, but
as Torvald rushed toward them, and as the soldier began to turn,
Qin crouched down, covering his head. Torvald did not hesitate. He
launched his own body into the air and threw a left punch at the
soldier’s head, using the loop of the cuffs as metal knuckles. The
man turned his temple directly into the path of the unorthodox
attack and crumpled as Torvald landed on top of him. Then,
unexpectedly, something from the soldier’s utility pack jabbed
painfully into Torvald’s side, knocking the breath forcefully from
his lungs.

Toutopolus had flipped the man onto his back
with the kick. The man had tried to spin on his back, had tried to
bring his own leg around to clip Toutopolus’s feet, but Toutopolus
had seen both Cyrus and Sifu Tanner do that on the Paracelsus, and
he had fallen for it too many times. Toutopolus had jumped, pulling
both feet into the air, raising his knees up to his waist. As he
had landed, he brought both feet down on the soldier’s chest and
stomach. Toutopolus had felt the soldier’s body shift awkwardly
underneath his feet and had stumbled off his torso. Toutopolus had
not resisted the fall, had moved with the momentum, and had pedaled
his legs beneath him to regain his footing. He had stumbled three
steps toward another soldier as that soldier had turned his back
with his machine gun hanging from its shoulder strap. The soldier
reached for some other device and yelled, “You fit to fry
espion!”

That was when Toutopolus tripped on Davidson’s
ankle.

Davidson still could not make sense of the debacle
that was playing out around him. Bodies were spinning, flying,
falling everywhere. He had become dizzy, and he realized that he
had not been breathing. He had heard the words, “You fit to fry,”
but he had only been able to stand there, trying to catch his
breath, trying to clear his vision. And then something clipped his
Achilles tendon and sent a sharp twinge through his entire body.
The twinge shot through to the base of his skull, clearing and
focusing his vision. He saw through the chaos of the melee in front
of him—there were two soldiers, across the lobby, neglecting their
machine guns to reach for something else to gun down Milliken who,
with the bellow of some enraged creature, blindly charged toward
them.

The soldier stood wisely outside of Torvald’s
reach, and he pulled a small black box from his utility belt.
Torvald coughed, spittle erupting from his mouth as he strained to
pull in air that eluded him. He noticed that Davidson was the only
thing in the hall that seemed to not be moving. It was as if
everything else was spinning around him—Davidson was the center of
balance in a universe that refused order. Then, as the soldier
pointed the black box, Torvald realized he was, as these jackmonkey
Ashan soldiers would put it, finished, complete.

But then, a comet from the chaos assaulted the
stable center, and Torvald saw Toutopolus, like a Fringe cat in a
wildlife holostream, curl into a ball and bowl into the legs of the
soldier with the black box. A tiny bolt of lightning burst from the
box, but went upward, dissipating into the ceiling as the guard’s
body splayed and fell, his limbs flailing into awkward positions on
the floor. Torvald rolled from the man he had punched, who was now
twitching beneath him, and he noticed Cyrus was still in
danger.

“Get up, rightforth!” The soldier standing over
Cyrus bellowed as he ignored the calamity around him. Cyrus looked
down the barrel of the gun, and he felt the heat well in him again,
eclipsing the throbbing in his shoulder. And then he saw the earwig
radio in the soldier’s ear. They were all connected, and yet, in
the midst of this nonsense, not a single shot had been fired—not
even into the air. So Cyrus leaned forward, as if he was about to
stand from the bloody soldier writhing beneath him, and he launched
a front kick at the soldier’s knee.

Torvald launched himself from his crouch toward the
soldier standing over Cyrus, but as Cyrus moved, the soldier’s body
came back toward him. Torvald landed another metal-knuckled punch,
this time right at the base of the soldier’s skull. The soldier’s
head snapped forward but his body continued its descent. As he
fell, Torvald noticed another black box, like the one that had been
pointed at him, on the man’s belt.

Milliken’s legs rushed him toward the guard. A
world-class sprinter could cover thirty meters in a little less
than three seconds—but Milliken had a larger distance to cover in
less time. The thought crossed his mind and then dissipated in the
fury that still fueled his body and launched him toward the guard
across the lobby. The guard had reached onto his belt and was
pulling something black and oddly cold-looking from his belt, and
now he was raising it to point at Milliken.

Davidson hurled himself forward behind Milliken,
screaming as he charged toward the second guard across the lobby.
The guard had pulled the thing from his belt, and as Davidson
screamed, the guard turned his attention from Milliken to him. He
pulled the black box between himself and Davidson and there was a
flash. Davidson’s vision went blank and he felt his chest stop, as
if someone had lifted a hand and halted him. He realized he could
no longer feel his legs. And then the feeling in his arms and
fingers was gone. An then, finally, nothing.

Milliken saw something that looked like a thin bolt
of lightning streak from the black box of the guard to his right.
It had halted the screaming of whoever had followed him out of the
brawl into the lobby. He didn’t know what it had done, but he was
sure he didn’t want to find out, so as the guard turned his eyes
back to him, Milliken leapt forward and dropped.

Torvald saw Davidson get laid out by the bolt of
lightning that shot out from the soldier and it felt as if his own
heart had stopped. Davidson twitched as static electricity crackled
through his body. But now, Torvald had one of the black lightning
boxes in his own hand. He saw Milliken drop to the ground, slide,
and clip the soldier near the entrance from his feet. Torvald
lifted the box and pressed the green button, hoping simultaneously
that he was pressing the correct button and, for Davidson’s sake,
that the bolts that issued from the box were not lethal.

Cyrus elbowed the man writhing beneath him and then
hopped to his feet. The soldier rolled feebly toward him, but Cyrus
kicked him in the side of his head to halt his advance. Cyrus
turned as Davidson collapsed, a sparkle of electricity dancing
across his chest. The soldier on the left that had zapped Davidson
from across the lobby moved his thumb across the black box. Even
though he was several meters away, the soldier looked nervous as he
tried to pick his next target. Milliken, who had rushed toward the
other soldier on the right, dropped to the floor just as the
soldier in front of him fired his own box. The bolt streaked over
Milliken and left a blue scar in the air as Milliken’s momentum
carried him into the soldier’s legs. Milliken grappled the man’s
legs with his own and then twisted his body to the right. The man
collapsed, extending his arms awkwardly to break his fall. There
was a loud pop as the man attempted to brace himself with his arm
but failed. The soldier’s body went limp in mid air, his arms
collapsing awkwardly beneath him, allowing his head to smack
against the tiled floor. Even as his body collapsed, and as the
sickening snap from the man’s shattered arm still resonated through
the lobby, Milliken continued his roll, drawing in his left leg and
extending it into the back of the soldier’s head. The left soldier,
realizing he was about to be flanked as Milliken rolled to his
feet, was stymied. He turned back to his right quickly and aimed
the box at Cyrus. After losing consciousness once, even for a
moment, Cyrus knew that above all else, he had to stay on his feet
if they were to make it out of here. The thought sent a tremor
through his body as the black box faced him. His eyes focused on
the man’s shoulders because the shoulders always move first, but
the man was too far away, and his clothes were too baggy. As Cyrus
dove to his right, he wasn’t sure if the man was about to press the
button, or if he had already pressed it.