The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (33 page)

Under ideal situations, direct pressure on a wound was enough to stem the blood loss, which also meant that the nanites had a much easier time accelerating the healing process. The pressure meant that the nanites could gather at the sides of the cut and form a kind of molecular net that would keep the blood inside me at the same time that it helped pull the edges of the wound together so that I could heal cleanly and quickly.

The nanites had no doubt done their best to stem the blood loss, but without something to counteract the internal pressure forcing them out of the body, their efforts had been severely hampered. I couldn't afford that—at least not until I had Brennan safely back to the compound.

I grabbed another strip of fabric and used my teeth to tie it around my arm, and then set off as I heard Jasper and the others enter the building.

"It's clear up here—you can probably scavenge some more ammunition off of the bodies—but be careful. There's no guarantee that someone won't come in behind me and ruin your day."

"You're not going to wait for us?"

"I can't afford to, Jasper. If we get bogged down they'll surround us and cut us to pieces. I've got to keep moving, got to keep them off balance."

Jasper didn't sound particularly excited at the idea, but he didn't try to stop me. "The word on the street is that Piter runs everything out of the fourth floor. That's your best bet as to where he's holding Brennan."

"I hope you're right. There aren't enough of us to lock down the exit and conduct a room by room search of this place at the same time."

"Yeah, we probably should've thought of that before we let Victoria send such a small group."

I nodded—fully aware he probably couldn't see the gesture in the darkness—and headed back towards the stairwell.

The trip up the next two sets of stairs was a balance between stealth and speed. There was no way of knowing how many people were on the third floor, but it was a good bet that at least some of them would actively resist me if given the chance. That meant I was going to have to bypass the third floor and just hope I could move quickly enough once I got to the fourth floor that I wouldn't have to worry about someone attacking me from behind. It wasn't a very good plan, but hopefully Jasper and the others wouldn't be too far behind me.

I reached the fourth floor and wasn't surprised to find the window blacked out. This time I chose to go in fully committed. I backed up several steps and then charged forward, leading with the shoulder that had already seen so much abuse in the last fifteen minutes.

If Piter had been smart he probably would've just blockaded himself inside the fourth floor until his people could regain control of the streets. Then again, I wasn't all that surprised that he'd chosen not to bar the door. Warlords and gang leaders ruled primarily through causing fear among the general populace, and a different kind of fear among their enforcers. Once someone like Piter started showing signs of fear, his days were unavoidably numbered.

Piter couldn't afford that—especially not after the losses he'd already suffered. I hit the door leading out of the stairwell with every ounce of force my hundred-and-twenty-five-pound body could muster, and it barely slowed me down at all.

I caught only flashes of my surroundings as I stumbled into the room. It was massive, taking up nearly the entire floor. They'd obviously knocked out walls to create a more intimidating space. There were a surprising number of candles scattered about the space, creating a soft flickering light that made it easy to see the primitive luxury of a city despot.

There were girls scattered around the periphery of the room—all young, all wearing too few clothes for how cold it was. The center of the room was dominated by a large metal throne which was currently surrounded by an even dozen bodyguards. Twenty feet away from the throne, Brennan was chained to one of the structural steel beams that rose vertically to the ceiling.

My heart skipped a beat when I realized that I'd found Brennan, but there wasn't time to dwell on his presence because Piter had stationed one of his men less than five feet from the doorway and a rusty, jagged ax was headed towards my head.

I got my rifle up just in time to deflect the blow. I even managed to avoid losing any fingers, but it was a close thing. I was strong—stronger than I had any right to be—but there were limits to what even cutting-edge nanites were able to do.

I'd been moving at something like twenty-five miles per hour when I ran into the ax, and it had carried a respectable amount of kinetic energy all by itself. Despite my best efforts, the enforcer's blow drove my rifle back into my chest and knocked me down.

For once I was grateful that Brennan hadn't yet mastered the art of manufacturing rifles that were more plastic than metal, like we had back home. A rifle like that probably would've been sheared through by the blow from the ax that had just taken me down, but the heavy compound-manufactured rifle I was carrying turned the blow without sustaining any critical damage.

I hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of me, but as I slid backwards towards the door to the stairwell, I whipped my rifle around and put a three-round burst into the chest of the enforcer who'd just tried to decapitate me. Acting on instinct, I slapped the ground with my left hand, throwing myself to the right as the two guards with rifles opened up on the space I'd been occupying a second before.

I needed to be moving, needed to make myself a harder target, but there was simply no good way to do that—not starting from a sitting position. I rolled through one complete revolution and then used my right elbow to stop my momentum with a suddenness that I was hoping would make the two gunners overshoot me.

The pain was intense. I'd just broken one or more of the bones in my arm, but my trigger finger still worked and I returned fire with a smoothness beyond anything I'd ever demonstrated in training.

It was surreal to see the near-constant strobe of my enemies' muzzle flashes blooming like orange flower petals. I knew a child could probably take out the stationary target I presented at this range, but I forced the fear surging up inside of me back into the little box where it had been living all night.

My first burst took the guard on the left through the throat and he dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut. A hot awl of fire sliced my left cheek a split second before the wall behind me exploded, and then my crosshairs settled over the figure of the second guard and I stroked my trigger again, blowing a hole in his chest where his heart had been only moments before.

I rolled to my feet, gun at the ready despite the pain in my right arm. I felt like a porcelain doll who'd had a hammer taken to her and then been put back together with chewing gum, but I refused to quit—not now, not when I was so close.

A few of the enforcers closest to the two I'd just killed looked like they wanted to make a play for the two priceless rifles. I couldn't allow that.

"Anyone who moves is dead. This can all be over—just remove Brennan's gag and free him. There's no reason for me to gun all of you down."

Piter shook his head, top hat swaying with the motion. "I'm not stupid. If I let Brennan walk out of here I—and all of my men—will be dead before the week is out. Brennan can't let this kind of provocation go any more than I could if I was in his shoes. All we need to do is rush you. You won't be able to kill all of us, and once you're dead it's only a matter of time before my men reestablish control of my territory."

"It may have escaped your notice, but there's a running firefight all along your north border. The only way you were going to survive this was if Jax and Tyrell continued to think that you'd had nothing to do with Brennan's abduction. I'll admit that you are way down on their list of suspects, but even they won't be able to ignore the kind of commotion taking place just across the barricade from them. Even if by some miracle you kill me, there's another team headed up the stairs as we speak. That doesn't matter though, because Jax and Tyrell will be attacking your territory within an hour or two of sunrise.

"You're going to lose your territory no matter what you do at this point, but I'm willing to offer you a head start. Even Brennan's reach has its limit. If you started now you could probably bribe your way across two or three territories and put yourself safely beyond retribution.

"It's a good offer, Piter, you should take it. I guarantee you that the team behind me isn't going to let you off that easily."

Piter shook his head, not even bothering to rise from his throne. "You severely overestimate both your skill with that gun and the number of bullets you have remaining in that magazine. You could be the fastest person on the earth and still not manage to put a new magazine into your weapon before we get to you."

I tried to do some quick math in my head. I didn't remember doing a tactical reload back on the balcony, but I was pretty sure I'd done so out of simple force of habit. Brennan's rifles had twenty-five-round magazines, but it was common knowledge among the guards that you were asking for a jam if you put more than twenty-two rounds in them.

A tactical reload meant that I would have replaced my magazine before I'd shot it dry, which meant that there would have still been a live round in the chamber when I slammed a new magazine home. That meant that I'd entered the fourth floor with twenty-three rounds. Killing the three men I'd killed so far had taken nine shots.

Piter was right, I didn't have enough ammo left to take them all down—not unless I switched over to single shot, and if I did that I wouldn't be able to gun them down quickly enough. It was ironic. I probably was the single fastest person in the entire world, but that wasn't going to be enough to save me—not with a broken right arm.

I put on the bravest front I could. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I can't kill all of you, but I will kill most of you. You're not worth dying for, Piter, and everyone in this room knows it. More importantly, I'll definitely take you with me when I go down."

I did my best to read the mood of the gathered strongmen as I talked, but there were still too many cultural differences between them and me. Brennan's compound had been alien enough to push my acting ability to its outer limits, but this was a whole different world. Brennan was trying to recreate civilization; Piter couldn't have cared less about any of that.

A long burst of gunfire from beneath us broke the stalemate, and I brought my rifle back up to my shoulder in the smoothest motion I was still capable of. Beth had been right, I moved like greased lightning, but Piter had obviously been waiting for me to make my move. He grabbed the arm of one of his bodyguards, pulling on it as he threw himself out of his throne.

I tightened my finger on the trigger and the bodyguard jerked as my bullets tore into him. Piter never would have been fast enough to avoid my fire by himself, but he'd pulled his guard into the path of my bullets and saved himself in the process.

"The guy who kills her gets a territory of their own!"

It was like someone had run a live current through the enforcers. They charged forward, completely heedless of the danger, and I cut them down with three-round bursts as quickly as I could.

They should have spread out, but in fairness there was only so much they could do given that they were all headed toward the same point. Every burst of fire I sent into the crowd took down at least one person. Brennan's rifles were heavy old beasts. They were murder to pack around all day, but their sheer weight meant that they could fire a heavier load than we'd used back home.

More often than not, my bullets tore through their original target and collided with someone behind them, but I was going through my ammunition too quickly. I started to fall back and then remembered that the door to the stairwell had swung shut behind me. There was nowhere to go.

I pulled the trigger again and this time the gun didn't respond with the three-round burst I'd asked of it. The slide locked back partway through the firing cycle—my magazine was empty. I hit the magazine release as I darted to the right, trying to buy myself time to reload, but I knew it was a futile effort.

Without the support of my left hand, my right arm nearly wasn't up to the task of keeping ahold of my gun. It dropped towards the ground with alarming speed, but I just gritted my teeth as I went for my last spare magazine.

The enforcers had been trimmed down to numbers that would have been nearly manageable under other circumstances. The closest one wound up with his club, aiming to crush my skull in, but I kicked him in the stomach, crying out from a combination of pain and the effort of trying to keep my weak arm from dropping my rifle.

I was at less than top form, but I still managed to generate enough force with my kick to pick him up off of the ground and fling him backwards into his friends. He still would have crushed my head if I hadn't leaned backwards from the waist as I drove my foot into his midsection.

The magazine had caught on my vest, but it came free to the sound of ripping fabric as I spun to the side in an effort to avoid a knife to the ribs. I was nearly successful, but added another wound to my rapidly failing body as the knife creased me. I slammed the magazine—full of bullets and therefore heavy enough to serve as a decent improvised club—into that opponent's temple and then screamed once again as I tried to bring my rifle up to where I could force the magazine home.

It was no good, the arm had taken too much damage. It was physically capable of lifting the rifle, but my will was insufficient to force it to operate around the pain.

A slender, remarkably quick enforcer stepped over his fallen companions. He was eager to be the one to take me down, and as his sword darted towards me I knew that I was out of time. I tried to dodge to the side, hoping that would be enough to avoid the cruel point of his weapon, but all of my speed still wasn't enough to let me get completely out of the way.

The sword took me through the back on my right side. I was pretty sure that it had just taken out my right kidney. I was going to die within the next couple of minutes without medical assistance. I hadn't managed to dodge the attack, but that was okay, I'd accomplished something else with my spin.