Beat. Beat. Beat.
Nothing made sense. If I were dead, then why did I still have a heartbeat? I wasn't breathing, but I felt air rush into my lungs the moment I stopped holding my breath. My vision was amorphous blackness, but I could still feel my feet touching the floor.
"Somebody grab their guns," Stansy said, her voice anxious, but near and clear.
Slowly, reluctantly, I opened my eyes and looked down. If I had been hit, I couldn't see it, and I couldn't feel it, either. In front of me, Robert lay on the floor, clutching a wound low on his abdomen. His face was set in a rictus of pain and his breath hissed out between clenched teeth. His gun lay on the floor, just inches in front of his face. Sasha's mother, Nonna, stood over him in her pajamas, a small-caliber pistol trained on him. She caught my glance and nodded to me. Stan and Takara lay sprawled on the floor next to the wall where they had impacted.
Nock appeared from around the corner and moved to get the gun from Rollins. My legs felt limp, but I made them move, stepping wide around Robert to get to Stan and the officer he had tackled. Takara was in bad shape, one arm broken, hanging at a sickening angle. The glazed look in his eyes told me he had likely suffered a concussion. I carefully worked his sidearm from its retention holster, ejected the magazine and emptied the chamber before tossing it towards the far corner of the room. I moved on to Stan, who was sitting up, but groaning in pain and clutching at his shoulder. His shirt around his fingers was stained red. "You okay?" I asked.
"Got shot," he said through clenched teeth. "Hurts like a bitch."
Stansy was beside me suddenly, kneeling to cradle Stan's head. "Oh my God, Stan," she said. "Why did you do that?"
I carefully lifted the shredded edges of the hole in his shirt. The bullet had passed through the muscle of his shoulder, maybe grazed the clavicle as it passed under. The blood flow was steady, but not copious. "I don't think it's bad," I said. "But we should dress it."
"No time," Stan said. "I'll be fine."
Stan surely knew his model's capabilities better than me, but I hoped that it wasn't just bravado. "Can you walk?"
"I think so."
Stansy and I helped him to his feet, careful to avoid putting any stress on his injured arm. He took a few steps, wincing from the pain but otherwise steady on his feet.
Now I could take stock of the rest of the room. Stansy had let Rollins go and she sat on the floor, cradling and rubbing what I guessed was a sprained wrist, Nock standing close by to watch her. Robert was whimpering in pain, his hands pressed against his lower back and side to staunch a flow of blood. Nonna still stood over him with her gun, but he seemed unaware of anything but the pain he was in. There were actually tears in his eyes.
Coming closer to examine him, I could see why. Nonna's shot had hit him low in the back, passing just beneath the protection of his bulletproof vest. It must have gone through his kidney, one of the most painful places in the body to sustain an injury. It also was one place in the body where you could get shot and have a good chance of a full recovery as long as you got medical attention before you bled too much. I had to wonder if it had been the shot of a trained professional or simple, blind luck.
I disarmed Robert and moved on to Davis, the one Nissi had struck with a chair. He was out cold, his face a bloody mess. He might really be in serious condition, for all I could tell, but there was little I could do for him in the moment. "What happened to the last one?" I asked.
"Wendy happened," Tilly said.
I hurried out the open back door and froze, confronted with what I had done. The man I had shot lay on the patio in a pool of his own blood. His hands were still clutched at his throat and his lifeless eyes stared up at the stars. I turned and vomited, not from the sight of blood and death, but from the realization that I had killed another person. I felt Nissi's hand rubbing my back as I coughed and gasped. The nausea quickly passed, but as I let her help me to my feet, I was careful to avert my eyes from the body.
"Hey, 'bout time someone showed up," Wendy said. She stood a few steps back from the final officer, his own gun held in her grip and pointed at his head. He was propped against the side of the house, pinching his nose against a flow of blood that had already soaked his goatee and the collar of his uniform.
He looked over at our approach. "So that's it," he said, glaring at Nissi's elven features. "You're genemods." He looked at Wendy. "And you must be a stunty. Nice trick you pulled, brat."
"What did you do?" I asked.
Wendy shrugged. "I just pretended to be exactly what I look like. He tried to pick me up and carry me to safety. So I broke his nose."
I studied Wendy for a moment. She looked confident, but her stance was off, her weight too far back on her heels. She was a novice. "You should take your finger off the trigger," I told her, nervous that she might accidentally shoot him. "Just rest it along the guard."
Wendy did as I asked with a grimace and a nod.
"You, come with me," I told the officer. He looked like he might try to argue, but Wendy gave him a sweet little girl smile and made the subtle motion with her trigger finger.
I stepped back as he got to his feet and motioned for him to walk in front. The look he gave me as he walked past was pure malice, and I realized that he thought I was a genemod too. I directed him to the basement door, but when I tried my code on my phone, the door didn't open. I remembered the radio interference that the house must still be projecting and fished around for the panel that was hidden at the back of a shelf. This time, the door slid open. I motioned to the officer and he went sullenly down the steps. Wendy stood guard up at the top, propping the door open, while I went back for the others. "You, Rollins was it?" I said, pointing at the female officer.
She was trembling, no doubt coming off the adrenaline high of the fight. "What do you want?"
"We're putting all of you in the basement," I said. "Stansy, stay with her. We'll need to carry the other three down."
Between me, Nock, Tilly and Nissi, we carefully carried the three injured officers down the steps into the basement. Nock checked each of them over carefully for guns and mobile devices. I pointed out the first aid kit to Rollins, and she got to work immediately on Robert. Once the others were clear, Wendy and I backed up the stairs with our guns held at the ready. "Stan," I called, realizing the weak point in my plan. "Can you jam the lock?"
Stan chuckled on his way over. "This isn't exactly a padlock, Norm."
"Can you do it?"
Stan looked over the touchscreen panel and traced the wires out the back to where they disappeared into the wall. He nodded. "Yeah, the main control is elsewhere. I can just cut access here and it should still lock." He pulled out a pocket knife, grunting at the pain from his shoulder. He cut the wires in two places, tossed the cut pieces into the kitchen and pocketed his knife. Stan stepped out and I released the door. Sure enough, it swung into place and locked with a series of clicks.
The clock was ticking now. Rollins and the officer that Wendy had taken down were still mobile. They would start looking for a way to get free as soon as we were out of the house. That was actually what I wanted, since at least two of them were in real need of medical treatment, but we also needed to have enough of a head start by then to get safely away. I had even considered placing a call to 911, despite the risks, but I dismissed that idea as too risky.
The others had been busy while Stan worked, getting the last of our belongings out the door. Tilly had taken the job of carrying Sasha's computer. "Where's Nonna?" I asked.
"She's in her room," Nock said.
I went to find her immediately. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, her gun in her lap. "That politsiya," she said, "he live?"
I shrugged. "Probably."
Nonna frowned and hefted the pistol, "It is long time since... well, is long time. You go."
"You're going with us," I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "If they catch you, they'll throw you in jail and probably never let you out."
She shook her head. "I am old and half senile. I slow you down."
"Then think about me," I said. "Think what Sasha would do to me if she finds out I left you behind."
A ghost of a smile lit up the old woman's face. "She would kill you, da?"
"Yes, so you'd better come with us."
The smile faded. "Nyet. You go. Save others. Me, not worth your time."
My mind fumbled for a way to convince her. "Look, if they have both you and Sasha, they might use you to try to get information out of her. If you go with use, they won't have that leverage."
Nonna appeared to consider that for a moment and nodded. She stood and tucked the pistol into her waistband. "Well, I hope you have plan. I would pack, but no time. We go."
Wendy's cat had disappeared during the police raid, but now she strolled out from under the sofa and rubbed against my legs. "Guess it's your lucky day," I said.
"Sasha didn't get around to dropping her at the shelter today," Wendy said, picking Ingrid up. The cat climbed her shoulder and perched across the back of her neck, using her claws to stabilize herself. "Now I'm stuck with the sadistic little shit head," she said, and grimaced.
The night air was crisp with a chill breeze blowing from inland. Most nights, the total absence of the sounds of insects and frogs didn't faze me, but now, that silence, broken only by the distant sound of cars on the highway, was eerie. We scurried through the dark past the wall of the greenhouse to the back fence at the corner of the yard. Stansy hopped over first, clearing the five feet of wooden fence with a flat-footed jump. Nissi followed next. Wendy scrambled over with a hand from me. Nock lifted Nonna and handed her over to the two girls, who set her carefully on the ground. We helped Stan climb carefully over, gritting his teeth against the pain of the exertion. I clambered up and over, scraping one of my arms in the process. Nock and Tilly followed over as effortlessly as Stansy had done.
We were standing at the edge of a culvert that stretched away to either side, with a few feet of solid ground between it and the fence. Moonlight glittered off a flow of sluggish water at the bottom.
"This way," Nock said, moving to the right along the fence. I could barely see my own feet, but he led us without faltering, taking care to point out places where the ground was uneven. A few houses down, we crossed to the other side through ankle-deep water, coming up in an empty field. I checked on Nonna, who was doing fine, and Stan, whom I was getting more worried about. His breathing was labored and he seemed to be in more pain than ever, but he waved me off when I asked if he needed to rest.
The field ended at another street. We crossed quickly and turned down a quieter side street. In the far distance, a single dog barked, but we otherwise moved through a world of near silence. We came to another muddy field and a chain link fence topped with razor wire. The chain link was a good eight feet, with two feet of the coiled wire rising above that. Nissi took a few steps back, gauging the height. She set her burden on the ground. "Our truck is in here?" she asked.
I nodded and produced the key, giving it to her when she held out her hand. "Wait here," she said. She ran back a few steps, then charged straight at the fence. She threw herself into the air, flipping her body forward once as she cleared the top of the wire. She landed on the other side in a crouch and popped effortlessly to her feet. Chills went up my spine at the feat and I found myself smiling in appreciation and amazement.
