Greg Rucka - Alpha

Movement erupts all around her, the vibration in the air and her body, shots and more shots. Pooch shoves her aside, rushing forward, and Kurkur/Vladimir is sweeping his cloak back and bringing up his gun. Athena shouts, throws herself into Joel, knocking them both to the pavement. She sees Oscar/Clip is on his knees, hands moving to his helmet, like he wants to take it off, and then the helmet shatters and he falls sideways. Gail, Lynne, Miguel, Leon, all of them in their costumes, they’re still standing, and Athena pushes herself to her feet, launches herself at Lynne from behind. They tumble to the ground together, landing absorbed by the Smooch costume.

Sonny is turning toward them, yanking his big gun free from where he’s been hiding it inside Gordo’s baseball glove. Big, happy Gordo eyes seem to find her, and Athena sees a shower of color behind him, plastic spheres suddenly erupting from the ball pit, bouncing every which way. Uncle Freddie is there now, and he’s shooting, too. Gordo’s eyes stay big and happy, but he twists, falls to his side like someone let the air out of him.

Athena rolls off Lynne, sees the second group, to the side. There’s a S.E.E.K.E.R. Robot down on the ground, clutching at his leg, and there’s a Pooch facedown, not moving.

She sees her dad, watches as he fires the gun in his hand. Soccer Betsy jerks like she’s been punched in the face, and he shoots her again, and she falls. He steps over her like she’s not even there, that pistol in both hands, swinging it around. The look on his face is one she’s never seen before. It’s not a scary face, but it’s not a happy face, either. For that instant, she thinks her father is feeling nothing at all.

“Dad!” Athena shouts, shouts as loud as she can, not even certain what that is. Using all her air, making the words, “Dad! Dad! Dad!”

His head snaps in her direction, but his eyes don’t find her, skip past her. Athena remembers the stupid Agent Rose mask on her face, yanks it off, knocking the hat away at the same time.

“Dad!” She’s screaming it, now, feels her throat tearing, wonders if she has ever been this loud before, wonders if it matters. “Daddy! Daddy!”

He finds her, and the blank face isn’t blank any longer, and he’s shouting something, starting toward her, gesturing with one hand while the other still holds the pistol high. Swiping, telling her to get down, and Athena thinks that all of this, it’s almost over, it’s going to be all right.

Her dad is here, and it’s going to be all right.

She’s wrong.

Gabriel doesn’t know why they’ve stopped at first, only that they have, and Vladimir half turns, calls back to him, voice muffled behind the Kurkur mask.

“I don’t see them,” Vladimir says, using English. “Something’s wrong.”

He thinks that means Vladimir just can’t see the two other groups, Charlie One and Charlie Two, and Gabriel takes another few steps forward then. He is aware of Bell’s daughter in front of him, looking at her friend in the Flashman costume, but beyond the front of their group, where Dana is positioned beside Oscar, Betsy and Clip Flashman side by side, his vision is impaired. It’s hard to see extreme distance through the Pooch headpiece, and Gabriel wants to remove it, the same way he wants to answer Vladimir. Again, he keeps his silence, afraid of what his voice might mean to Dana.

“They’re not here.” Sonny, dressed as Gordo, anxious, nervous. Oscar starts to turn back his way. Just at the edge of Gabriel’s vision, fuzzy through the grille, he can see Charlie One coming in from the north. He moves his hand, thinking to reach into his suit and pull his radio, to ask Jonathan Bell just what he thinks he’s doing, if he really wants to do this, to play games with the lives of so many, with the life of his daughter.

Then it all goes to screaming hell.

“Contact!” This in Russian, Vladimir shouting, and Gabriel can’t tell where the shots are coming from, only that Oscar is going down, Clip Flashman helmet bursting into shards as a round finds his face. The reports echo across pavement and bounce from buildings, the rides, from the heavens, it seems, all of them muffled, confused, inside Pooch’s head.

The girl, Bell’s daughter, has fallen, or maybe she’s diving, knocking down the Flashman boy, and Vladimir is turning, freeing his submachine gun, but the others are only now beginning to respond. In the back of Gabriel’s mind he understands, intuitively, how this is happening, how Bell and his team are picking their targets, at least in part, at least in front of him. How can they tell who is a hostage and who isn’t? The last ones to move, those are the hostages. The last ones to move, because they are the last to understand, because they are deaf. They cannot hear the shots.

Sonny is falling, and just in the edge of his vision, Gabriel sees Vladimir with his weapon out, laying down fire. Gabriel starts forward, wanting to reach Dana, to protect her, but stops himself, instead steps back. Tears at the front of the Pooch costume, reaching for his own submachine gun, still trapped against his side.

Then the weapon is in his hands, and he swings it right, fires off a burst toward the spinning bowl ride, shooting blindly. Bell’s daughter is on her knees, screaming for her father, and he can see that Dana in the Betsy costume is trying to protect the kids, trying to pull them close to her with oversized arms, to pull them down.

“The girl!” Gabriel points at Bell’s daughter. “Vladimir! The girl, get the girl!”

He looses another burst, same direction as before. The fucking Pooch head has killed his peripheral vision, and what he can see as he moves comes stuttered, like broken film. He tries to back up, almost trips over his own paws, sees a man amid the bowls coming forward, pistol in his hands, firing at him. Something punches through his mask, creases pain along his scalp, and he lays on the MP5K again, watches the man jerk backward, fall out of his line of sight.

Bell’s daughter is still on her knees, the girl in the Smooch costume flat on the ground in front of her, and Gabriel can hear her still screaming for her father, screaming bloody murder. Vladimir cuts into his vision, reaches down for her, pulls her up and against his costume armor. Gabriel raises the MP5K, puts another burst downrange, the direction of Charlie One, begins backing away again.

“Tunnel!” His voice is too loud in the mask, makes his ears throb, but he’s shouting anyway. “Back! Toward the theater!”

Vladimir adjusts his grip on the girl, lifting her under one arm, goes on his trigger with the other, firing in the direction of the ball pit. Then he’s pivoting, the girl shrieking incoherently, kicking and clawing, and Gabriel sees Vladimir bash the barrel of the SMG along the side of her head, and the girl stops struggling.

Gabriel fires again, almost randomly, lets Vladimir get behind him with Bell’s daughter, checks over his shoulder to see they’re making their retreat. Turns back and then he sees him, sees Bell, or at least he thinks he does, distorted through the mask, a hundred feet or so away. Starting to run toward them, and Gabriel brings the gun up again, lays a burst at him starting up the sloped path in their direction. The man cuts right just as Gabriel fires, throws himself into cover against the curving wall along the pathway. Gabriel lays down a second burst, close after the first, still backing away.

Retreat is the only thing that matters now, salvaging this is the only thing that matters right now. That, and Dana, and Gabriel sees she’s huddled on her knees, big Betsy arms around two of the costumed kids. Head bowed, and he doesn’t think she’s been hit, can’t see if she was, prays that she wasn’t. Prays that Bell and his people take better care of her than he’s managed to.