Patrick Lee - Ghost Country

At the same instant the beam finally vanished, leaving the iris alone.

Paige was waving for Bethany to go through, but Bethany was already moving, fast and lithe. She got her limbs beneath her without rising more than a foot from the floor, and went through the iris in a single movement. No part of her even touched the circle.

Paige was right behind her, and when she was two thirds through the iris, Travis gripped the cylinder in his right hand and tossed it at her backside in an underhand spiral. He was betting it all that she would turn toward him once she'd crossed the threshold. Would turn and have time to catch the thing. He had no choice. His ears told him he was out of time. P aige spun on her knee the moment she was through the iris-and flinched, her hands coming up just in time to keep the cylinder from smashing into her face. She blocked it and then got hold of it, pulling it against herself, already forgetting it entirely.

Because Finn and two of his men were right there. Ten feet from Travis. Just passing the visual barrier of the overturned leather chair and the upright one beside it. Their guns already coming up to level.

But Travis was coming up, too. Not with a gun of his own. The Beretta was close by, somewhere under the couch, but the gap was too narrow to easily reach into.

What Travis had instead was the coffee table. He had it right by the middle with both hands, raising it over his head, and he was heaving himself upright from a crouch.

Finn and his men faltered. Whatever they'd expected, this wasn't it.

Travis extended his arms violently as he stood, and hurled the coffee table at them like a two-handed shot put.

Finn ducked. The man to his left brought his forearms up. The man to his right did nothing at all, and Paige saw the leading edge of the table connect dead-on with his nose. There was an explosion of blood across the bottom half of his face.

Paige missed whatever came next. She could see Travis diving toward the opening now, and pitched herself sideways to clear the way. He came through headfirst, landed on his forearms, twisted and pulled his legs the rest of the way across the margin.

It occurred to Paige that they were nowhere near safe yet. Just the opposite. They were sprawled out in the darkness before the opening, in no position to move quickly or take cover-if there'd been any cover. Finn and his people had been slowed by no more than a few seconds. There was still all the time in the world before the iris slipped shut.

She could see two sets of feet and shins coming already. Rounding the chairs. Pivoting. Crossing the open space. The men wouldn't even need to look through the iris for their targets. They could simply shove their pistols through and start shooting. They couldn't miss.

The SIG.

Where the hell was the backpack? When Paige had tossed it through, she'd been thinking only of getting out of the room fast. She spun, trying to guess where-and how far away-it could have ended up on this side.

But she saw the SIG the moment she turned. A small hand was gripping it. And centering it on the iris.

Bethany fired.

Paige looked in time to see a kneecap, five feet beyond the opening, burst inside its pant leg. A man screamed and fell bodily into view. Not Finn. The guy still had his Beretta, but he wasn't aiming yet. Bethany's next shot went right through the bridge of his nose. He flopped forward onto the carpet. The second pair of legs dug in to a hard stop. The man vaulted sideways, just missing Bethany's next round. It cratered one of the suite's bulletproof windows instead.

By then Paige could see Travis getting to his feet. Reaching to help her up. Bethany was rising too, but staying bent at the waist, keeping the SIG positioned to fire again.

Ten seconds later they settled into a safer position, several yards from the iris at a random angle. The opening looked strange hovering there in the darkness, lighting up the intermittent rain a few feet around it.

Bethany kept the SIG leveled. Nobody appeared at the opening.

The next minute went by like ten, and then the iris slipped shut, and there was nothing but the rain and the chill and the darkness of the ruined city.

Almost at once the rain provided a form of guidance. They could hear it hissing where it passed through the rusted bars of the steel grid, but somewhere close by it was making another sound. A hard pinging against something solid, resonant.

The stairs.

Just as in the office building in D.C., the heavy treads of the stairs in this structure had survived the decades of neglect. The three of them had climbed the full thirty flights earlier in the day.

Travis stood. "Let's go."

They made their way across the gridwork, stopping a few times to reassess the direction of the pinging. They took careful steps, placing each one tentatively before shifting any weight forward. There were other things than the stairwell that they might encounter. The elevator shaft, for one.

Travis swept an arm low in front of him. After a moment it hit something rigid. A structural upright. He felt down its length and found the top of the still-sturdy handrail.

Thirty seconds later they were two floors down. Travis stepped off of the landing and navigated by memory to where he'd left the twelve-gauge, a few yards away. It was still dry, leaning under the intact metal panel. He carried it back to the stairs.

"Hand me the backpack," he said.

He heard it shift in the darkness and then Bethany pushed it into his hands. It contained nothing but shotgun shells now. Bethany was still holding the SIG, and Paige had the cylinder.

"What are you doing?" Paige said.

"I'm going back up," Travis said. "You're going to keep heading down."

"The hell we are. You're coming with us, or we're coming with you."

"Finn and his people have the other cylinder," Travis said, "and it's their only way out of the building. The ground floor probably slammed shut like a bear trap half a second after you smacked Garner. Even the upper stairwells could have building security in them by now. Finn has to assume they do, either way. So his only exit is through the iris, on the top floor. Think of that, along with the fact that he still wants to capture or kill us. What's his best strategy?"

Paige was quiet a few seconds. Then she said, "He'll give us a few minutes to flee, and then come through the iris. That way we're not right there, shooting at his guys on their way through the bottleneck."

"Exactly," Travis said. "Once they're past that point, the advantage is all theirs. You saw the goggles around their necks. They can see in the dark and we can't. If they come through the iris in the next couple minutes, while we're groping our way down the stairs, they'll overtake us long before we reach the ground. And they know we can't use our own cylinder to go back through the iris on some lower floor-not with the building locked down. We'd be taken into custody, and we'd be under President Currey's discretion within hours. We're dead either way. The only real chance we've got is to stay here in the ruins until we're well away from this building. But that only works if someone stays up here and covers the retreat. And I'm sorry to be a dick, but it's gonna be me, and that's it."

He slung the pack on his shoulder. The weight of the shells inside felt reassuring.

"On the bright side," he said, "this is a chance to end this right here."

"Then we should all stay," Bethany said.

"No," Travis said. "We can't risk the cylinder. What Currey said on the phone is right. No one's going to believe any of this if they don't look through the iris for themselves. Garner needs it. It's more important than any of our lives."

Neither of them replied right away. In the whisper of the rain, Travis could sense them accepting the idea. Hating it, but accepting it.