Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

The door opened more quietly than it had any right to and he hesitated behind it, but the only sound he heard was the thunder of his own heart and breath. He eased his pistol out from under his jacket, zipped it up to the throat, and peered through the hinge side of the door. He would have expected the low-light optic on his left eye to reveal almost nothing in the darkness of the basement, but some light must have filtered in, because he saw the derelict boiler and the outline of a flight of steel stairs.

He stepped up over the high lip at the bottom and — betrayed only by the creak of leather — drifted like a lurking shadow into the basement. The floor creaked overhead, and he paused, cocking one ear. How dumb do they think I am?

Dumb enough to walk into a trap. And he couldn’t deny it, either.

The stairs would be harder to do without making a sound. He wondered if they would have the sense to cover the stairwells, or if Casey was arrogant enough to think she’d pick him off on the way into the building. He shouldn’t have come. One foot after another, he crept up the stairs on the wall side, where they might be stronger.

Leesie was dead already, probably dropped in the river wrapped in chain link with a cinder block tied to the wire. Everything he’d fought for in twenty hard years was gone, taken away with a pass of some faceless company’s hand. Somebody he owed was rotting in a hospital somewhere, and the burning in his chest just kept getting worse.

And Razorface felt the need to do something about it. Something long term, preferably. Permanent, if he could.

He had his hand on the doorknob when glass shattered on the other side of it, and then the gunfire started in earnest.

Outside, Mitch swore under his breath and brought his captured rifle around. He’d left the body of a Boston ronin, drilled once cleanly through the back of the neck, two roofs to the left, and was slowly advancing on the warehouse. A drop of rain spattered the back of his hand as he crab-crawled over the side of a redbrick tenement and dropped to the fire escape with enough noise to make him wince.

They’re not going to hear you over the gunfire. “Bobbi, where are you?” he whispered. Razorface had gone out of contact ten minutes before. Underground.

The wind picked up, smearing his hair across his face. Her light tones followed a moment later. “Breathing,” she said. “I got one.”

“Me, too,” he answered. “Any sign of Casey?”

“She might be inside. Or she might be not here.”

He paused in his descent on the lowest platform of the fire escape, where stairs gave way to a drop ladder. It was going to make a hell of a noise when he kicked it loose, and no mistake. “That would suck. I’m moving for the southern exposure.” And then the storm broke over him like a cascade.

Mitch ducked his head, clinging to the rifle, rainslick fingers of the other hand lacing through groaning metal of the scaffolding on which he stood. He shouted into the wind—“Bobbi!”—and didn’t know if she heard. The wind coiled around him like a snake, slick and humid and as strangely warm as the fist-sized drops of rain that slapped his face. Blinded, right hand knotted on the stock of the rifle, he raised the arm to shield his face.

He lost his contact in there somewhere, sluiced out of his eye by the torrent of water, and swore as darkness added itself to his problems. A streetlight sparked and shattered. You have got to get off this building or you’re not going to make it, Mitchy.

It was an act of will to unlace his fingers from the escape and turn his face back out to the storm. Huddling his back against the building, he unzipped the collar of his windbreaker and shoved the rifle down his back. Not the best idea in the world . But he was at a loss for options.

He rezipped the jacket, hissed a quick little prayer, and kicked the ladder down before he went over the edge of the platform, feeling for the rungs in the tossing darkness. Hell of a storm, he thought. Knew I should have stayed in college. I could have been a pharmacist.

The rusted metal sliced his hands, blood slicker than water as he fought his way down. That rust, he half thought, was the only thing keeping his hands on the ladder. If the rungs had been smooth, the gust that blew his feet sideways and fetched his hip up against brick would have sent his body tumbling into the alley. He screamed into the wind, or anyway tasted rain, and hauled himself back up against the ladder, shaking.

It was only fifteen feet down to the ground.

He dropped the last five in a lull between gusts and landed crouching.

And this is only the edge of the storm.

Razorface almost jumped back from the door when bullets spattered the far side, but they didn’t pierce the wood. He touched his ear clip. “Killer?”

“I’m in the building. Michael is outside.”

“Leesie there?”

“Razorface.” Her tone told him everything he needed to know.

“Right. You get out on your own?”

“Storm broke. You can’t get out through the sewer.”

“Fuck. Can you blow enough shit up so I can get through this door?”

“Yes, I can. No sign of Casey. I don’t think she’s here. On three, Mister Razorface.”

He changed his pistol for the shotgun while she counted in his ear, and on three he reared back and landed one boot hard on the lock plate of the door. It burst open, ricocheted off the wall, and slammed shut behind him as he stalked into the room. He raised the shotgun and discharged it into the face of a ronin who spun to meet him a half second too late. The body flopped forward instead of back, already dead when Bobbi put a safety shot into it from her perch just beneath the shattered skylight. He saw her silhouetted against the greenlit sky, rain sheeting down around her as she swung slowly through it. She spun and swayed on something that looked like a chain trapeze, and while Razorface watched she laid a careful burst into the chest and face of one man who ducked around a corner to snap a shot at her.

“You a beautiful lady, killer,” he said, spinning on the ball of his foot and surveying the room briefly through his optic. He counted four corpses, including the one he’d made.

“Go for it, Razorface,” she answered in his ear. “I think that’s all of them. And I’ll cover you until you’re out.”

But he couldn’t leave. Not until he searched the echoing, empty building and proved to himself that no one else — living or dead — was there. By the time he finished, Bobbi had made it to ground level and Mitch was inside, dripping water like a half-drowned terrier.

“Fuck it,” Mitch said, laying a hand on his arm again. Again, he let it ride. “Razorface, let’s go home and clean house, all right?”

Physics is like sex. Of course it can give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.

— Richard Feynman

11:00 P.M., Saturday 16 September, 2062

Bloor Street West

Toronto, Ontario

Leah grabbed her dad by the elbow when he came out of Genie’s bedroom, stretching his hands up idly and pressing his fingertips against the ceiling. “Dad.”

“What, sweetie?”

“Are you going out tonight?”

A hot tide flooded his cheeks. “I had plans for later.”

Leah let go of his sleeve and rolled her eyes. “ Dad . You know Elspeth can come here, don’t you? God, you act like you have something to be ashamed of.”

“Ah.” He chewed air for a moment, and at last he chuckled. “You’ve been spending too much time with Jenny. But all right. I’ll let her know she’s welcome. Is that all this is about?”