Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

In the shadows not far away, a wet coughing was followed by Razorface’s voice. “She came in here,” he said. “I was twenty feet behind her. Hush up and move.” Soft splashing told Mitch that Razor was suiting action to words.

Just like a deadly serious game of Marco Polo. But he tapped Bobbi on the arm as she swam up next to him, and moved slowly upstream.

After the struggle through the tossing Connecticut, the sheltered Park River, frigid as it was, seemed almost restful. Mitch clenched his teeth to keep the chattering from giving him away. Somewhere close by, he heard the quiet spattering of Razorface moving through the inky blackness, and the big man’s ragged, carefully silenced breathing. The smallest noise echoed and reverberated.

Mitch thought the water was warmer, suddenly, and then the sensation of heat passed. You’re probably getting hypothermia, Mitchy, he thought. Even without the trauma plates, wearing his waterlogged Kevlar was like swimming holding a bag of cement. He could barely hold the handgrips in his rust-slashed hands, and his head spun with cold and exhaustion. Somewhere ahead, a single splash echoed.

He closed his useless eyes for a moment, leaning his forehead against the cold cement of the culvert wall. Bobbi bumped into him in the darkness and slithered an arm around him quietly, giving him a quick squeeze before she passed by. He turned toward her.

It saved Bobbi Yee’s life.

“Motherfucker!” Razorface threw himself backward, shouting in pain as he kicked away from the wall with his shattered ankle. Incandescent, searing white, loud as apocalypse in the echoing culvert, whatever happened next seemed to take the top of his skull off. He ducked under the water, which burned like cold fire as it clogged his nose. Flash grenade, he thought.

And then he remembered the two grenades he was carrying on his own belt. And underwater, blinded, he smiled.

He dove deep, breathlessness aching in his chest already, struggling against the current as he felt along the bottom of the culvert for what he hoped would be there.

Handholds. And they were.

Slowly, sparks swimming before his eyes, deathly as the shark he resembled, Razorface dragged himself along the bottom of the culvert.

Mitch saw the flash through closed eyelids. Reflexively, he threw an arm around Yee and pushed her down into the water. He didn’t hear the roar that followed the flash bang, deafening in the narrow tunnel. At first, he didn’t know why the water felt so warm, or what the mule-kick in the small of his back had been. Then he knew the bullet had hit his vest, knocked the air out of him, and when he tried to kick upward and get his head above water he thought he must be stunned. Dazed, he drifted, the little ronin’s lithe muscular body twisting against him. He felt her fingers in his hair, sharp pain and then sharper, deeper, as she dragged his head above water and he opened his mouth to take a breath. Something like a knife pressed between his ribs when he did it, and he tasted bright froth and the sharp tang of blood.

“Oh, Michael, oh no,” Bobbi whispered.

What kind of a stupid-ass cop pulls out his fucking trauma plates? Casey must have been using explosive rounds. At least he’d gotten between Bobbi and the bullet. He tried to say something, to warn Bobbi as she pressed her mouth over his, still clinging to the iron ring with her other small hand, her hair like seaweed draped over his face, the red water turning sharp as it scoured the wound in his back. She tried to breathe for him, and he would have screamed with the pain, but it hurt too much and anyway the black, black water dragged him down.

Got her, Barb thought with satisfaction, lowering her sidearm. Two to go. She forced herself to breathe evenly around the stabbing pain in her chest. Cracked ribs under her bulletproof vest, probably, if not busted, and she knew she’d torn up her right knee and right shoulder coming down the hill. But she was breathing, and that was all that counted.

And she’d bet a twoonie that she’d nailed the little Chinese ronin while she was stunned by the flash grenade. Things were looking up. The big space echoing around her had to be the confluence chamber, she thought, where the north and south branches of the river ran together. She knew from schematics she’d studied — just in case — that there was an overflow pit in this room, up the slope of a long concrete beach. The water wasn’t high enough for it to be a threat yet. The need to hurry pushed at her.

Cold enough that her body had quit trying to shiver and was locked in painful tension, Barb fell back along the north fork, where the water felt somewhat warmer.

Razorface stopped where he felt the warmer water flowing into the colder, and slowly raised his head until he got his nose above the surface — only just. He breathed deeply, as silently as he could, feeling the inside of steel teeth with the tip of his tongue. Someone moved past him in the darkness, swimming slowly and carefully; he guessed that it was Bobbi from the sound of her breathing. Something hot trickled down the side of his face: blood from his torn ear, but at least the water numbed the pain in his ankle. The storm blew across the mouth of the culvert like breath over the neck of a bottle.

Razorface closed his eyes in the darkness and listened.

Somewhere down the tunnel, a red light pulsed languidly. Flash burn still swam in front of Razorface’s vision. He squinted around it, trying to look through the edges of his eyes, and thought he saw a dark figure moving upstream farther than Bobbi could have gotten. He fumbled in his armpit for the water-slick butt of his pistol, fingers too numb to ache. He had to glance down to see what he was doing.

What does that light mean?

It seemed to flash faster, but he couldn’t be sure, and then he saw iridescence shattering off of Bobbi’s lilac-and-violet hair. She swam low in the water, and as he watched she submerged. Razorface grinned, the cold scent of concrete strong in his nostrils.

Casey was too far away for a good shot with a pistol. Kicking with his good foot, trying to brace against the recoil, Razorface leveled his waterlogged weapon just above the surface of the river anyway. Wonder if I’ll live long enough to clean it . Hoping the water hadn’t fouled the palm sensor, he pulled the trigger twice; the pistol jerked in his hand like a wounded animal, its action spraying river water across his face.

He heard Casey shout in pain and curse before he dove back under the water, explosive bullets smacking into the surface where he’d been a second before. He dove deep, held his breath, and grabbed the projecting loops at the bottom of the channel, groping forward. He was worried about the flashing light.

He was more worried when he came up for air, silently, as close to the wall of the channel as possible, and heard the claxon start.

The first shot missed Barb cleanly, but the second one whacked solidly into her vest. She screamed as a stabbing ripple of flame ran across the injured side of her chest, and then swore at the top of her lungs, returning fire. Idiot, imbecile. She didn’t even see the little Chinese ronin lunge up out of the darkness and thrust her gun hand upward, slamming her against the side wall of the culvert, next to the narrower side tunnel she had been swimming for. Merci à Dieu, cela endommage. She felt something break in her chest, tasting blood as she swung the barrel of her gun at Yee’s temple, revealed in the strobing crimson light. Her scream of pain still echoed when Yee ducked under the water, came up swinging with an elbow toward Barb’s injured ribs that Barb barely twisted away from. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. But Yee wasn’t any bigger than Nell had been at fourteen, and it hadn’t been that hard to hold her head under the water when the time came.