James Decker - Fallout

Behind them, the last few people wrestled through the door and it slammed shut behind them.

“Come on,” Vamp said. “Never mind them, go!”

Police blues and reds formed an overlapping strobe in the chaos of the club plaza as armed officers cruised in on one-man air transports. Others tromped through the mob to try to surround the club. As we darted toward the walkway on the other side, I heard another shout.

“Secure those exits!” a man barked. “Cut them off!”

The lights along the moving walkways winked out, and they wound down. People shouted as they slowed, then stopped.

I took another step and slammed headlong into what felt like a wall, caroming off and staggering back before falling on my butt. Ahead, I saw Vamp skid to a stop in front of a faint blue force field that had appeared in front of us.

“Shit…” I got back onto my feet, wiping blood out from under my nose with my forearm. Shuang looked around, and spotted a break in the crowd.

“That way!”

“Freeze!” a man barked from behind us.

We turned, Nix parting the way in front of us, but got only as far as an outdoor café before another field lit up in front of us.

“Shit!”

We were stuck. There was no way out. I turned back and saw Qian appear in the crowd back the way we’d come. To our left and right, two of the men who had come through the dome were moving in fast.

“Sam…”

Security moved in behind her. She stared at me, meeting my eye for a moment, and then seemed to decide that she’d missed her opportunity. She turned and disappeared into the crowd.

“Stop where you are!”

I turned to see at least two black-helmeted guards had moved in from our side of the field. When a third one joined them, Vamp rushed them.

“Hey!”

He plowed into them, knocking one down. He made a hole, big enough to get through, but one of them had him and the other two were back on their feet before he could even twist free.

The guard that had taken the brunt of the impact unclipped his nightstick from his belt and slammed Vamp square in the gut with the butt of it. Vamp doubled over, falling to his knees in front of the guard. The other two went for Nix. They both hit him with the prods and pumped enough juice into him to send a visible arc squirming between the cells of his rib cage. His body went rigid as they held the stunners to him, and the first guard crossed behind Vamp to grab one wrist and twist it, pushing the arm down so that Vamp was forced onto his chest. I bolted toward the guards, ducking some flailing chick with a bush of peroxide-white hair as I closed in on the brawl. My intention was that I would use the nearest table as a launching pad and jump the guard, but it turned out the table had a single, central support. As soon as my foot came down on the table’s edge it tipped over and fell away leaving me in midair with almost no momentum. I did manage to at least hook my fingers through the guard’s collar as I fell, and he choked as he staggered back, then fell in a heap on top of me.

“Let go!” he grunted, reaching back as I squirmed free and tried to get my arms around his neck. He managed to roll over onto his knees, and then from there he hauled himself to his feet with me hanging off him.

When one of the guards zapping Nix went to help him, he waved him off. “Keep on it! I got this!”

I leaned back so that all my weight was on his neck, but he had a thick neck and I didn’t weigh much. I almost made him tip back and lose his footing, almost. Instead he leaned forward, reaching back with both hands and grabbing me.

Before I knew what was happening he’d peeled me off and flipped me over his shoulder. I came down on the floor on my back hard enough to knock the wind out of me for a minute, and before I could get back up he had his knee on my chest. He leaned forward until I thought he was going to crack a rib, then stopped.

“Let her go!” Vamp yelled. I couldn’t see him but I could hear him struggling. “Let her go, asshole!”

“Shut up!” one of them barked.

“Get off her!” he grunted as one of the men grappled with him. “Get off her or I swear I’ll—”

As I squirmed under the guard’s knee I caught a flash of light, Vamp’s voice cut out as I heard the rapid popping of a stunner.

“Oh, come on,” one of them said as Vamp’s legs folded and he fell to the floor. “Now we’ll never know what he’d do.” A couple of others laughed.

“Zip him and hood him,” the one holding me down said. The crackle of electricity coming from Nix finally sizzled out and I heard him collapse with a heavy thud.

“What about the haan?” someone asked.

“Put a shock pin in him. They want that one back in Shiliuyuán.”

Nix’s eyes flashed bright, at that. He began to stir.

The knee came up off my chest and I gasped in a breath as the guard’s big hand grabbed my arm and flipped me over.

“Hands behind your back,” he said. “You know the drill.”

I did what he said, craning my neck so I could see Vamp. He was still woozy, but he was moving as they tied his wrists behind his back with a plastic zip tie. When he was secure, one of them pulled a hood over his head and jerked the strap tight under his chin.

“What is this about?” I asked as the guard tied my hands behind my back, pulling until the plastic tie dug into my wrists.

“You know what this is about.”

He hauled me to my feet, and shoved me toward Vamp who had begun to stir on the floor. A crowd had formed around us, a wide circle of faces that looked in on us, phones held out to snap pictures and video.

“Not the ship…” Nix said, his voice faint.

“Huh?” one of the officers grunted.

Nix stirred again, placing his palms on the floor and trying to push himself up. “Not Shiliuyuán…”

A thread of fear, mixed with a rising sense of violence, began to stream in through the mite cluster. It grew more intense the more he struggled.

Nix, don’t, I sent over the 3i.

“Just tell me what’s going on? What’s this about?”

“Shut up,” he snapped. He waved at Shuang, who hovered near the edge of the crowd. “You, over here with the rest. Don’t make me come get you.”

Shuang looked pale as she stepped away from the others, and approached us. One of the other guards approached Nix.

“I can’t go back,” he said, his voice box flickering very faint.

“Nix, it’ll be okay,” I told him.

The guard jammed a shock pin into Nix’s chest. He activated it, and Nix’s body went limp.

“My guardian is in security,” I told him as he grabbed Shuang’s arm and shoved her toward us.

“Good for him.”

“Just call him, he can—”

“One more word,” he growled in my ear, “and you get the stunner, got me?”

“Just—”

The guard whipped back around, his stunner out.

He wasn’t bluffing.

I couldn’t see where we went, but back through the mall and then through a door somewhere to the outside. The sounds of the metro faded and were replaced by the bustle of street noise. There was a lot of reverb, like we were in one of the garages, and then we got marched up a couple of flights of stairs to the outside. The guard pushed me along, and then heavy doors ahead of me groaned open. I bumped onto a metal step, banging my shin before I managed to get one foot up on it.

“Watch your step,” the guy next to me said before putting one hand on my ass and shoving me forward. I fell down into the back of what had to be a prison transport, the metal deck drumming underneath me as my shoulder hit. Vamp and Nix followed, and then the guards tromped in after us. The doors squealed closed again with a heavy thud, and I felt the engine whine to life through the floor.