Ramez Naam - Apex

But only because the army allowed them to. Only because they didn’t shoot live ammunition. Only because fear of this new transparency, this new visibility to their own citizens and the world held them back.

And even so, they’d had bruises, broken bones, concussions, one girl burned badly when a Molotov exploded in her hand.

Daylight had brought an end to the fighting. Exhausted protesters ate what food they could, drank water piped in from the university buildings, napped, or swayed on their feet.

Now the sun had set again. The clouds overhead had turned pink and red. Even that was fading. The blue of the sky was growing deeper and darker by the minute. The first stars had appeared. Night was coming. The tear gas would come soon.

Zhi Li hadn’t slept. The world felt grainy, unreal. She was exhausted.

She was exhilarated.

“We need a specific list of demands,” she said to Yuguo. They were sitting on the ground, on the hard dirt that had been grass just days ago, their backs to a heavy metal table turned onto its side as piece of cover.

Yuguo’s friend, Jian, next to him, nodded at her words, and Zhi Li turned to include him as well.

“We need to prioritize what we want,” she said. “Communicate it consistently from all the protests, so our voices add to each other’s–”

“What’s that noise?” Qi said next to her, suddenly turning, standing to look over the table.

Zhi Li stopped speaking. Then she could hear it too. She could feel the sudden alertness of the thousands of minds around her. She could hear it through their ears. It sounded like…

“Engines,” Lu Song said. He was up too. Dai was up. Yuguo was up. His friend Jian was up. Other people all around them were up, and looking.

The sound was growing louder. Zhi Li came to her feet, turned.

The tanks. In the twilight, lit by the fires and the spotlights, she could see the tanks moving forward, driving straight towards the still-burning barricades and the protest behind them.

She saw movement, closer. Her eye tracked it unconsciously. A boy, a student, his arm cocked back, a lit Molotov in his hand – and then he was hurling it forward.

She turned to look where it would go. Her eyes found the tanks again.

Their turrets were turning, aiming towards the boy, aiming roughly this way.

“DOWN!” Qi shouted.

Hands grabbed her, yanked her painfully to the hard ground.

The world exploded. The sound was deafening. Dirt and debris flew everywhere. There were screams. There was pain and fear shouting out from the minds all around there. Confusion.

New sounds arrived. Harsh metallic repetition. Badadadadadadada. Machine guns.

Screams.

“Lu Song!” she cried. She couldn’t see. There was someone in her arms. Someone she was holding. They were screaming. They were screaming! There was pain shooting from their mind! Horror!

“Lu Song!” She wiped the clods of dirt away from her face, opened her eyes.

“Lu Song!” Why was he screaming!

It was the boy she was holding. Yuguo’s friend. Jian.

He screamed again, in horror, in pain. It struck her full force from his mind.

His left arm was gone. It ended in a red trail of shirtsleeve, blood gushing out from it.

Zhi Li gasped. She put her hands on what was left of his arm, pressed hard, tried to stop the blood.

Another explosion sounded, shockingly close. She closed her eyes against the dirt and debris. When she opened them someone she didn’t know was wrapping a tourniquet around Jian’s upper arm.

“I’ve got him!” the woman yelled, and started pulling on Jian, started tugging him away, back, towards somewhere.

Zhi Li heard a crushing, crashing sound, and couldn’t stop herself from coming up to a knee and looking. Tanks were pushing forward, into the barricade they’d made of junk, doused with fuel. The tanks were pushing the flaming mass in places, climbing over it and crushing it in others.

“Fuck them,” she heard someone say. Yuguo. He had something in his hand. Like a slate, but not. He jabbed at it.

She looked back at the tanks, and they were frozen, stuck still, exactly where they were, their turrets unmoving.

She saw soldiers, climbing out of hatches, putting their hands on huge top-mounted machine guns.

“FOR CHINA!” someone yelled near her.

Lu Song!

She turned, and there he was, standing, his giant frame towering in clear view, a huge target, his arm cocked back, a lit Molotov cocktail in it.

They were going to kill him. She could see it about to happen. See that they were about to blow him to bits like they had that boy down there!

“Lu Song!” she yelled, fear overruling all else.

Then the Molotov was out of his hands, hurtling forward, and the heavy machine guns were firing. He was down on the ground next to her, panting. He was bleeding from his brow. And then he smiled.

Pride rushed through her heart at Lu Song’s courage. Love of such intensity she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt it before.

Zhi Li kissed Lu Song before she even knew what she was doing, then she peered back over the crowd. There was fire, fire atop one of the tanks, a machine gunner engulfed in fire, screaming. She gasped in horror, then remembered that this man would’ve shot them, would have killed students in the crowd.

Her lover had killed him instead.

And then other guns opened up, further back.

Guns in the hands of soldiers. Hundreds of them, on foot, with their shields and armor and assault rifles, firing into the crowd as they advanced.

Damn them! Zhi Li thought.

Tanks or no, the Army was coming.

Bai squeezed more nutritional goo from the ration pouch into his mouth. Just a few hours left. Just a few hours and they’d see if the Su-Yong on the cube was any better than what they’d encountered so far.

Before then it would be time to put the chameleonware back on, time to gear up again, time to prep for heavy action.

“Incoming, incoming!” Peng’s voice came across all their radios. “Tanks moving. Troops opening fire!”

Bai shot to his feet. His finger went to the radio control at his collar. “Deploy!” he barked. He flipped to status of the other protests. No sign of incursion anywhere else.

Which meant they knew.

“Lethal force!” he barked. No time for stealth. No point now. “Links up! Squads one, two, three, to the square! Snipers, weapons free! Squad four, building defense!”

Then he activated his own encrypted radio link, felt his brothers all around the campus do the same.

Suddenly more than a hundred minds were linked crystal clearly to his. And the battlefield was alive in his thoughts.

Zhi Li scrambled backwards for the small rise in the center of the square, trying to stay low, trying to stay behind tents, tables, overturned benches, anything that might offer the tiniest bit of cover.

There was shooting everywhere. She could see gouts of flame erupting from rifles in twilight, see the flames of the barriers and the Molotov-ignited fires reflecting in the mirror helmets of the incoming soldiers. There were screams, horrible screams. Minds were yelling out in pain and fear.

Minds were winking out.

People were dying.

“Come on!” Lu Song yelled. He had his hand around hers, was pulling her, trying to move her faster.

“They’re coming after us,” Yuguo said. “They’ve seen us. There’s a squad heading this way.”

“You’re the leaders,” her bodyguard, Dai, said. “They want you.”

Dai drew his gun and stopped, crouched low. “Run!” he said. “I’ll hold them off!”

Zhi looked back at him, despair in her heart as Lu Song tugged at her. She saw Dai stand, his pistol in his hand. He pointed it back the way they’d come, fired, fired, fired again, flame shooting out of it.