Ramez Naam - Crux

“What’s our ETA?” Shiva asked.

“Six minutes for the drones,” Hayes replied. “Twelve minutes for us.”

Too slow , Shiva thought. The bounty hunters will get him first!

“We’re into the club’s systems!” came the voice of their hacker. “Cameras, security system, the works.”

“Can you see Lane?” Hayes asked.

“It’s a zoo in there,” the hacker replied. “No sight of him.”

The channel came to life again. “Targets moving towards the back door. Repeat. Targets moving towards back door.”

“South-west corner, shooters ready,” came the reply.

Damn it. They had to be there now . They had to stop those snipers from taking out Lane and his companion.

Shiva turned to the hacker. “Can you trigger the fire alarm?”

“Looking…” the hacker said. “Fire alarms. Yes.”

Hayes looked up at Shiva. “Flush everyone else out? Confuse the snipers?”

Shiva nodded. “Will it work?”

“Better than nothing,” Hayes replied. Then, to the hacker, “Do it.”

Kade got up calmly from the bar. Feng went ahead of him, and they started to wind their way through the crowd towards the back, the second bar, the restrooms, and the other exit from the club. The crowd beckoned to Kade, that sweet union, that sweet forgetting of the illusion that he existed, that he mattered.

But he remembered now. He remembered who he was and why he mattered.

Feng had a beer bottle in his hand, and Kade could feel his friend scanning, keeping track of the bounty hunter in the bar with them, looking for additional weapons he could pick up. That barstool. The mic stand. The tall bottle of whisky behind the bar.

Then a piercing sound blasted through the club. White lights came on. Emergency exit signs lit up. The piercing noise buzzed again and again and again, now with a voice over it.

“A fire has been detected,” a voice droned over the music. “Please exit the building. A fire has been detected. Please exit the building. A fire has been detected…”

Confusion ruled around him. Kade felt chaos ripple through minds, tear down the coherence that had been there seconds before. People looked around. Was there really a fire? A false alarm? The DJ turned down the music, uncertain. Lotus’s mind was indecisive.

Then the sprinklers kicked in, raining cold water on everyone, and the crowd made up its mind. Someone jostled Kade from behind, and he felt the crowd start to push towards the exits. Out of reflex he moved with them. Then Feng had hold of his arm, was yanking him off to the side, out of the way of the river of humanity making for the exits, over between a six-foot-tall stack of speakers and the wall of the club.

Down!Feng sent to him, and Kade dropped to a crouch, partially hidden by the speakers, Feng at his side.

What’s going on?he asked in confusion.

Then the bounty hunter they’d seen pushed through the crowd, feet from them, and there was a gun in his hand.

Shiva listened as the bounty hunters’ channel burst into noise.

“Fire alarm.”

“Crazy. Can’t see target.”

“Can’t see him in the crowd moving out.”

“ETA?” Shiva asked Hayes.

“Three and nine minutes,” the commander replied.

“Can the drones take out the snipers?” Shiva asked.

“Affirmative,” Hayes answered.

Then across the bounty hunters’ channel: “North-west, south-west, fire gas into the building. Repeat, into the building. Backup 1, ram the wall.”

Kade barely had time to tense at the sight of the man and the gun. The bounty hunter’s eyes widened and the gun started to rise. Feng’s mind was suddenly like ice. The world slowed almost to a halt, and then his friend was there, impossibly fast. Feng took the bounty hunter’s gun wrist in one vise-like grip and punched the man in the face hard enough that his head snapped back with an audible crack. The gun exploded in the same instant, sending a round into the wall by his side, and Kade felt the crowd jump in response. Fear flared across their minds, and people started rushing, pushing harder, crushing each other against walls or overstuffed doorways.

Then something crashed in through a window. Something small and hard and moving fast. It hit a boy in a devil costume in the belly, sent pain lancing out from his mind, knocked him reeling back into three more dancers. The crowd held them up and the canister that had struck him fell to the floor, hissing out something that scattered the now-white fog. Kade felt Feng’s mind fill with firing angles and escape options and the trajectories of the scores of unpredictable bodies that were the crowd.

Another canister whistled in through another window, lifting a girl in a transparent red skirt off her feet and into a table that collapsed beneath her, sending glasses and bottles flying and crashing to the ground. Kade could feel the intense pain of something broken inside her abdomen, her sudden burst of terror.

He felt the crowd teeter on the verge of panic. People were coughing near the canisters. They were slumping, falling. He could feel them fading in his mind. Another canister punched through the window. He saw the shirtless Vietnamese boy, the one being ridden from London, try to jump out of the club through the now demolished window. A canister struck him in the head. The force of the impact knocked him down and out of Kade’s sight.

There were people everywhere, a mass of them, upright and crowding the doors, screaming, yelling, trying to push each other out of the way, crawling over each other to make it to the exit. Others were slumping over in the middle of the club where the gas was reaching them. He saw the pretty brunette, trying to push her way through the mass of people, screaming. More and more revelers were swaying, falling as the gas spread. Every direction was blocked. The Nexus link that had been sublime union was now filled with terror and panic. Kade felt it press in on him, a cold dark tide of fear trying to take him under.

Then Feng’s mind closed around him. He could feel his friend’s resolve, feel his calm. They were getting out of here.

Feng pushed Kade out of his way. Then he reached up and grabbed a speaker the size of a trash bin off the stack beside them. Feng swung the speaker back, then drove it forward into the wall like a battering ram, embedding a third of its length in the plaster and wood of the structure.

Another canister shot into through the window, struck the bar, ricocheted into the illuminated wall of bottles behind it, sent alcohol and broken glass shrapnel everywhere. Kade heard more panicked screams as the glass lacerated people. More than half the crowd was down now. The rest were coughing. Kade was coughing. He could feel whatever was in the gas working on him. He reached into his mind to boost acetylcholine, boost adrenaline, try to keep himself awake…

Feng yanked the speaker free of the wall, swung it back again with both hands, drove it forward.

Then the wall exploded and something huge burst in. Kade saw it in slow motion through Feng’s eyes but it was too late, too slow. The armored jeep’s massive front end struck the speaker and then Feng, and then he disappeared as the vehicle roared into the club.

41

BATTLE ROYALE

Saturday October 27th

Shiva clenched his fists as the first view of the scene appeared. Overhead, their quartet of drones reached the site. Each was a meter-wide flying wing, radar absorbent, color shifting, propelled by twin fuel-cell-powered engines, loaded with cameras and small, lethal weapons.

On screen their cameras showed an armored jeep surging down the street, scattering people, striking some head on, and then crashing in through the wall of the club. From the other direction a second armored jeep was coming. Young men and women jumped out of its way, not all of them fast enough.