Saul grabbed hold of the shotgun and let himself fall back under the weight of Eren’s corpse, then heaved it to one side. Aiming the shotgun at the guard, he squeezed the trigger, and a fist-sized hole appeared in the man’s chest. The guard fell backwards in an awkward heap, the Agnessa clattering on to the wooden floor beside him.
Saul shuffled backwards until his shoulders were up against the wall beneath the window, his breath emerging in short, rapid gasps. He kept the shotgun trained on the living-room as he listened for the sound of running feet. He waited there for at least another minute, before slowly pushing himself upright and making his way back into the other room.
He kneeled beside Narendra, who lay face-down on the floor, and heaved him over. One side of the man’s head was crusted with blood, but he was clearly still breathing.
Narendra moaned, his eyes blinking open.
Saul rifled through Narendra’s pockets until he found a slim aluminium case containing a single set of contacts, then glanced back at Narendra in time to see his eyes start rolling up in their sockets.
He shook him fiercely. ‘Narendra!’ He held the case up where the other man could see it. ‘Look at me. Are these my contacts?’
Narendra managed to focus on the case and muttered something Saul couldn’t make out, before his eyes slid shut once more. Saul shook him again, slapping the man’s face and cursing, but it was clear a response wasn’t going to be forthcoming any time soon.
He pinched the contacts out of the aluminium case and dropped them on to his eyes. Relief surged over him like a wave once it became clear that they were his own. He tried first to access the local emergency data sources but found, to his consternation, that they were currently all down. Calling for help clearly wasn’t going to be an option any time soon.
There was no one to be heard, so if any of the neighbours had noticed any sounds of shooting or violence, they were doing the sensible thing and staying well out of sight.
Saul hurried back into the apartment, stepping over Eren’s motionless body as he once more entered the office. It took only a moment to locate all of the unencrypted video files on Maalouf’s network, before copying everything over to his own contacts.
A quick browse on the spot showed him that there were many, many other files than just the video logs Narendra had already shown him. He noticed documents in their hundreds, all marked for much higher levels of clearance than his own. Technically, his duty was to leave them untouched and hand them over to his immediate superiors.
To hell with that, he decided.
Saul abandoned his blood-spattered jacket, finding another that was a near fit in the bedroom wardrobe. It felt loose around his shoulders – Farad had been a couple of sizes larger – but it was long and roomy enough to conceal the Agnessa within its folds. Lastly he rifled the dead guard’s pockets until he found a box of spare ammunition, then headed down the stairwell as fast as he could, pointedly avoiding the elevator.
Once he was back outside, he looked out across the whole of the canopied city stretching out below. He walked rapidly away from the building he had been held in, sticking to the shadows and keeping an eye out for anyone who might be showing an undue interest in him.
There was another detonation as he moved, and he looked out across the cityscape to see smoke and flames rising from yet another building adjacent to the Array. He glanced up at the overhead canopy and wondered if there was any way of discerning whether or not it had been damaged. If by any chance it had, a very great number of people were going to die.
Picking up his pace, he crossed a street, heading for an elevated transit station a couple kilometres further down the slope. As a shadow fitted past his feet, Saul looked up in time to glimpse an observation drone flying overhead. He watched as it banked right, following the road and ignoring him.
Before long he came to a row of stalls beneath an awning running down the middle of a city block. By the look of things, the owners had left in a considerable hurry, leaving food and fruit scattered all across the street. He passed on down the road and caught sight of an abandoned trike with a kebab cart hooked up to the rear.
He looked around, but whoever owned the trike had clearly gone to ground along with everyone else. He bent down and pulled out the pin to uncouple the cart. As soon as he climbed on, the dashboard sprang to life. He twisted the throttle and guided the trike out on to the street, noting simultaneously that the battery had just about enough juice to get him as far as the Array.
He rode gingerly at first, feeling somewhat less than comfortable on anything with less than four wheels. He saw very few people, though the evidence of ongoing combat echoed loudly through the air. He came to an intersection and guided the trike on to a main thoroughfare, passing several cars and vans shooting at high speed in the opposite direction, away from the city centre.
Saul opened up the throttle, gathering speed and making his way down a second thoroughfare, as he followed the course of an elevated rail line back towards the Array.
The closer he got to the Array, the more ASI drones he saw. One passed him in the opposite direction, broadcasting a message warning people to stay off the streets, but whoever was operating it had failed to spot him hidden beneath the elevated train track. A few minutes later, however, he nearly came flying off the trike when another drone fired on him. He jumped off and dashed for the relative cover of a nearby doorway, then waited and watched till the drone buzzed away over the rooftops.
He glanced across the street and noticed three other men hiding in the open doorway of a shuttered shop. One waved to Saul and beckoned him to come closer. He approached them warily, keeping his borrowed coat pulled tight around him, the Agnessa pressing against his thigh where he’d tucked it into his waistband.
The oldest-looking of the three had a carefully trimmed, greying beard, and he addressed Saul in Arabic. Saul’s contacts instantly gave him a rough-and-ready live translation.
‘What the hell are you up to?’ the old man demanded. ‘You’ll get yourself killed riding around in the open like that. You don’t see anyone else out on the streets, do you?’
‘I don’t know what’s going on here,’ Saul replied in English.
From the way the old man squinted at him in confusion, it was clear he wasn’t wearing contacts.
‘He’s not from around here,’ one of the younger men informed the old man, before turning to Saul. ‘Amid doesn’t like technology, but you can speak to me. You’re from Earth, right?’
Saul nodded, glad that at least one of them had active translation enabled in his contacts. ‘I was at the other end of town, doing some business, and now I’m just trying to find my way to the Array, so I can get back home.’
Amid’s younger companion nodded thoughtfully. ‘Must have been quite some business to get yourself knocked about like that.’ He gestured towards Saul’s bruised face. ‘You’ll have a hard time getting anywhere near the Array, I can tell you. Haven’t you heard? We’re being invaded.’
‘By the Coalition?’
Amid started at mention of the word, then spat out a string of invectives that Saul’s contacts struggled to comprehend.
‘Their tanks came through just over a day ago,’ said one of them. ‘Soldiers, too, appearing like ants out of an anthill. They took over the Legislature, and now there’s fighting on the streets all around the colonial government building, with Al Hurr taking on Black Dogs and drones.’ Maz shook his head. ‘A lot of dead people already.’
Sudden shouting from nearby was followed by gunshots, and then an explosion that shook the ground beneath their feet. Several men with scarves or T-shirts covering their faces came running along the street. One of them carried an assault rifle, while another brandished a rusty-looking axe. They soon disappeared around a corner, followed a minute later by a heavily armed drone.