Shaw’s eyes are half-closed when he murmurs, “It’s the end times, True.”
“No,” she says in gentle dismissal. “That’s nonsense.” Her tone is a pose, a false front of confidence, but she is not going to encourage his apocalyptic state of mind. She wipes the sweat and the tears from his eyes with a last clean scrap of gauze. “You know you’re fucking crazy?”
“Crazy,” he agrees. “Not wrong.”
She’s almost grateful when Colt interrupts—though there’s fear in his gruff voice. “Oh crap,” he says. “There’s a goddamned armed robot coming down the street.”
True is abruptly aware of the ratcheting sound of tracks on the pavement. She grabs the Triple-Y and starts to lever herself up on stiff legs, her head pounding, but Shaw reaches across his body with his good hand and grabs the rifle barrel, pushing it down, unbalancing her.
“Don’t try to fight it,” he warns her. “You can’t win and you’re not white-listed.”
It comes fast. She hardly has time to look around before it’s there: a little armed robotic vehicle, poised on the threshold alongside Guiying’s remains. It’s got a traditional design, like a miniature tank, riding on caterpillar treads. It’s only about forty inches long, with a jointed arm supporting a short gun barrel, and behind that, a mast with a 360-degree camera sealed within a spherical transparent housing. Affixed to its armored surface is the Rogue Lightning emblem. Marking another deadly mech. She notes this as the gun swivels, sighting on her.
“Fuck,” she whispers and perversely her next thought is how tired she feels. But tired or not, she has to do what she can.
“It’s my people,” Shaw says. “Didn’t want to bring them in. Couldn’t stop the emergency beacon.”
“That’s why you needed your visor.”
“You’ll be okay.”
She doesn’t believe it. Don’t trust anyone.
The situation is slipping away. Lincoln is coming but not soon enough. She turns to hide the movement of her hand as she pulls a tracking disc out of her pocket.
“Two armed males just stepped into sight,” Colt warns.
She activates the disc, shoves it into a hidden pocket at the waistband of her pants. She gets out the other disc, and under the guise of adjusting the medical tape on Shaw’s shoulder, she shoves it between the layers of dressing.
“You got that?” she whispers to Colt.
He responds in a defeated voice, “You think you’re going to be a hostage. Roger that.”
Friends
From the street outside, a youthful male voice with a British accent shouts, “Jon! If you’re still breathing, tell your friend to put the gun down and back away.”
“Do it,” Shaw warns her.
She eyes the ARV, wondering how many shots it would take to damage the thing. “Is it autonomous?” she asks.
“Of course.”
It would take just one bullet to lay her out, and with no human in the kill chain the shot would come without hesitation.
“Okay,” she says, mouthing the word for the benefit of the ARV’s camera. But she doesn’t put the gun down right away. Still on one knee, she edges back, holding on to the Triple-Y but with her hand nowhere near the trigger. The ARV adjusts the direction of its weapon to track her movement.
“Gun on the ground!” the voice insists. “I won’t ask you again.”
She’s a few feet from Shaw now, so she sets it down at her side, almost behind her. She holds her hands half up, palms out, rising from her crouch. Still moving slowly backward, almost at the mouth of the passage. Just a harmless old lady. The sling of the Triple-Y is only inches from her feet.
“Take the visor off too!”
She does it, folding it, sliding it into her pocket. She’s still wearing her TINSL.
Out in the street, two well-muscled, athletic young men come into sight. Both are dressed in neat trousers and button-down shirts, but True is sure that beneath their shirts they’re wearing protective vests, and they move with the crisp discipline of highly trained soldiers.
They pause behind the ARV. The shorter one wears a shoulder holster, empty now, because he’s holding his pistol in a two-handed grip—muzzle down, for the moment. He has a dark-brown complexion, unruly black hair, and heavy black eyebrows just visible above the nearly opaque screen of an AR visor.
The second man is taller, with deep black skin. Black sunglasses hide his eyes. He too carries a pistol though he’s more relaxed, his gun held casually in one hand. “We all friends here?” he asks in that same British voice she heard before.
True would love to think so but it’s hard to answer in the affirmative, given that the ARV still has its gun trained on her. So she says nothing. But Shaw speaks, his voice a low, hoarse whisper. “Stop fucking around, Ian. We got to move out now.”
The tall man, Ian, makes a show of looking down at Guiying’s blasted corpse. “Jesus fuck, Jon,” he says, stepping over it to enter the passage. “That’s fucking impressive.”
True nudges the sling of the Triple-Y with her toe as she eases to one side, a shift that puts Ian between herself and the robotic vehicle. She is very conscious of the weight of the pistol in her pocket. Also of the weight of the second man’s gaze as he repositions himself to maintain a clean line of sight.
Ian gives her a casual look-over before frowning down at Shaw, taking in the massive wound dressing already stained with blood and yellow fluids. “Got to say it, brother. It looks like you’re having a bad day.”
All friends here, huh?
Shaw said these were his people, but True is not sensing the love. “That’s what a laser can do,” she says cautiously. “One strike. Killed her. Burned him down to the bone.”
“Fucking shit.” He crouches beside Shaw. “No worries, Jon. I’ll get you out of here.”
“You need to get him to a hospital,” True says. She eyes the Triple-Y on the floor, and the ARV… and the man in the street, who is eyeing her.
“Fuck that,” Shaw growls.
“No,” Ian says. “The lady’s got it right.”
“Don’t shit me.” To True’s astonishment, Shaw manages to roll onto his uninjured arm. He starts to push himself up. But Ian puts a hand on his wounded shoulder and shoves him down. “God,” Shaw gasps, back arching in pain.
“Come on, Jon,” Ian says. “Don’t be an ass. You’re in bad shape and that puts me in a bad position. You need to give me access. Give me the keys. Because if you go, Variant Forces goes with you. Money disappears, and I’ve got nothing.”
“You worked that out?” Shaw breathes. “You got to figure, that’s on purpose.”
“Two years I’ve had your back. Kept you alive.”
“That’s your job. Still is. You’re paid damn well for it.”
Ian looks up, making brief eye contact with his partner. “Farouk predicted you’d do this. That when it came time, you’d leave us on the street. I did not want to believe it, but you’ve been a stranger since that cock-up with Al-Furat. When you disappeared yesterday, I had concerns. Farouk agreed. We needed an exit plan.”
Shaw relaxes a little, he closes his eyes. “So you two been talking to someone? Got a new contract?”
“It’s not too late,” Ian assures him. “We can put this back together, mate, but I need to be on the inside this time. A trusted partner. Farouk too.”
“Fuck you,” Shaw spits.
The man outside—Farouk—shifts his focus from True to Ian. “We won’t get anything from him,” he says bitterly, speaking in Arabic-accented English.