Jack shouldered Will out the window, then tumbled after, gracelessly, followed by a stream of reanimated bullets. Falling five feet he hit the laminated glass, hard, and then the grenade on the trooper’s belt detonated.
Screams erupted from inside the building.
Will was in his face, terrified. “Are you okay?”
“Just glad the glass didn’t break.”
“It’s reinforced. How do we get down from here? They’re going to kill us!”
The canopy was an undulating design that tapered toward the ground on the far side. Three hundred feet beneath their shoes waited the hard, polished floor of the atrium. Two panels of glass-reinforced or not-between them and about two seconds of terror.
Will was transfixed, staring at the ground below with an expression of total horror.
“Will? Hey, Will.” Tucking the handgun into the back of his jeans Jack shook Will by the shoulder. Will reacted violently, stance wide, struggling for balance. “Will! We’re fine. We walk across this, to the far side, into your car, and we’re gone. Easy.” Will clearly wasn’t convinced. “C’mon, this’ll be fun.”
“Fun?” And then, “Oh, this is your coping strategy manifesting again. I understand.”
“I’ll go first, you follow.” Jack walked twenty feet to the next segmented glass panel, held in place by the ornate geometrical webwork of steel beams. He jumped up and down. “Totally safe.”
“Please don’t do that.” Will took a breath, followed.
The old physics building-that redbrick relic of a bygone era-was mostly enclosed by the crystalline shell of the Monarch Innovations Quantum Physics complex. Only its new top levels jutted above the glass dome, the levels that held the lab and Monarch’s time machine. It was from the ground floor of this building that Senior Operative Randall Gibson emerged, into the vast domed lobby of the Quantum Physics complex. On his earpiece was his second-in-command, Donny, now in charge of the squad Gibson had left in the time lab.
Gibson’s ear mic pinged-a call from the Tower. “Actual to C-1, activate rescue rigs.”
Beneath their armor Gibson’s crew wore delicate wire-and-brace filament exoskeletons, wired to the portable chronon battery on their back. Simultaneously slapping a small chrome plate on each hip brought Gibson’s battery online. His skin stung sharply along the lines of the wiring.
“Donny, you copy that?”
Donny was a good guy. Gibson had worked with him for years: easy to get along with, happiest when taking orders, reliable in a fight.
“Yeah, boss. We’re live.”
This is what they’d trained for. Chronon-1 could now move freely. Interruptions to causality flow would have no hold over them.
“Actual, C-1 is chronon-active.”
“Boss, heads up. Getting word: gunfire on fifth, and Reaper squad is down. Fifty percent casualties. Looks like a grenade mishap.”
“Are you fuckin’ serious, Don?”
Chronon-1 was the only squad on-site authorized to deploy rigs. Reaper squad was filled with regulars. Nothing special, but casualties meant leaving DNA, fiber… evidence. Ah, Monarch had the best cleaners in the biz.
“’Fraid so, sir.”
“You’re in charge, Don. I’m overseeing Guardian’s sanitization run. Buzz me if you need me.”
Guardian squad was hanging out in the atrium. No rigs, no skills. This wasn’t how Gibson had imagined his first live chronon op: coddling a gang of masked chumps. Fuck this, man. Right in the car.
Guardian squad’s CO-a young senior operative, carbine strapped across his chest-saluted as he strolled over, like he was still in the Corps. Didn’t even take the mask off to do it.
Asshole.
The light from the double-dome superstructure was throwing down crazed shadows that made Gibson’s eyes hurt.
“Boss,” Donny piped up over the earpiece. “Be aware: the two strays from the time lab aren’t among the bodies.”
Stupid idea for a building, Gibson thought, taking it all in: a football field’s worth of space between here and the other side of the dome. Racks of Segways spaced around it just so the civvies could get to the stairs. So fuckin’ inefficient.
“Do what we do, Don. Lock it down. They’ll be in there…” His eyes traversed the geometrical curvature above him, the inner and outer webwork clashing into still more patterns.
Gibson stopped where he was, eyes up. Well, Randall Gibson thought. Ain’t that something. “Don?” he said. “Look out a window.”
“Hey, Randall,” Guardian’s CO said, eye on the time. “You ready?”
Gibson kept his eye on the ceiling. “Sure, sure. Listen, let me borrow that six-pack your boy’s carrying.”
Donny piped up. “Well shit, boss. Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?”
“Wait twenty seconds, Don, then tell me what you see.”
Jack and Will had covered about ten panels-maybe a hundred feet-and were making good time.
“See? No big deal. Close to halfway there and no casualties.” No response from Will, so Jack checked behind him. “Will?”
Will was where they’d started.
Eyes screwed shut, frozen on the spot, Will stammered, “I-I can’t move, Jack. I…” He looked down. “Oh God.”
“Will, look at me, okay? Straight ahead. Slow and steady steps.”
“I…” Will never finished the sentence. He was staring down, fixated by the glass at his feet, the drop beyond it.
“Will?”
His head whipped up, breath snagged in his throat, and, suddenly, Will was running right at him.
“Whoop,” Gibson muttered, tracking the grenade launcher’s barrel across the underside of the dome. “We got a rabbit.”
Forty-millimeter grenades have a casualty radius of about 130 feet, so Guardian squad had hunkered themselves behind the info stand. Gibson had positioned himself as far away from his target as possible, firing at an angle. Mama Gibson didn’t raise no dummy.
Gibson sighed and pulled the trigger. The M32 kicked with a satisfying thoonk.
Will sprinted straight for Jack.
“Will! It’s cool! Rel-”
Three glass panels thirty feet behind his brother shocked white as the entire superstructure smashed into the underside of their feet. Jack was knocked on his ass, the handgun striking sharp against his tailbone, ankles and shins wracked with splintering pain; Will left the surface completely, arms pinwheeling, and came down hard, smashing into the glass. Jack couldn’t hear himself shout, “What the fuck was that?”
He couldn’t hear anything.
Will was hyperventilating, scrambling to his feet, but something was wrong. His feet wouldn’t take his weight. Jack’s own feet and legs were a riot of tingling excruciation. His bones burned. Facedown as he was, pressed to the glass dome, he saw what was happening below: a smiley-faced squad taking cover behind a curved information desk and a bare-headed trooper with a six-shot rotary grenade launcher, eyeballing Will with the happiest expression Jack had ever seen on a human face.
Cordite stench and hot glass particles settled into the atrium. Gibson rolled his shoulders, cricked his neck, and sighted up a second shot.
Gibson called out his next shot to Donny. “See if I can pinball him off the roof.”
“Damn, boss. You know I could just shoot ’em from here.”
“Don’t you dare. I got me five shots left.”
Foonk.
Jack struggled to his aching feet.
“Will, get up.”