Lila frowned. “You rigged a trap? What do you mean?”
“I ran an electrical current through the faucet.”
“You ran…” Lila absorbed this for a moment, as outside, the booming and popping of battle intensified.
“Lila, don’t blame me for being the one who’s not dead.”
Lila covered her eyes with her palm. “But you stabbed him. I saw you.”
Kai stood slowly. He looked at his hands, caked with drying blood. The water was still running. He thrust them under the faucet; the chilly water turned light pink. Tendrils of deeper red carried up and out of the sink, over the counter.
Lila left the kitchen as he dried his hands on a towel hanging from the oven door. He could hear her in one of the bedrooms, opening and closing drawers.
Erik’s assault rifle still lay on the floor in the living room. Kai went and picked it up. It weighed at least thirty pounds.
Lila reappeared carrying an oversized beige bedspread. She used it to cover Erik.
“I have to get out there and help,” Kai said.
Lila looked at the rifle in his hands. “What? No. You’re part of the command team. We need you.”
A red stain had bloomed on the bedspread; it grew as Kai watched. “No, you don’t. I’m not CIA, or State Department, or a genetic engineer. I’m a poker player and a war veteran. I’d be more useful out there.” He motioned toward the door with his head.
Lila reached up, grabbed his face with both hands, and turned it toward hers. He hadn’t realized it, but he was avoiding her eyes. “You’ll die out there. Please don’t go.”
Kai didn’t answer.
“You’re going out there to prove you didn’t have anything against Erik personally. Forget what I said; I shouldn’t have said it.” She drew him into a hug. “This is all so fucked-up. Sometimes I’m not even sure whose side I’m on.” She pressed her face into his shoulder.
“It’s not that. Honestly.” He wanted to explain why he felt the need to go out there, but he wasn’t sure himself. He had to go for the same reason as everyone else. To fix their fucked-up world.
“You’re still trying to live down The Boy Who Betrayed the World,” Lila said. “You took four bullets. You’ve done your part, okay?”
Kai smiled sadly. “Everybody’s done their part. There’s no one who’s coming fresh to this fight.”
Lila inhaled to say something, then simply hugged him tighter. “I don’t know what I’ll do if you die out there.”
He didn’t want to make a promise that was outside his control. “Soon we’ll be able to live a normal, boring life. You, me, and Errol.” He lifted the rifle, turned toward the door. “I’ll meet you at Oliver’s apartment.”
“That’s another reason I wanted you to come,” Lila called after him. “They kicked me out. I’m not being a team player.”
“Be a team player. Just go, before things get too bad out there. They love you.”
“Five doesn’t love me.”
Kai laughed. “Well no, Five doesn’t.”
“When will you meet me there?”
He looked back at her. “When I’m too tired to fight. Figure twenty-four hours.”
86
Kai Zhou
January 18, 2048. Washington, D.C.
As soon as Kai was outside, a Luyten was in his head.
Head toward Lester Avenue. Eight blocks.
When Kai reached for his keys, the Luyten added, We’re setting up roadblocks to slow the defenders’ tanks. Go on foot. We can use that assault rifle. And congratulations on your kill. Sometimes Lila’s past blinds her to some harsh realities; put her reaction out of your mind and focus on the fight at hand. She loves you. She’s thinking about how much she loves you right now; she regrets the accusation she made.
Kai was sure the Luyten speaking in his head was neither Five nor the crimson one, yet it spoke as if it were an old friend, or, better yet, his shrink. He hadn’t realized they were offering soldiers psychological services as well as tactical direction.
He also hadn’t realized he was letting the encounter with Lila bother him, but he’d take the Luyten’s word for it. He willed himself to focus on the landscape, the smell of oily smoke, the sound of gunfire and, farther off, artillery fire. A defender fighter jet roared past overhead, flying close to the ground.
The streets were nearly empty. People appeared and disappeared, running bent at the waist, carrying axes or knives. They were men and women, young and old. Occasionally someone passed who looked to be flat-out fleeing. Kai wondered if some were refusing to follow the Luyten’s directions.
Some. About a third, although the number is dropping as they see others fight alongside us. You’re highly social animals. Like us.
As he approached Lester Avenue, the Luyten said, Change of plans. Get inside the copy store up ahead. The red door.
Kai saw the door it was talking about and hurried inside, his bad leg throbbing.
There’s a staircase in the back.
It led him to an upstairs storage room with windows facing the street, instructed him to bust in the window with the nose of his rifle. He pushed a pallet of boxes filled with reams of paper into place to brace the butt of the rifle, got situated just as a defender trotted into view across the street. It was in full body armor.
Several dozen people advanced on it, surging toward cover behind parked vehicles, behind the corners of buildings. The defender raised his rifle, fired, hit a woman square in the chest. She fell backward, lay unmoving.
Kai didn’t notice the Luyten on the roof above the defender until it leaped, dropping three stories, landing right on the defender’s back. Somehow the defender stayed upright. He tried to angle his rifle to get a shot at the Luyten, while struggling to keep the butcher knife the Luyten was gripping away from his throat. The humans used the opportunity to charge. They closed on the defender from both sides, hacked at his thighs and feet with their makeshift weapons.
Howling in pain, the defender lashed out, slashing them with the blades on his legs and arms. Blood sprayed across the pavement as people suffered terrible wounds and dropped like sacks.
A second defender surged into view. Kai didn’t need the Luyten to tell him what to do: He trained his sights on the defender and squeezed a quick burst from the rifle. It bucked violently. He gripped the rifle with his left hand, held it in place with all of his might, and squeezed off another round, then another, hitting the defender squarely in the chest and knocking it to the ground.
The defender’s body armor meant the shots weren’t lethal, but as soon as it was down, people attacked it, aiming for the face with their blades and bats.
A woman showed up holding a handgun like she knew how to use one, probably former police or military. She pushed into the crowd of assailants and put two slugs in the defender’s face, point-blank.
Thirty seconds later, the street was deserted except for the dead. They were listening to the Luyten. And why not? It was working; the Luyten were coordinating them into an incredibly efficient force, using a million sets of eyes and ears to know what was happening everywhere, benefiting from brains that allowed them to think a dozen things at once, able to move their forces with a split second’s notice. Kai hadn’t realized just how lethal the combination of humans and Luyten would be.
The defenders in your area are withdrawing. That means an air strike is coming. Move.