Dragan gestured for me to snap out of it, and get out of the car.
“Sam, go.”
You should be, you selfish piece of shit—
A boom crashed down the street, so big and so loud that I felt the aircar shake. Everyone in the car turned to look as a collective gasp filled the air outside, people stopping to stare as a black cloud of smoke still bubbling with orange flame rose up from the middle of the intersection where the gonzos, and Alexei, had just been standing.
Chapter Eleven
With the noise from the explosion still rolling down the block, the street fell into complete chaos. A cloud of smoke billowed up between the buildings, while people surged away in a frantic, expanding circle from the blast site. The wave backed up against the mob of people surrounding it, and in seconds the strip was a tangle of shoving, screaming bodies. A sick feeling grew in my stomach as I realized Alexei’s 3i icon had gone from shiny red to idle gray.
The driver unlocked the car doors but there were too many people pressed against it and I couldn’t push it open. Dragan managed to muscle his side open and I followed him out, sticking close while people swarmed around us. As soon as we were clear, the door slammed shut behind us and I heard the aircar’s emitters wind up. Hot air ruffled my clothes as it whooshed up into the air behind me amid the racket of blaring horns.
Dragan pulled his gun, pointing it toward the sky as he looped his badge around his neck and began shoving his way through the stunned crowd, back toward the blast. After a beat, I snapped out of it and took off after him.
“Alexei!” he shouted. “Alexei!”
I wove through the mass of bodies in the wake Dragan created, hammering Alexei’s 3i with message requests. Tears welled in my eyes even as I fought to push my way through the panicked crowd.
You selfish piece of shit. It was all I could think. You selfish piece of shit. That couldn’t be the last thing I ever said to him.
“Security!” Dragan yelled, wrestling past a group of men clogging the sidewalk. “Out of the way! Now!”
The wall of bodies was too cramped for me to see between them and I was too short to see over them. All I could see was Dragan’s back, and the tangle of arms and legs that surrounded him.
“Everyone, out of the way!”
I ducked a swinging elbow at the last second and stumbled into a man who shoved me away into the wall of the building next to me. I hit hard, and almost went down onto the ground before I managed to get my footing back.
I wasn’t going to make it. There were too many people, and the crowd had turned violent. It was all I could do to not get pulled under and trampled. Sticking close to the side of the building, I looked through the mob where people clambered over and around the vehicles gridlocked at the intersection. Above them was a fire escape, the ladder collapsed against the second-floor grate.
A man on a bicycle crashed down on the sidewalk in front of me as another man collided with him. The opening they made was small, but big enough for me. I darted forward and jumped over them, slipping through the people on the other side, and then following the shop fronts until I got to the intersection. I climbed onto the hood of the nearest car, and then up the windshield and onto the roof.
“Hey!”
I lunged for the fire escape ladder and just managed to grab one of the rungs before I fell. It didn’t come down like I hoped, though, and for a second I hung there like a spider looking down at the people who surged below. I brought my legs up, and managed to scramble over the side where people inside the building were watching through the windows.
I pushed off one foot and ran the length of the escape, which took me all the way to the opposite side of the building. I stopped at the rail and looked down at the chaos.
Up ahead, I could see that the gonzo assembly had been wiped out. Bodies lay strewn across the street around a circle of twisted metal and spitting flames. Several cars had been thrown over onto their sides amid smoking shrapnel, broken glass, and concrete rubble.
Alexei, answer me. Please answer me.
Off to the side I could see Dragan as he muscled his way toward the blast site, but he still had a ways to go. I climbed over the rail, and hung there gauging the distance to the truck below me. I dangled at arm’s length, and then dropped down onto the roof with a hollow thump followed by the blare of a horn.
“Off the truck asshole!”
I jumped down and took off at an angle toward the street. Foot traffic had thinned close to the explosion, and I could see bodies and flapping, bloody clothes through the crisscrossing streams of people.
Alexei, please, answer me.
I pushed through the last of the mob, and stumbled out the other side to the edge of the blast site. As I approached, the wind shifted, and through the stink of exhaust and body funk I caught a blast of acrid smoke and burned meat. Dragan pushed his way through the last of the crowd and ran to me. He grabbed my elbow, but I pulled away.
The street was a mess. Two of the gonzo procession cars lay on their sides, showing jagged edges of blackened metal and broken glass. The nearest car’s shattered windshield had been splashed with blood, and I could see a shapeless mass of black and red inside. Dark trickles wandered across the blacktop, creeping toward a sewer grate.
“Sam, stop,” Dragan said. He grabbed my arm again, and again I pulled away.
I lurched farther into the wreckage, looking for Alexei. The remains of the gonzos were strewn among their ruined shrine where somehow the floating wax apple wobbled but still spun. An armless body lay several meters away, one of its missing limbs on the curb nearby. Others who had been even closer to the blast fared far worse. With some I couldn’t even tell what part was what, it was all just blood, bone, and guts.
The Pan-Slavs had bombed Render’s Strip before, it had to be them, but for a minute all I could think about was Dao-Ming’s box of explosives. That this, this mess in front of me, was the type of mess she meant to cause if given half the chance. Her hatred of the government, the haan, and the gonzos, this is where it would lead.
And where will you lead us? The voice nagged from within. When the lights do go out, where will we find ourselves then?
Blobs of red were splattered across the remains of a bus stop shelter, and several glass flytraps had shattered around clumps of chemical-soaked flies. Down at my feet lay the remains of the gonzo sign, painted partly over with a big swatch of blood. Black and red lines bled from lettering on the wet cardboard.
PREPARE FOR SECOND IMPACT
It felt like some kind of dream. Everything had grown distant, and even the sounds and smells around me faded to the distant static of white noise. My stomach tingled, threatening to throw up the little bit that was down there as I grew dizzy. Far off up ahead, the towering haan ship seemed to tilt behind its shimmering dome.
What if this actually was Dao-Ming? The thought buzzed in my ear. I didn’t want to believe it, but part of me had already begun to think it could be true. Pan-Slavs went after distribution centers for food and water, but this had targeted the gonzos. Dao-Ming hated the gonzos, maybe even more than the rest of them. I remembered her words at the protest:
“That man has sold out his own race to gain favor with the haan. One of these days, he’ll pay for that…. Cut off the head, and the rest will die.”
She couldn’t have, I thought. I never delivered the box. The dealers are dead. She couldn’t have. She—