No: this wasn’t fair! He’d been careful. They were heading home!
Sergeant Nairn punched up the power on his Thrummer and shouted: ‘Dickson, Wright, get your arses back here on the double!’
They all sprinted for the broken escalator. Nairn jumped onto the ramp, his Thrummer searching for targets. ‘Talk to me Rhodes, what the hell’s going on up there?’
‘…Fifteen, maybe more. Automatic projectile weapons; I think I see a Zinger.’ The harsh burr of a Thrummer tore through the air. ‘Orders?’
Nairn looked at Will and waited.
‘We…It…’
‘Sir, I hate to hassle you, but now would be a good fucking time.’
‘But we…’ Deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
‘Fine.’ Nairn hit his throat mike again. ‘Rhodes, you are cleared for deadly force. I want everything neutralized and-’
‘No!’ Will grabbed the sergeant’s arm. ‘We’ve had two cases of VR syndrome on this floor in one week, probably hundreds more we don’t know about. You have to keep any contact to a minimum or this whole place will explode.’
‘Oh Jesus…’ Nairn swallowed, hard. ‘Rhodes-disregard last order, non-lethal force only.’
‘Sarge? Have you gone off your fuckin’-’
‘Shut up and do what you’re told. People: we need dust-off and we need it now!’ He charged up the ramp, with privates Dickson and Wright hurrying after him, leaving Will, DS Cameron and the SOC team behind.
Angry noises filtered up from the floors below: it didn’t matter that the scanners had been turned off and packed way, it would take time for the building’s local network to reboot. Sherman House was suffering from VR withdrawal. And if the residents couldn’t have computer-generated death and destruction, they could always have the real thing.
‘Erm…’ Beaton shifted from foot to foot. ‘Not meaning to be funny or anything, sir, but shouldn’t we be getting the hell out of here?’
Stein fiddled with the Field Zapper at his hip. The SOC team only carried small arms-anything bigger would have made manoeuvring the scanning equipment impossible. He was flicking the power switch on and off, on and off, never quite allowing it to get fully charged. Eyes darting up and down the corridor. Licking his top lip. The sound of gunfire was getting louder. ‘It’s going to be OK, right? No problem…’
Will pushed them towards the ramp. ‘I’ll take point; DS Cameron, you’re back door.’
She nodded, a faint sheen of perspiration speckling her brow. The bag of severed halfheads swung as she spun round to face back down the ramp, making her stagger. There was no way she could provide covering fire carrying a sack full of heads and Will told her so.
‘We can’t just leave them, they’re evidence!’
‘OK, fine…give them here. I’ll take-’
A soft ‘phfwoom’ sounded from the floor above and suddenly the entire corridor was bathed in flickering orange light. Then a sheet of flame exploded down the ramp.
‘GET DOWN!’
Will leapt, bouncing off the wall and twisting on the rebound to land behind the escalator, putting its bulk between himself and the fireball. Stein wasn’t so lucky. He was still straining with the scanning equipment when the blaze caught him. Beaton cowered on the other side of the scanner as the fire rushed past; leaving her unscathed while her colleague burned.
Stein staggered off the ramp, his hair and clothes ablaze, screaming.
Will tore off his own jacket and dived on top of him, smothering the flames. Stein’s thrashing body gradually fell still.
The bitter tang of smoke filled the air, and the corridor’s sprinklers finally kicked in, bathing the hallway with lukewarm, stale water.
‘Damn it!’ Will flipped Stein over onto his back and felt for a pulse. The trooper’s face was scarlet and swollen, blackened in places, the skin split open on his cheeks and forehead, wisps of steam drifting up into the ineffective drizzle. There was a faint tremor beneath Will’s fingers, but Stein wasn’t breathing.
‘Is he dead?’
Will looked around to see DS Cameron struggling to her feet. The back of her bright-green suit was burnt, crackling and flaking as she moved. Her meticulous asymmetric bun was ruined: from the nape of her neck up, her hair was tattered and crisped, angry red skin showing through underneath. She was shaking.
More gunshots. Closer now.
Go back to Sherman House, Will. It’ll be good for you, Will. Will it bollocks.
He waved DS Cameron over. ‘Get him into the apartment.’
She stood, looking down at Stein’s roasted body, her face grey and smudged with soot. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he.’
‘He will be if you don’t stop fucking about!’ The corridor was getting darker as the flames on the floor above guttered out in the artificial rain. ‘Move it!’
DS Cameron gritted her teeth, grabbed a handful of Stein’s baked-on jumpsuit, and dragged him back towards flat 47126, swearing all the way. Will scrambled up the escalator ramp, helping Beaton manhandle the SOC gear down onto the soaking carpet. They hauled the heavy metal canister along the corridor, following DS Cameron into Allan Brown’s flat.
Will slammed the front door shut behind them, and keyed his throat-mike.
‘Sergeant Nairn? What’s going on up there?’
The signal was crackly, the older man’s voice breathless and worried: ‘Escalator’s impassable. Some spragger’s brought down the ramp.’ Will could hear gunshots, like small pops of static between the words. The jarring roar of Dickson’s Bull Thrummer drowned out what was said next, but when the noise died down Nairn was saying, ‘…concussion, and Floyd’s been shot in the shoulder. We’re laying down covering fire, trying to keep the wee bastards’ heads down. Can you make the stairs?’
Will watched Private Beaton clamber on top of Stein, rip open his chitin, and start chest compressions.
‘Don’t you dare die on me, Dick. You hear me?’ Keeping a steady rhythm on top of his heart. ‘Don’t you fucking dare…’
DS Cameron had her lips clamped over Stein’s mouth, forcing breath into his lungs. There was no way they could carry him up all the way up to the roof and keep him alive at the same time.
‘Negative. We need another option.’
‘We can’t get down to you. Not without a lot of dead bodies.’
And then the violence would spread and spread until the whole bloody building went up. Will swore.
DS Cameron shouted across the room, ‘We’re losing him!’
‘What do you want us to do?’
Outside in the corridor, the gunfire was getting louder. The locals were coming.
Plan. Need a plan.
Will scanned the room: he had two Network troopers-one on the verge of death-a traumatized Bluecoat, and a knackered set of scanning equipment. And none of the evidence they’d just risked their lives to collect.
‘Where’s the bag of halfheads?’
‘Sir? What should we do?’
‘Shut up and let me think!’
He stuck his head out into the corridor: the evidence bag lay against the wall by the escalator ramp. He was halfway down the hall before he realized what he was doing and by that time it was too late to turn back.
The wall lights were overflowing with stale water, casting wriggling snakes of dim light as Will splashed past. Now that the fire was out, the sprinklers were little more than an incontinent dribble. They’d probably done more damage to the building than the flames had.
He slithered to a halt by the escalator, grabbed the discarded evidence bag and hefted it over his shoulder-staggering under the weight. He peered up the ramp. Half way up, it came to an abrupt end, dirty orange rebar sticking out of the fractured foamcrete. Sergeant Nairn was right: there was no way anyone could jump that gap. Not without a body-wire…