The door comes off its hinges, a hail of—
steel-jacketed slugs and splinters—
triggering, heartstop and
shit
(I was never this fast)
steel hand moves
before
I think
left side profile narrow target
arm blocking face
center of mass
impact whine as a bullet
ricochets
slaps my fist like a fist
put it into Farley's
wide-
eyed face
right hand stiff-fingered
jab for the windpipe
he goes down like a sack of
bullets like a dropped firehose
bone shatters you never forget what it
(never like this Constance stay down damn you)
feels like
fire creases my shoulder
hip
pounds a horse kick into the thigh
stagger back
catch myself, skip
if you only dip a knee it doesn't count as a fall and
over the ruin of Farley I see
Indigo
staring at me.
Blood and I don't know what else dripping from my clenched left hand, blood soaking dark rings down my chest, ass, leg. It didn't hit the bone; leg will take my weight. How many times you get lucky in this life, Jenny?
Just one time less than you need to, in the end. Just like everybody else.
Farley rattles and falls silent, and a sharp scent of urine and blood clogs the air. “Put it down, Indigo.”
She has the handgun—9-millimeter Polk, palm lock, laser sight, smart trigger — leveled at my heart. The little red glint in her right eye, the little red dot on my lapel tells me she's targeted. Five feet. Awful close. Inside the safety zone for controlling somebody with a handgun.
Except I'd trip over the body I just made. I'd never get to her before she put me down.
“Casey.” I don't know what I expect. B-movie vengeance dialogue. Something. She doesn't smile. “You don't look much like your pictures anymore.”
“You know,” I say, “I was four years younger than you when I met your uncle. Put the gun down, Indigo”—say the name. Always say the name—“and I'll get the chance to tell you about him sometime.”
And I won't have to bury you next to him.
Maybe.
I hear her breathing, smell Riel sweating in the room behind me, hear their heartbeats like off-tempo drums. Red drips off my hand and my left thigh feels like somebody ripped it open with a rake. Shock any second, if I'm not there already. Farley's face is dripping down my shirt front. A single strand of Indigo's hair drifts in front of her eyes, drawn and released with the rhythm of her breath. I never got used to having guns pointed at me.
It all takes maybe half a second, and that's long enough for every detail to tattoo itself on my retinas with a rusty needle. “How many people have you killed, Indigo? Has it started to get easy yet?”
She blinks. I — almost — think I see the pistol waver. I relax enough to start drawing a single, slow, meticulous breath, and Indigo pulls the trigger.
I can't say I don't deserve it.
We don't always get what we deserve.
The damn thing hits like a rhino and I go back three steps, left fist slammed against my chest, all that red making the floor slick as ice and this time I do land on my knee, which twists that garden rake in the other direction, a little animal burrowing through muscle and flesh.
The look on her face when I lever myself back to my feet and show her the mushroomed bullet squashed between my steel finger and thumb makes me wish I had a fucking camera.
Pity I'm bleeding too much to chase after her when she turns to run.
11:00 AM
Friday 15 December, 2062
National Defence Medical Center
Toronto, Ontario
The drone of the air ambulance filled Valens's ears, buffet of the rotors as it dropped like a thirsty mosquito out of threatening clouds and settled on the hospital roof. Ducking, Valens ran to meet it, swore out loud when he saw Casey was conscious, a dark line of discomfort creasing her forehead as flight medics jostled her stretcher out of the chopper. He pushed past them, to the head of the gurney, grabbed a side rail and helped push.
“All that blood yours?”
She opened her eyes, blinked at him. “Not so much. Maybe a third. You set that up, didn't you?”
“You'll get another medal for this.”
Casey grinned. “Damned funny how things come around, ain't it? Ow,” she added, as the gurney plunged through a doorway that didn't snap open quite fast enough.
“Don't worry,” Valens said, stepping back as they wheeled her into the operating room. “I'll make sure you get what you need.”
Startled pupils widened. “You're not coming in?”
“Maybe next time. Right now, I have somebody to blackmail.”
He smiled more to himself than her, and tasted victory quietly all the way back to the lab. Holmes's vehicle — a new model year Rolls-Royce — was in the parking lot. Some people still appreciated the classics. She wasn't in her office. He found her in the executive meeting room, hard-copy financial charts spread across the polished interface plates. She didn't look up when he opened the door and came in, but she did when he lowered the window shades and activated the room's antispyware protocols. “Alberta,” he said, and sighed. “What possessed you to recruit Indigo Xu?”
The Unitek VP stood and began shuffling her papers together. “She existed.”
The soft rasp of sheet on sheet annoyed Valens. He reached out, laid the flat of his palm down on the pile. “Do pay attention. For once.”
“It is reckless,” Alberta Holmes said, pale eyes narrowing as she looked up, “to pass up an advantage because one is not yet mindful of the use to which it may be put. Actually, you gave me the idea.”
“I did?”
“Hiring Barbara Casey. She turned out useful — and such a hook in our pilot. Genevieve's strongly motivated by guilt, isn't she?”
“So?”
“So Casey was a hook in Indigo, and Indigo was a hook in Casey.”
“You're not denying you were behind the attempt on Riel?”
Holmes cleared her throat and glanced at the clear green light burning over the door, assuring the room's occupants that it was secure from outside listening devices. “There was an attempt on the prime minister?”
“Don't you find it demeans you to lie? No. I suppose you don't. There was an attempt, and I can prove that you knew enough about Riel's movements today to set it up. It's back to hanging for treason these days, Alberta. Only capital crime that Canada has ever had.”
“So turn me in.”
She had courage. He'd give her that. “That would defeat the purpose. But we do things my way from here on in.”
3:00 AM
Friday 15 December, 2062
National Defence Medical Center