Scrambling between desks, Damien couldn’t help but shut his eyes as more rounds smashed through the second level of the state school. Classrooms shook and windows disintegrated. The rounds tore through wall after wall, carving large holes in their wake.
Damien pinned Lijana’s knife arm with one leg and knocked her to the ground with the other. She landed on her hip and released the knife, grasped for his leg. He tried to roll away, knowing she’d break his leg if she had the chance.
Lijana moved around his leg, reaching his chest.
During their early training in Project GATE, he remembered swapping his orange juice with Lijana’s pineapple. He didn’t like orange and it was her favorite. And now she wanted to kill him.
Lijana pinned his chest with her knee. Her hands came fast around his face, one below his chin, the other around the top of his skull. His hand closed over the knife. He pulled his chin in to the side, but she wrenched it back. Pushed him farther.
She forced him onto his stomach. He lost touch with the knife. He lay on his stomach, head to one side. He tried to move but both her hands pressed down on the side of his jaws and skull, pushing hard into his skull with her body weight. The pressure blossomed into pain and he was suddenly immobile.
His hands-free earbud dug into her palm. She shifted her hand. That shift gave him just a moment to move. His fingers reached out across the classroom floor and found the knife. Backhanded grip. He slid his head away from her weighted hands. She clamped her hands over his head again, pushing down hard. His skull felt like it was about to fracture into a hundred pieces.
He brought the knife over his back, turned with it. Rolled into an upright position. He wasn’t sure if he’d hit an artery but then he saw Lijana kick and squirm on the floor. Blood dribbled and squirted from the side of her neck.
Knife in hand, Damien shuffled back until his back hit the edge of a desk. She reached out, touched his leg, wrapped her fingers around his ankle. It wasn’t a move to break his ankle. She just held on, looking at him with ice green eyes. For a moment it was Grace. He wanted to apologize but the words never came. Then it was Lijana again. Her grip relaxed.
Damien sat there for a moment, remembering to breathe. The .50 cal rounds had stopped tearing apart the school. And that meant one thing.
The masked Blue Berets were in the building.
He didn’t know where that other operative was. He got to his feet as more gunfire erupted downstairs.
‘Damien?’ Aviary said.
He ignored her, moved across the classroom, into the corridor.
‘Second level,’ he asked. ‘Where do I go?’
He could barely speak, catching his breath and using what little energy he had left. He was dehydrated, weak with hunger. He realized the last thing he ate was finger food at the function in the Waldorf Astoria hotel and that was who knew how many hours back.
Knife in hand, he moved through the corridor, unsure of where to go. All the windows were barred up. He could hear movement coming for the central stairs.
‘Keep going,’ Aviary said. ‘West end. West end.’
‘West,’ he whispered, more to himself than her.
He reached the end and found a much smaller staircase near the student restrooms. As he moved down the stairs he realized there was blood across both of his arms. Pouring from various slices across limbs, shoulders, chest. His white tuxedo shirt was now a crisscross of crimson.
‘Down the stairs,’ Aviary said. ‘If you can get down, there’s a parking lot on the west side.’
He reached the first level and could hear boots squeaking on polished floors. The exit was right there. Next to him.
‘Thanks,’ he said softly.
‘Buy me a drink after,’ Aviary said. ‘If you … you know, survive. I mean, of course you will but, um, you know.’
Damien pushed the door open and stepped into the parking lot. It was tiny and once again had super high fences. He didn’t know if he had the strength to climb the chain links, but the lot was still half-full of vehicles. He had nowhere to really keep an unsheathed knife so he used it to tear an arm off his shirt, then discarded the knife. He ran toward a compact silver 4x4, leaping onto the bonnet. With the shirt’s blood-stained sleeve in his mouth, he jumped from the roof of the 4x4 and grabbed the top of the fence with both hands, then pulled himself over.
He was back in public housing territory again, but only briefly. The footpath was right in front of him. He moved along the fence line, quiet as possible. Rain stung the new lacerations across his body. He took a second to inspect them. One on his forearm was particularly deep. Blood ran from it and coated his wrist and hand entirely. He took a second to make a tourniquet from the torn sleeve and wrap it just below his elbow. Without it, he’d be lucky to get another block. He pulled it tight enough to stop the blood flow, then peered out from behind a yellow school bus.
Farther back on the street he could see a Marauder in position. The .50 cal was aimed at the building. Aside from the gunner and the driver, no one was there. No one to spot him. They were all inside, hopefully tangling with the other operative.
He crossed the street as quietly as he could and reached another public housing block. This one had no tall fence to climb over, which was a nice change. He ran along the grass to keep his noise down, then realized the rain and wind were so loud that it probably didn’t matter.
The block funneled him out into yet another parking lot. He noticed a main road on the right — farther west — and took it. It was more open but he needed the speed.
He had to be getting closer.
‘Aviary,’ he said as he ran. ‘How am I looking?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, her voice straining. ‘One operative still at the school, just moving out now.’
He was still alive. This wasn’t over yet. Damien pushed the last reserves of his adrenalin and sprinted the sidewalk. Restaurants and a funeral parlor blurred past. He ran around a pair of half-destroyed bus shelters and hit a large intersection between two wide streets.
‘Where am I?’ he said.
‘Houston and First Ave,’ Aviary said. ‘Take a right. You’re almost there.’
That felt good to hear. He broke into a final run and didn’t look back. He couldn’t look back.
‘Operative’s on your street now, coming up behind you,’ Aviary said.
Great.
Ahead, something stirred in the gray. He squinted through the rain and it started to take shape. Solid, sharp. As he ran it loomed closer, twirled, swept across the street.
It was a segment of a large crane, torn from the sky. The metal frame screeched along the pavement and asphalt, rolling with the wind. It decapitated fire hydrants and crumpled parked cars. And it was coming straight for him.
He quickly realized it was too wide and he couldn’t get clear of it. It seemed too high to leap over. And it was rolling and sliding very fast, unpredictably.
Damien diverted, ducked between a 4WD and a van, lifting his feet off the ground so they wouldn’t be crushed and curling into a ball. The crane smashed across the 4WD, passed right over him, pulverized the van beside him. He pulled himself out in time to see the operative in pursuit dive into a shopfront moments before the crane collected him.
Damien was running again.
‘On your right, just there!’ Aviary said.
‘Take me there!’ Damien yelled.
‘I can’t!’ she screamed. ‘You’ll cut out once you’re underground!’
‘Where is it?’ he yelled.
‘Center platform, right side!’ she said. ‘I’ll see you on the cameras and open the doors!’
He saw the street stairs to a subway station, partitioned off with pink tape. It was next to a chemist on the corner. He burst through the tape and for a brief moment felt like a marathon runner. That feeling was short-lived as .50 cal rounds warmed the air behind him. The chemist exploded into a ball of glass and metal.