There was a fire door. Locked from the inside. Kafari snatched a tool kit out of her car and jimmied the whole door off its frame. Terror lent her strength as Sonny’s massive guns crawled inexorably closer. She could hear the sound of his treads chewing up pavement and cars and smaller things, the kind of things that screamed in mortal terror as they died. When she realized what she was seeing and hearing, Kafari ran cold to the bottom of her soul. They hadn’t just ordered Sonny to break up the riot. The Bolo was running over people. Lots of people.
Her breath caught in her lungs for one horrified instant. Then she pulled the door the rest of the way off its hinges. She clattered down the stairs, found herself rushing through a building eerily empty by daylight. The dance hall was full of ghostly, discordant shadows. Memories lingered, revelries filled with the intoxicating taste of ruling-class luxury and power. Dusty shafts of sunlight lent the room a surreal, churchlike atmosphere, while outside, a rising shriek of terror, metal against bone, ran thick as blood.
She found another staircase that took her from the dance floor to the street level. She emerged into a restaurant that fronted Darconi Street. The restaurant was packed with people. More were trying to shove through the door, creating the worst log-jam of human bodies Kafari had ever witnessed. The only way to cross the restaurant was by going up. Kafari jumped onto the nearest table and started running, leaping from one table to the next, scattering cutlery and water glasses and plates full of food. People around her were screaming, but she hardly heard them over the volcanic roar in the street.
When she reached the tables closest to the windows, she searched frantically for her daughter in the crowd beyond. The signal on Kafari’s wrist-comm said she was close, so close, she ought to be able to see her daughter by now. “YALENA!”
Screaming at the top of her voice made about as much noise as a bee’s wings trying to flee an erupting volcano. Then she spotted a wild shock of neon-green hair and recognized Yalena’s best friend, Ami-Lynn. Charmaine was with her, too. And there was Yalena. They were close to the sidewalk, caught in a mass of people with nowhere to go. For Yalena, there was no way in. For Kafari, there was no way out.
So she made one.
Kafari snatched up an overturned chair and threw it at the plate glass. The window shattered, raining slivers onto the heads of stunned people on the sidewalk, who couldn’t quite believe that somebody would want to go out instead of in. “Yalena!”
Her daughter looked around, saw her standing in the shattered window.
“MOM!”
“Get through the window! Sonny’s coming!”
Yalena looked back, saw the Bolo for the first time. Her eyes, streaming and blood-red from the retch gas, widened. “Oh — my — God—”
She started shoving her way toward Kafari. Other people were moving toward the broken window. Terror-stricken people, who shoved against the splintered glass, pushed the broken shards out of their way, climbed across the busted-out sill. Kafari snatched people up by shirt collars, belts, the backs of expensive dresses, throwing them into the restaurant. Anything to clear enough space for Yalena to reach the window. Her daughter was fighting through the crowd, dragging Ami-Lynn and Charmaine with her. The roar from the street was bone-shaking. Sonny’s massive warhull blocked the fading twilight, half-a-block away and coming like a flintsteel tide. She could hear his voice, familiar, horrifying. He was broadcasting loudly enough that the words were clearly audible, even above the roar.
“I have been ordered by President Zeloc to run over anyone between me and the Presidential Residence. Clear the streets. I have been ordered…”
Yalena was two meters away… a meter and a half… a meter from Kafari’s outstretched hand. “Come on!” she shouted, “Keep moving!”
People were struggling to pass her, trying to shove Yalena out of the way. A big, beefy lout with a broken signpost in each fist was clubbing people, trying to reach the window where Kafari had created the only way out of the street. He started to swing at Yalena—
Kafari ripped the gun loose from her holster and fired. From a meter and a half out, the bullet slammed into his face like a sledgehammer. It left a stunned expression of disbelief on his face. And a hole straight through his braincase. The club slid from his hand and he toppled, falling against a woman behind him.
Yalena lunged forward. Ami-Lynn and Charmaine tripped and fell. Both girls went down. Just beyond, Sonny’s treads were the only thing she could see. The immense treads were red, drenched in blood and other things…
“Yalena!” Kafari screamed, tearing her throat. The world paused. Everything came to a ghastly standstill. The crush of people, the crackle of heat, the wind. Even Sonny. Just long enough. Kafari leaned out into a tunnel of silence. Grabbed her daughter’s hand. Hauled her across the broken glass. Then Yalena was in her arms. She dragged her daughter away from the window, making room for others. She couldn’t see Ami-Lynn or Charmaine anywhere.
Then a massive shadow blocked the sunlight. Darkness engulfed the little restaurant, like a sudden eclipse of the sun. Sound roared back into her ears. The walls rattled. Overhead lights jangled. Dishes danced, some of them crashing to the floor. Nightmare memories broke loose, memories of the ground shaking under her feet as titans fought to possess it. Only this time, the titans weren’t defending them. Sonny’s treads scraped the edges of the restaurant. Kafari turned her head, unable to watch the slaughter of those still outside, but the screams were etched onto the marrow of her bones.
Yalena clung to her, sobbing and trembling. The ghastly silence that followed in the Bolo’s wake was almost worse than the screaming. Nobody seemed willing to move. Sonny kept grinding his way toward the Presidential Residence. The farther he moved toward it, the worse the silence grew.
The sudden discharge of his guns sent a shockwave through the jam-packed restaurant. Screams erupted again. Yalena jumped in Kafari’s arms. Kafari shut her eyes, not even wanting to know what he’d just fired at. All she wanted was to get her baby out of this horror. With her aircar a wreck on the roof, she didn’t have the faintest idea how to get out. They couldn’t walk out, that was certain. She had no desire to tangle with the P-Squads who’d made sure their victims couldn’t escape.
Worse, she was carrying a gun. Had shot a man with it, in front of several hundred witnesses, any one of whom could put Kafari in jail or a rehab facility for life. This was mostly an urban crowd, people who already hated Grangers and their so-called “cult of violence.” They were more than capable of lynch-mob destruction if provoked.
They had just been provoked.
She shook Yalena and said in a low, urgent voice, “C’mon, baby, we’ve got to go. Now.” Yalena looked up through swollen, tear-reddened eyes. “Wh-where are Ami-Lynn and…” Her voice trailed off when she realized her friends weren’t in the restaurant with them. She started to get up. Looked out the broken window before Kafari could stop her. Turned dead-fish white. The shock in her eyes ran to the bottom of her soul.
In that moment of acid-etched pain, the girl POPPA had stolen from them abruptly proved herself Simon Khrustinov’s daughter. Her eyes went hard and her chin came up. She spat through the window, the most eloquent gesture of defiance Kafari had ever witnessed. Then she stood up on shaking legs and started looking for exits.