Unity, Elly Bangs [best mobile ebook reader txt] 📗

voice was ringing in my ears, telling me it was reckless and irresponsible to leave my clients there undefended, let alone to do it for the sole purpose of getting high, but the pressure still building in my chest told me I’d never survive this ride sober. I walked.

The door at the end of the car slid open just as I reached it. A small woman with woven black hair stood there, wide-eyed, hands stuffed into her pockets, blocking my way. I stepped to the side to give her room to slide by me, and she took it—but as I stepped into the rattling vestibule between the cars, a shiver of reflex made me glance over my shoulder. The next reflex threw me onto the metal floor just in time for the shot to pass invisibly a few centimeters above my head and carve a spitting, smoking hole into the plastic wall.

My rifle was in my hands and primed to fire before I noticed myself do it. I crouched beside the door as it slid automatically shut. I’d seen her taking cover just outside my clients’ compartment, a wave pistol in each hand. There would be no delay to take advantage of since she could fire one pistol while the other primed—and my armor was next to useless, since she’d be aiming for my head at such close quarters. One way or another I had to act quickly. All she needed was one hard kick to the flimsy lock to gain access to my unarmed clients.

I palmed the switch on the door and heard it slide open. I assumed a firing stance and turned the corner, and in a blink her head was directly between my sights: I’d caught her in a dive for better cover. I had every advantage, and my finger was on the trigger, and I was pulling—I was trying so hard to pull it—

I couldn’t.

She fired her first shot with less than seven meters between us and missed. I felt the heat reflect off the metal wall and briefly set fire to the hair above my ear, but she was still centered in my sights and my finger was still on the trigger, and I was still straining every fiber of my body to pull it, still hooking my finger into an aching claw to depress that insignificant piece of metal—

She fired the other wave pistol. I heard the fizzling pop of cooking flesh before I registered the splash of ragged, electromagnetic fire where she’d hit me. The pain blossomed over my ribs and stabbed like a burning shank down into my lung.

Every nerve of my body was still twitching with electric fear. I wasn’t afraid of her, or death. I was afraid of the sky just outside these metal walls—afraid it was watching—and in the grip of that impossible fear, it was as if I could feel every blood cell corkscrewing through my every twisted artery, all of them straining to deliver the half kilogram of force to tell the wave rifle to impart the burst of high-frequency microwave radiation that would incinerate my enemy’s brain from the inside out—just as it had those forty-six times in Antarka only days ago, as it had hundreds of other times before that—

But they couldn’t. I couldn’t.

I couldn’t kill.

My enemy crouched there half hidden behind a cargo rack, waiting those three eternal seconds for her wave pistols to prime again. Enough time. I rapidly ejected my waver’s power cell, flipped the clip down to bridge the connections, and rolled it down the floor to her feet.

It exploded in a rain of sparks and burning chemicals, and a single arc of plasma danced briefly and brilliantly through the corridor before expending itself. The electromagnetic pulse made the whole train shudder briefly.

Her guns clattered to the floor under the flickering overhead lights, and she let out one drawn-out cry as the darkness washed over both of us.

DANAE

“So I guess this is it,” I was telling Naoto, wrapping him tight in my arms and smelling the ocean salt in his hair. “Once we get to Crossroads, that’s goodbye, isn’t it?”

He stiffened in my grip. “There’s something you need to know about Standard.”

“What?”

The first waver shriek from just outside cut him off mid-word. We stared at each other for only a second before he ran to press himself flat against the wall by the door, bracing to fight whoever came through it, fumbling for something in his pocket.

I was less composed. I didn’t know where I was until my back hit the wall, and it was all I could do to hold myself upright against the sill of the slit window. In that sharp sound, in my head, I was right back in Asher Valley, living and dying through it all over again: the smell of my own burning flesh, the screams from my own throats, the rising chorus of waver fire, the lack of an exit.

“It’s them,” I gasped. “They’ve found me.”

Get down! Naoto mouthed. He waved frantically for me to hide, but I couldn’t move.

“They’ve found me.”

Two more shots sounded in fast succession. I clamped my hands over my mouth to swallow the scream, already seeing ghost images of twenty Keepers in makeshift armor bursting through that door to shoot me down or hack me to pieces—but instead there was a loud snap and two irregular thuds, punctuated by a blood-curdling groan. The lights flickered and there was a feeling on the air that made my skin crawl. Ionization. Burnt chemical odors wafted in under the door.

The silence drew out. Hot adrenaline splashed through my chest when a voice outside yelled, “Clear.” It was Standard. “Open the door. Hurry.”

Naoto grudgingly obeyed once I gave him a nod. We both gaped at what waited on the other side: our bodyguard, dragging a half-conscious woman by her armpits into the compartment and sealing the door behind him. She couldn’t be more than