Chapter Twenty-One

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Halfway to the end of the alley, nearly at a jog, I dug in my heels and stopped. I hadn’t been carrying a gun since joining the Shepards, so I was used to going without. And most of the time it made sense. Shields could deflect bullets into nulling allies, someone could overpower me and take the gun… I could think of a thousand reasons not to have one. But all of those involved my team, which I was going without for the time being.

I bit my lip, staring back at the square where everyone was still gathered. Another concern had popped into my head, one specific to Jamal Rogers. At Bryant Park he had been using a shield that reflected bullets. He hadn’t used it on me back then, but we’d both had more than enough time to consider our mistakes on that day. Would he have a trick to reliably deal with a firearm after so many weeks to prepare?

It’s what I would have done. Acting on that thought alone, I broke into a run and darted across the street. My brief glimpse of the fighting down the lane showed little that was remarkable. More American soldiers were embroiled in combat with the EA troops, and once again we were gaining ground. But it was hard, bloody kind of progress, and I didn’t linger, didn’t even gaze at it too long, knowing that it wouldn’t help anything to acknowledge it.

Once far enough away from the others that I could justify not turning back, I asked, “Sierra, where am I going?”

“Your course will take you south, but I’m going to try and maneuver you through the battlefield. Follow the back road until you get to the parking lot behind the truck rental place. You’re going to cross another street, and then enter an electrical supply warehouse. That’ll get you at least a little bit further east.”

I nodded. Then, realizing my mistake, I said, “Thanks. I’m on it.”

She chuckled into the microphone. “I was a soldier once, you know. Doubt you remember anything but the first part of my directions, but that’s fine. I’m keeping an eye on you, Marissa. Let me know if you have questions or run into obstacles.”

A cloud of smoke laced with burning newspaper passed in front of my face. Before I could make a decision, I’d inhaled a lungful of it. I coughed a few times, retched, then spat on the ground to clear my mouth. From my home town I’d grown used to the earthy flavors of wood smoke, but all I could taste now was acid and copper. The cloud didn’t abate, seemingly coming from an office building down the street. I cut across the parking lot as fast as I could to get clear of the fires.

With the electronics supply looming on the other side of the street, I didn’t need ask Sierra for a reminder. A short dash got me onto the opposite sidewalk, but it seemed like the only entrance was on the eastern end of the building. I tried the west side, feeling for the first time a pang of doubt about Sierra’s guidance. Around the corner was a row of bay doors that were used to offload semi trailers. Every door was closed, and windows above my head showed that the inside was dark.

A concrete barrier hugged the length of the wall. It stood about chest height, positioned so that the folding ramps in each bay could project outside the building. I heaved myself up, finding the ledge so narrow that I had to turn sideways to keep from falling off. A few short sidesteps got me to the first of the doors. I crouched down and got my fingers under the rubber seal, hoping that the mechanisms were old enough that they’d be unlocked. But as close as I was to the heart of Chicago, nothing would be unprotected like that. I dropped down from the ledge and took a few steps back.

The metal of my weapon projected into a hexagon, but I didn’t activate the shield itself. It wasn’t a requirement in order to trigger a force rune. The bay door was divided into several horizontal panels that buckled and split at the pressure. The plastic wheels that rode the rails snapped, and pieces of metal whirled through the air to crash against shelving units inside the storehouse. Inside, people screamed.

I hesitated, but only for a second. “Whoever’s in there, relax! I’m… with the military. I need to pass through, and I didn’t know anyone was still inside.”

Shuddering sobs echoed from inside, then, “well now the whole fuckin’ world knows we’re here. C’mon in, it’s a fucking party.”

I braced myself on the rusted metal of the folding ramp and crawled up. My hands came away covered in orange, which I wiped on my pants to clear off. Stepping through the door, I squinted into the shadows to see eyes shimmering with reflected sunlight. There were more than ten people crouched in the darkness, but I wasn’t going to count them all. I breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that there were no children.

“All the fighting is happening further ahead, east of here,” I said. Boxes full of miscellaneous parts had fallen off their shelves and spilled open. I was forced to clamber between bundles of exposed wire and pieces of insulated piping to reach the people deeper inside. “Now’s your chance to run, but you need to be careful about it. Stay off the streets, and keep heading west.”

“You’re saying the battle has moved on? The walls tremble every goddamn time one of those bombs goes off. How sure are you?” asked a man, the same voice that I’d heard before. A woman, presumably his wife, was leaned against him. The man had his hands behind his back so she couldn’t feel how much they shook.

“I just came from outside,” I said, trying to be gentle. “I can’t stay and help, but I’ll tell you that you’re surrounded by American soldiers. If you get out of here and keep moving west, you’ll hit the pickets soon. They’ll get you out of this, and they’re more than equipped to handle anyone who got hurt.”

The man backed away from his wife enough that he could stand. “We don’t need doctors. We just need to get the fuck out.”

I pointed my thumb over my shoulder, trying to be stoic even though I wished I could do more to help. “There’s your chance. You’ve gotta get going. There’s always a chance things can change, and you don’t want to be trapped in a place like this.”

“Why the hell isn’t this better than anywhere else?” He scowled at me.

“These walls are just sheet metal. If an explosion hits the outside of this, it’s all going to turn into shrapnel.”

He cocked his head. “Girl, we’re not idiots. But as long as we’re between the aisles, we’ve got something to protect us.”

“OK,” I huffed, baffled as to why he was arguing with me, “my original point stands. You’ve got a window of opportunity to get out of here. Whether or not you take it is your business.”

They all eyed me as I walked by, sharing whispers directed at my back. I took a deep breath and held it, trying to keep my frustration and unease out of sight. There was a commotion as their group got up to leave, with clinking and grinding sounds as they waded through the contents of the toppled boxes. Struck with an idea out of nowhere, I turned to face them.

“Hey!” I yelled to get their attention. A man in a denim jacket noticed me, then tapped the shoulder of the one I’d been talking with. “Does this place have respirators? Something to cover my face and keep my lungs clear?”

The man in the denim jacket spoke up. “Dunno about your face, but we’ve got masks among the emergency stuff in the back. Lemme grab it.”

“Quickly,” said the first man.

He vanished into into the maze of shelves and opened a back door. In less than a minute he had returned with what was clearly an industrial grade respirator. I gave him a word of thanks, then exited through the southeastern end of the building. As I descended a short set of stairs, I could see several of the refugees gather in the truck lot to my right. Despite my better judgment, I waited a few seconds to make sure they were head in the right direction before continuing on myself.

A few seconds listening to Sierra got me another set of directions. I asked her about using the subway lines to get closer to the city, but she said that many had been collapsed. With the volume of smoke from collapsed buildings in downtown, that didn’t much surprise me. The heat increased with every block I traveled. The day had felt crisp when I was still at the gate hub, but I was already starting to feel sweat bead at the nape of my neck.

As I crawled through ruined buildings that stood in my path, I found the city eerily serene. The EA forces were operating much like ours were, with makeshift camps behind the fighting used for regrouping and caring for wounded. That left whole swathes of the city empty of people, with very little activity at all. City blocks demolished by the O-bomb stood silent but for the cackling of fires. Vacant residences seemed content in their stillness. Those still connected to the power grid hummed with climate control systems, but were otherwise lifeless.

It seemed to me like a monument to the temporary. A creature with its living heart cut out, leaving endless questions as to the worth of it all. I knew those thoughts were useless. Distracting, even. In the end they were just buildings, and there was nothing profound about disaster or vacancy. Yet being alone among it all was disconcerting, and a hidden part of me seemed to be struggling to make something useful of it.

I scoffed, which got Sierra’s attention. “What’s happening?”

“Nothing. Just making fun of myself. How is everyone else?”

“Fine. As fine as they can be, at least. Eddie Ehlers went off after his old acquaintances, but the rest of them are still fighting. The front is continuing to move forward. It’s slower than my superiors would like, but when isn’t that true?”

I grunted in reply, too busy thinking about Eddie to give her a real response. So he was out chasing down his enemies, who were a complete mystery to me. I could only assume that Lagred and Danielle were also in the dark, which made me wonder why no one had gone with him. At least with Michelle and Jamal I had a good idea of what they were capable of. That didn’t apply to the enigmatic business conglomerate, and they seemed to be making a power play.

It was one more thing stacked on top of the rest, and I was already overloaded as things stood. I paused to ask Sierra for new directions before moving on. She informed me that I was getting close to their last known location, but the area was as quiet as the rest of downtown. I kept my eyes peeled for bodies with knife wounds or signs of explosive damage. Staring at bodies was grim work, and also didn’t seem to be helpful. Most of the corpses, from civilians to soldiers, were mangled in one way or another. Some were scorched beyond recognition, others were missing limbs, but none seemed to be ‘conventional’ kinds of death.

I walked a back road between two rows of businesses. Four story buildings on both sides of me were conspicuously intact in the midst of heavy desolation. But coincidences happened, and I didn’t give it too much thought. Ahead, a toppled dumpster with spilled refuse suggested that someone had tried to hide inside. Whatever their purpose was, they were long gone. A few bodies were leaned against the back wall of a bar, with enough blood on the stoop that I knew they’d been dragged outside. It was the quiet that made it obvious when someone hit the ground behind me.

Before I could whirl and project my weapon, I heard the pounding of footsteps coming toward me. My shield sprung outward and the air boomed with force. Jamal Rogers raised a hand, conjuring a shimmering field that reflected most of the magic back at me. But his deflector wasn’t large enough to catch the entire blast, and his feet were swept out from under him. At the same time that he hit the ground, my arm was jarred backwards with the force of the blow on my projected shield. Because the force was transfered by magic straight to my wrist, the runes of my body armor failed to trigger.

Jamal used the runes on his boots to rocket forward. As low to the ground as he was, I couldn’t level my other hand at him in time. He was nulling when he struck me in the chest. I skidded across the ground with him on top of me, the air torn from my lungs. Before I could move, his bladed staff swept between us to rest on the skin of my throat.

Panting, barely able to draw breath against his weight, I bared my teeth. All the grappling I’d done with Danielle was enough to tell me that I’d lost. Even if I had more skill than he did, my position was too poor to recover from with a knife at my neck. So I met his eyes, staring him down, because I’d be damned if I was going to let him forget me.

A metal door opened. I could hear her walking towards us, all the way until her shadow passed over my face. Craning my neck, I saw Michelle walker looking down at me.

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