Final Days

Saul stared down at the weapon with the fascination of a rabbit confronted by a hungry lion. ‘Is it loaded?’

Tanner shrugged. ‘One way to find out.’

Saul glanced back at Hsingyun, and wondered just how long he had known. It wasn’t too hard to picture Jacob, stoned out of his mind while crammed into a bar much like the one they’d left barely more than half an hour before, letting slip some clue that he was something other than what he seemed. Maybe the answer really was that simple.

Moving slowly, Saul picked up the pykrete gun, feeling the balanced weight of it in his hands. He then considered his options. Terror and fury waged a war inside his head and heart, while sparks of light like fireflies swam at the edges of his vision, leaving phosphorescent blue trails.

Or maybe, he thought, the whole thing was really a kind of carefully staged test. The gun in his hand might, in fact, not be loaded at all. Maybe neither Tanner nor Hsingyun nor anyone else had any idea that he and Jacob were anything other than who they claimed to be. But the surest way to reveal they were ASI would be to refuse to play along.

The knife-edge sharpness from the loup-garou reasserted itself, through the fug of alcohol and hallucinogens. He felt suddenly, supremely confident that everything was going to be just fine; Tanner would never have given him a loaded gun if he really believed he was a cop. Wasn’t that how it always played out in the TriView dramas? The gun was never loaded. Never.

Saul aimed the gun at Jacob’s chest, deliberately fumbling with it to create the impression this was the first time he’d ever held such a weapon.

Jacob tried to struggle out of his chair, and Saul noticed a curious look on Tanner’s face. The street soldier moved to one side of Jacob, while keeping one meaty hand firmly clamped over his mouth.

‘It’s cool,’ Saul said to Jacob, the wood panelling on the walls writhing furiously, like wheat in an autumn gale. ‘They’re just testing us.’

Saul pulled the trigger. The gun made a loud popping sound and a lozenge-sized chunk of pykrete punched a hole through Jacob’s chest. It sounded, thought Saul, not unlike a cork being pulled from a champagne bottle. Jacob jerked back with sufficient violence to tip his chair sideways on to the floor, dead before his cheek touched the carpet.

The sound of the gunshot seemed to resonate through every cell in Saul’s body, startling him into something more closely resembling sobriety.

After a few moments’ prolonged silence, Tanner turned to Kwan with a delighted grin. ‘Well, fuck me, you won that fair and square.’ He turned back to Saul. ‘I’m seriously fucking taken aback. I really, really didn’t think you were going to do it.’

‘Why not?’ Saul managed to croak, his tongue suddenly thick and heavy. He stared down at Jacob’s slumped form in horrified fascination, then noticed, as he brought his gaze back up, that Tanner had momentarily lowered his own weapon until it pointed at the floor.

‘Because we already knew the both of you were fucking cops,’ Tanner replied, levelling his Koch at Saul once more.

Saul reached down with his free hand and grabbed one corner of the open briefcase beside him, whipping it around and up with as much force as he could muster. The briefcase struck Tanner on the side of the head. He dodged back with a yell, arms raised in defence, nearly stumbling over Jacob’s body as loose banknotes went scattering through the air.

Already moving forward, Saul grabbed Tanner by the shoulder, pulling him close and twisting him around before the street soldier, who had been standing directly behind the pharm manager, could get a clear shot at him. He reached down and clasped his hand around Tanner’s fist, where it held the pykrete gun, aiming the weapon at the street soldier and squeezing. As if by magic, a line of fine red dots appeared across the soldier’s neck and chest, and he dropped to his knees with a gurgling sound.

Saul tore the flechette pistol from Tanner’s grasp, then ducked beneath the table before Kwan had a chance to fix him in his sights. He could hear the sound of chunks of compacted cellulose and ice water thudding into the wood a second later.

Kwan dropped on to all fours, to try and take aim a second time. His head flowered red as Saul fired, the flechettes tearing into his vulnerable flesh. Kwan collapsed, his legs and arms twitching spastically.

Tanner stumbled away to hide behind the couch. Saul looked around and saw Hsingyun fumbling desperately with the door, cursing in his panic to get out. Saul fired a stream of flechettes towards his ankles. Two intervening chairs spun away from the side of the table, as if shoved aside by invisible hands, and Hsingyun went down screaming.

Saul darted back out from under the table, and meanwhile glanced towards the couch. Several bottles previously standing on the table next to the TriView rolled noisily across the tiled floor.

‘Tanner,’ Saul shouted hoarsely, ‘if you so much as twitch from where you are, I swear I’ll blow your fucking head off. Do you understand me?’

There was a muffled reply, just audible over the sound of the chainsaw and the combined shrieks of both the torture-doll and Hsingyun.

Saul backed towards the door, and Hsingyun, and a moment later Tanner’s head popped back up over the top of the couch. Saul fired without thinking, the flechettes ripping gouts of foam out of the couch. Tanner made a strangled sound and fell backwards, crashing into the TriView, its sounds of carnage cutting off instantly.

He turned back to Hsingyun and found him slumped half-conscious against the door in an ever-widening pool of blood, his lower legs now a mess of pulverized meat. Saul kept a tight grip on the Koch, and used his free hand to rifle through Hsingyun’s pockets until he located the device that could get him past the minefield.

Now all he needed to do was get to the surface alive – and pray the ’copter was still parked where they’d left it.

And if it wasn’t, he was totally, irretrievably, fucked.

He dragged Hsingyun out of the way and cautiously pulled the door open. When he leaned out, he could see no one bar the distant figures of white-suited workers going about their business.