Sudden shouting from nearby was followed by gunshots, and then an explosion that shook the ground beneath their feet. Several men with scarves or T-shirts covering their faces came running along the street. One of them carried an assault rifle, while another brandished a rusty-looking axe. They soon disappeared around a corner, followed a minute later by a heavily armed drone.
‘I’m not hanging around out here any longer,’ said one of the men, disappearing back inside the shuttered premises, as smoke started drifting above the rooftops of a neighbouring street. ‘You’ll all get your heads blown off if you stay out here.’
His companions followed him inside, the old man giving Saul an angry glance, as if he were somehow responsible.
Saul continued in the direction the fighters had emerged from, abandoning the trike now it seemed likely to draw too much attention. He soon came to an intersection, where a truck lay on its side, with broken bodies scattered all around. The rear of the vehicle still smouldered, while every window in the surrounding buildings appeared to have been shattered.
A targeted hit, Saul guessed, almost certainly from the drone that had passed by just a few minutes before. He started moving again, then froze when he heard that familiar buzz-saw rattle from behind. He turned to hear a mechanized voice shouting at him in Arabic.
A drone hovered just a few metres away, its central rotor scattering a blizzard of dust and debris outwards from beneath it. Twin gun turrets were mounted on either side of its primary sensors.
‘I’m ASI!’ Saul yelled over the din it made, raising his hands slowly. His Agnessa, momentarily forgotten, clattered to the ground at his feet.
‘ASI!’ Saul screamed again, dropping to his knees.
The drone wobbled slightly, light glinting from one of its lenses as a genuinely human voice emerged from it a moment later.
‘Hey, you’re ASI! I’m picking up on your UP.’
Saul let his breath out in a juddering rush. ‘Fine, can I take my hands down now?’ he yelled up at the machine.
‘Wait a second,’ the operator replied, almost certainly speaking from some temporary command post deep inside the Newton Array. ‘I need to run further verification on your ID, sir. You could have stolen those contacts, for al I know. Please wait just there.’
There was a click and a hiss of static as the operator went offline, presumably so he could consult with some superior officer. Saul bent down to pick up the Agnessa, keeping his eye on the drone the whole time. He kept the barrel pointing downwards as he waited.
The operator came back. ‘Sorry, sir, you check out fine. If you want to rendezvous with a clean-up squad, you can—’
Saul heard the sound of running feet once again, voices calling to each other in Arabic. Ignoring the drone, Saul crawled underneath a bus parked nearby, before turning to look back on to the street.
Two armed men appeared around a corner, and the drone wobbled around to face them. One of the two dropped face-forward as the machine fired several rounds into his body, while the second leaped back around the same corner. Saul heard a subtle change in the sound of the drone’s rotors as it moved to follow the fugitive.
A moment later, he heard a sound like a pop followed by a hiss. Something slammed into the drone, as it passed into the next street, engulfing it in flames. It spun wildly, its gyros obviously damaged.
A second rocket struck the drone, shattering it this time, and sent shards of metal spinning across the rubble- strewn roadway. There were shouts of jubilation and, a few moments later, more armed men came running towards Saul along the street.
He crouched low, hoping to stay invisible, but one of the resistance fighters, brandishing a meat cleaver, spotted him and yelled something that Saul’s contacts translated as a promise to kill him if he didn’t hurry the fuck up out of his hiding place.
Then things got really bad.
First, there was a bright eruption of light, and a deafening bass boom that Saul felt more than heard. The facade of the building opposite came tumbling down, burying most of the men now gathered triumphantly around the remains of the drone.
Saul closed his eyes, his ears still singing from the explosion, and when he opened them once more, the man threatening him had disappeared.
He crawled out from under the bus just as a Black Dog came pounding around the corner, bigger than any other he’d ever seen before, and with heavy cannons mounted between its metallic shoulders. Half a dozen armed Consortium troopers followed on foot, their outlines rendered indistinct by their active chameleon armour.
‘Hey, is your name Saul Dumont?’ one of them yelled, lowering his weapon to his side, as the rest of the squad moved past Saul towards the other end of the street. ‘We got word from one of our operators, so who you with?’
Saul shook his head. ‘I’m not with anyone.’ He stared down at his torn and filthy jacket, his skin now caked with dust, and realized he had no idea where the Agnessa had disappeared.
‘Right.’ The trooper looked around, his armour reflecting the smoking rubble, making it hard to focus on him. ‘You need transport?’
‘I’m trying to get back to Florida,’ said Saul, wondering if he was in shock.
The trooper turned around, in an indistinct motion, lines of colour streaking as he looked back in the direction from which he’d appeared. ‘Well, we’re about to head back that way, because we need to recharge the Dog. Just try not to attract any more attention, will you? I think you just lost us a drone.’
