“Shit,” Idina said.
His brain chose flight. He whirled around and ran back up Eleventh Street, arms and legs pumping.
She took off after him, not having to wonder whether Dahl would follow. She had never been a fast runner, and the light armor she was wearing weighed her down a little, but Gretia’s lower gravity turned Palladians into high-performance athletes. Pedestrians jumped aside with exclamations of irritation and surprise as she dashed down the street after the running kid in the light-blue bodysuit. He looked over his shoulder and redoubled his efforts. When she was just a few meters away from him, he nimbly hooked to the left and ran toward the entrance of a nearby indoor gallery. She was faster, but he was smaller and had less mass to swing around, and she couldn’t match his turn at the same speed and overshot her mark. By the time she had changed direction, he was twenty meters in front of her again. Dahl had been slightly behind Idina and was able to adjust her own trajectory more quickly. She reached the kid and grabbed him by the back of his thermal vest. In one impressively quick motion, he rolled his shoulders and slipped out of the vest, then ran into the gallery, a wide passageway lined with shops.
Dahl stumbled and almost fell to her knees. She caught herself and took off after the kid again, still holding his vest. Idina overtook her, once again at a full run. Between the two of them, the kid had no chance to make it out of there. Another look over his shoulder seemed to make him realize it as well. He took another sharp turn, this one to the right. Idina could almost smell the fear trailing in his wake, a panicked prey animal fleeing from two predators and realizing it had run into a dead end. She saw the pistol now, tucked into a pocket high up on the waist of his bodysuit.
“Gun, gun, gun,” she called out to make sure that Dahl was aware of the confirmed threat, even though she was certain the other woman had seen it as well.
He ran into a shop that sold custom-printed clothing, knocking over a display near the entrance and sending sample bodysuits flying through the air. Dahl yelled something in Gretian that Idina’s translator didn’t understand. The kid slipped and crashed into an order terminal, toppling it over as he fell. The store attendant, too surprised to react to the sudden intrusion, started to voice a protest, but backed away from the entrance when he saw Dahl and Idina barging into the store behind their quarry.
When the kid rose from the pile of clothing samples that had fallen on top of him, he had the pistol in one hand. He wasn’t aiming it at anyone in particular yet as he was struggling back to his feet, but Idina’s adrenaline spiked at the sight of the weapon’s muzzle swinging in her general direction. She unlocked her own weapon and drew it from its holster. Next to her, Dahl’s gun was already out and aimed at the kid. The Gretian police sidearms still used visual aiming assists in the form of a green laser chevron. The tip of the chevron was square in the middle of the kid’s chest. Even though Dahl’s suit didn’t have automatic aiming servos and she had just run a sprint, the green laser mark didn’t waver very much.
“Drop the weapon now,” Dahl commanded in a loud voice that wasn’t quite a shout.
The kid didn’t drop the pistol, but he didn’t raise his arm any further. His wraparound sun visor had fallen off his head when he had crashed into the sales terminal. His eyes were wide and fearful.
“If you move that gun toward us another centimeter, we will shoot you,” Dahl told him. “We are in armor. You are not. If you try your luck, we will both have a very bad day. But yours will be worse than mine.”
The kid appeared shaken. For a moment, the gun in his hand dipped a little, and it looked like he wasn’t willing to try his luck.
“Tell him the gun probably won’t work anyway,” Idina said. “It’s coded to its owner’s biometric profile.”
His expression of wide-eyed fear mixed with anger. Before Dahl could provide the translation, the kid spat in Idina’s direction.
“Fuck off, occupier,” he said. “You do not belong here. You cannot give me orders. You do not have the right.”
“She did not give you an order,” Dahl said. “I did. And I do have the right.”
For a few heartbeats, they were at an impasse. The kid was angry, but not enough to let that emotion override his survival instincts. He was still holding the gun though, and Idina could tell that his ego wouldn’t just let him obey Dahl’s commands without a gesture of defiance. He needed a nudge to get him away from the precipice. To her relief, Dahl read the situation the same way.
“You do not want it to end like this,” Dahl told him, in a gentler tone. “Dying here, now, for no reason. You will not leave a mark. You want to matter, do you not?”
From the way the kid’s posture changed and his gaze flicked from Dahl’s face to the floor and then back, Idina could tell that she had picked the right angle. He let out a long, shaky breath and slowly put the pistol on the ground. As soon as his hand had left the grip of the weapon, Dahl was in front of him and kicked it away.
Idina stood back while the Gretian police captain
