Time slowed as Bharat took aim. As the Commander’s finger pressed the pistol’s trigger. Bharat’s rifle bucked at the same time the Commander’s pistol boomed. The Commander dropped.
Three.
A big man hurled himself over the table, the same man whose knee Bharat had just kicked out. Shit, four again! The man sputtered with rage and pain and also, idiotically, provided the perfect human shield against the other three Truthers. A single snap of Bharat’s flattened hand crushed his windpipe. Three.
Bharat spotted his prospective killer in the distance far too late, a man who had sprinted away from the table and come around to get a clear shot. That man had a clear shot. Bharat realized then he wasn’t ready to die, but who was?
A bright red wound blossomed in the Truther’s forehead.
Two! Bharat scrambled away from the table in the darkness, staying low, as another sniper round echoed through the warehouse, and another. One. Zero. Shit!
A sniper had just joined the gunfight, and the rifle he was using must be of a rather large caliber, given he was firing through the warehouse’s biocrete walls. The flimsy table beside Bharat now offered about as much cover as a paper bag.
“Move!” someone shouted. The Golden Widow dashed right past Bharat, toward the far door of the warehouse. “Now, Bharat!” She seemed unconcerned by the sniper, which suggested that sniper was working for her. Also, she knew his name?
The Golden Widow slid to a halt by a closed warehouse door and jiggled the latch. How could she know his name? Bharat ejected the spent cartridge, noticed the empty chamber, and discarded the spent rifle as he rose.
His trained gaze swept the warehouse and counted eight dead Truthers, including the Commander. The Commander and ...
“Jax!” Bharat dashed for Jaxon Cole. Cole slumped now against his post, bleeding quietly. “How bad is it?”
Cole didn’t answer, but given the placement of the wound, Bharat easily answered his own question. Commander Esparza had made certain to shoot Cole before he died. Had he simply wanted to keep Cole from talking, or did Esparza hate the Advanced so much that he wanted to make sure Cole died first?
This wound would be fatal on Ceto, without Advanced drugs and a trained medic. Bharat wanted to cut Cole down and provide what comfort he could. Instead, he asked the only question that mattered, calmly and clearly, of his dying friend.
“Is that the woman who stole our disc?”
Cole nodded. “I fucked up. I’m ... sorry ...”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t speak. Jaxon Cole would speak no more. Bharat turned away, fists trembling, just in time to see the Golden Widow stalking back his way.
A frustrated frown marred her otherwise gorgeous face, and her dyed curls bounced as she approached. She still held her pistol, but it wasn’t pointed his way, which felt like a mistake.
No, it wasn’t that. Bharat’s eyes rose to the small frosted windows atop the warehouse walls. Outside, his instincts whispered, watching everything on Wi-Vi.
The Widow’s sniper was still outside, seeing through walls, with a bead on Bharat and the ability to put a bullet anywhere they liked. Bharat could take the Golden Widow, but it would cost his life ... and it was no longer necessary for him to die.
“What are you waiting for?” the Widow demanded, her previous auditory elegance now colored by annoyance. “I’m truly sorry about your friend, but we must leave at once.”
Bharat glared at her callous disregard for what had been a good man’s life. “I had to check on him.”
The Widow glared right back. “And I thought,” she said, with a gesture at the carnage, “that you’d offer me the courtesy of making a deal before you started dropping bodies.”
Bharat wasn’t quite sure how to respond to her seemingly genuine frustration. “What deal?”
“Buying your freedom, you densely packed ...” The Widow paused and stared past the flipped table. “Where’s Esparza?”
Bharat turned to glare at the body of the gray-haired imbecile with the wire-rimmed glasses, the man Bharat had shot after Esparza shot Cole in the chest. Seven corpses filled the warehouse, besides Cole’s, but “the Commander” was no longer among them. Commander Graham Esparza was gone.
Bharat blinked. “How did he survive?”
“Because he was wearing body armor?” the Widow asked, in a way that wasn’t actually asking at all. “And because Truthers always dig an escape tunnel beneath their safe houses?”
Bharat kicked the table aside. “We’re going after him.”
“Stop!” The Widow grabbed his shoulder, and Bharat resisted the urge to flip her on her head. Her sniper was watching.
“You think I don’t wish Esparza dead?” the Widow asked. “That waste of human flesh knows my face, now, and he has an army of zealots ready to hunt me down. Yet he’d never have slipped into his secret passage if he’d not booby-trapped it behind him.”
The Widow was right. More importantly, she was speaking to him as if trying to convince him, which made absolutely no sense after she’d stolen Tarack’s disc and gotten Cole killed. Why hadn’t she shot him yet? Why hadn’t her sniper?
Bharat slipped out of the Widow’s grip and turned on her, keeping his hands where she could see them. “What do you want?”
“What do I ...” She blinked like he’d just insulted her teeth. “This was your plan, Bharat!”
A tingle of dread arced up Bharat’s spine. “What?”
“Right, the restoration phrase. I’d all but forgotten in the excitement.” The Widow straightened. “Turkey chlorine diction.”
Bharat’s body stiffened like he’d been physically shocked. Hidden partitions inside his PBA unlocked. Secrets unfurled like flower petals in the garden outside his and Nadia’s modest home, plans and
