“Hey!” Jan shouted. “Who’s in charge of this shithole?” No one expected an intruder who’d just killed all your door guards to stroll in and demand an audience.
Four armed people, two men and two women, straightened in confusion as Jan marched into the cavernous and mostly empty warehouse. As Pollen had reported, Jan counted four freshly confused Truthers standing around a table with rifles, a fifth Truther with mirrored data glasses sitting at the table’s side, and seven bodies lined up on the bloodstained floor.
A quick survey of the dead’s attire assured Jan they had all been Truthers as well. There was no Bharat in here, and no other captives. Just a bunch of confused assholes with guns.
“Stop!” a bald soldier with an eyepatch demanded, pointing his rifle. Like the others, he wore dusty cargo pants, a thick armored vest, and a grimy gray shirt. It was the closest thing this particular cell of dickheads likely had for a uniform.
Jan glared at him. “Don’t point that thing at me!”
“Rifle down,” the man at the desk ordered. His nose twitched beneath his mirrored data glasses. “Identify yourself.”
“We don’t have time for this!” Jan gestured at the windows of the warehouse. “We have CSD inbound, five minutes. Grab what you need and move out now.”
“What?” a burly woman asked, shocked. “How’d they find us?” She almost had Pollen’s build, but was much shorter.
“Someone got sloppy,” Jan growled. “This is what happens when you nab targets from the Luxury District.” He glared at Eyepatch. “Or they simply heard all the fucking shooting.”
Two soldiers moved before Glasses stood. “Stop,” Glasses said.
Both soldiers stopped immediately. Not good. These soldiers obviously respected their commander, and their commander did not appear to be an idiot.
Glasses watched Jan from behind his mirrored lenses. “Tell us who you are and how you found us here, or we will shoot you.” A predatory smile grew as his soldiers raised their guns.
So much for bullshitting them into compliance. Jan rolled his eyes, raised his empty right hand, and made an unusually precise slicing motion at their leader. “Christ, am I the only—”
A bullet burst through Glasses’ data glasses and then right out the back of his head. Jan’s seemingly random gesture had been a command for Pollen to fire. The Truthers’ leader was too smart for Jan’s bullshit, but the other four Truthers weren’t, and now, they actually wanted everyone to hear the shot.
“Down, down, down!” Jan rushed for the table and past the shocked Truthers before they could decide to shoot him. He shoved the table over and cowered behind it, then looked around. “Get down, you idiots! We’ve got a sniper out there!”
Truthers dropped all around him, panicked at the sight of their slain commander. They had dropped facing the outer walls, because of course a sniper would snipe you from outside the warehouse, right? No one would snipe you from inside a building.
Jan idly noticed the table he’d pushed over already had two big bullet holes in it. There was probably a story behind that. He set curiosity aside, grabbed the rifle from the dead man with the broken data glasses, and fired over the table at the warehouse windows. He hit nothing and shattered glass.
“Back door’s clear!” he shouted. “Go, go, go!”
The Truthers, people who’d been drilled to follow orders from anyone sounding remotely confident, didn’t question the voice of command. All four hopped up and ran for the door Jan had entered by, yet Jan caught the man with the eyepatch by the shoulder and pulled him back down. “Wait!”
The man’s single good eye blinked at him. “But you said—”
Jan’s hand knifed into the other man’s neck hard enough to leave him choking, and then he dropped the gasping, gurgling man on his face. He pinned the man’s arms behind his back as another massive bang sounded. He looked up in time to see two of the three Truthers drop at almost the same time.
One of Pollen’s giant bullets had gone right through both of them. Jan imagined she was gleefully proud of that. She always had taken pleasure in lining up the perfect shot.
The last upright survivor stopped where she was, head turning from the door to Jan as her rifle came around. Her wide eyes shined with betrayal. Jan felt a stab of unexpected guilt before Kinsley stepped through the open door, behind the woman, and put her down with a single shot to the back of the head.
Emiko stepped through after Kinsley, eyes narrowed as she surveyed the carnage, and Pollen bumped the doorframe as she shouldered her way in behind both. Smoke trailed from her rifle. She had the biggest grin on her face.
Just like that, four of the Truthers who abducted Bharat and murdered other innocent Advanced were dead. Just like that, they had one live Truther to interrogate, one man left to lead them to whatever Truther group was holding Bharat. All in all—
Jan’s captive wriggled loose and socked him in the jaw.
Jan went down as Eyepatch grappled with him, punching and thrashing on top of him, but then both he and Eyepatch froze as a menacing rumble arose outside the warehouse. It sounded like the engine of some sort of massive vehicle fast approaching.
“Hey,” Eyepatch said, eyes wide, “isn’t that—?”
One wall of the warehouse exploded violently enough that Jan felt the shockwave half a warehouse away. Eyepatch rose and ran as a six-wheeled armored personnel carrier rolled through the hole into the warehouse, its turreted top gun swiveling to face Jan. The dark brown monster bucked to a halt as Eyepatch made a break for it, and Jan had just enough
