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He took a breath, made his feet move, a fall that became a step that became an awkward loping jog. Everything hurt. Blackness throbbed at his vision even as the fire grew brighter, hotter. He reached the UAV first, a twisted sculpture of flame, a licking inferno that forced him aside, but it wasn’t the drone he was interested in. He kept moving, passing pieces of her plane, a teardrop wing bent awkwardly, the tail intact and upright, a rubber wheel belching smoke. The fuselage had snapped, the forward portion ahead and inverted. He ran to it, grabbed the handle, jerked his hands back from the heat, then took a breath and reached again, flesh scorching as he ripped the door open.

Shannon hung upside down, still belted to the seat, her torso packed hard in a white substance like Styrofoam but already melting, the impact foam dissolving to run thick and soapy to the tarmac, and something inside him gave the same way, a wash of warmth.

She opened her eyes. Met his. “Oww.”

“You fucking nutcase,” he said, laughing and gasping. “I thought you were dead.”

“No,” she groaned. “Not quite.”

His burned fingers were clumsy, but he managed to undo her seat belt, her weight sliding into his arms, the two of them collapsing amidst the bubbling remains of the safety foam. She lay in his arms, both of them panting, lit in blue. Finally, he said, “A parachute was too much trouble?”

“Old-world thinking, Cooper.” She smiled, and he bent down to kiss her, never mind the agony from his ribs, the shock from his splintered tooth.

There was another explosion, the UAV jumping and then crashing down again. They startled apart. Shannon said, “Soren?”

“Done.”

“Good. That’s good.” She shifted, then winced. “I think my leg is broken.”

“That’ll teach you.” He smiled, stood up, bringing her body with him, one arm draped around his shoulder, her body soft and warm against his.

“We won,” she said.

“Almost. One more thing to do.”

“What’s that?”

“What you’ve been bugging me about since we met.” He tried a wobbling step, found it okay, took another. He kissed the side of her hair, her hair smelling of smoke and sweat. “Tell the truth.”

CHAPTER 44

In the flare of light from his rifle, the man kneeling in the street looked different from the others. For one thing he was older, fifty or even a very fit sixty. But there was more to it. It seemed to Natalie that he had a serenity about him. He had fired just a single shot, not a screaming burst, and where the others were lit by ferocity or pain, he had a killer’s calm. As if this scene of horror was his home.

It scared her. And so when she lined up her sights on the place he had knelt, she didn’t hold back. She held down the trigger and unloaded the rest of the magazine at him. The bullets ricocheted off the concrete, sparked off his rifle, and though she couldn’t say for sure, she thought she saw his body fall.

She dropped to the floor, removed the magazine from her rifle, and reached for a new one. The bag was empty. She grimaced, said, “Jolene?”

As she looked over, she saw Jolene on the floor, arms outstretched and a strangely placid expression on her face. Staying low, Natalie hurried over. No point in checking for a pulse. There was a neat hole in her forehead.

Something tore in her then. She hadn’t known the woman long, had really only had the one conversation, but they had fought side by side, and that had connected them in a way she’d never understood before. Like her, Jolene wasn’t here for ideology, or Tesla, or even her own survival. She’d fought for a child. Natalie took a trembling breath. Laid a hand on Jolene’s eyes and closed them. Then she grabbed her dead friend’s spare ammunition and moved to the next window.

The moment she popped her head up, there was a fusillade of fire from the street below, flashes from a dozen spots. She dropped, fought the shake in her hands. The street had been filled with attackers, men sprinting across with impunity. For the first time in a long time, Natalie let herself look around.

When the attack started, there had been eight of them spread out across the floor. Eight men and women, including Jolene and Kurt and the pudgy girl with the dog. Jolene was down, Kurt was nowhere to be seen, and the dog was whimpering and pawing at the girl’s body. Best Natalie could tell, she was the only one left.

Their line had failed. The Sons had broken past the building. It was over.

You don’t know that. They’d been hit hard here, but maybe the rest of the city hadn’t taken as much fire. She had to believe that, because otherwise it meant the militia was streaming in everywhere, and how long could it be before they reached the city center and the bunker where her children hid?