defensive perimeter sprinted into place, body-wires spooling out behind them like armoured spiders. Sunlight glistened off their chitin as they scanned the crowded square, heavy weapons searching for possible targets. The blocks’ residents froze in place like waxworks: silent, staring. Hostile.
Then the advance team charged down the ramp; running for the nearest monolith, the crowds parting like a Red Sea of the unwashed and unwanted.
Will tightened his grip on the Whomper as the three Network troopers disappeared into Sherman House. The entrance had been grand and imposing once: a wall of plexi glass and chrome the size of a football pitch, moulded marble plinths and the most fashionable sculpture public money could buy. But the glass had lost its sparkle long ago.
There was no sign of the dancing figures in bronze, or the mottled-steel animals, or even the full-sized granite sperm whale. They’d all gone during the riots: blown apart by Shrikes, or Thrummed out of existence. Only ash-black shadows remained.
When the all-clear crackled in his earpiece, Will realized he’d been holding his breath.
This was a very bad idea.
‘Come on,’ he said, keeping his voice low so no one else could hear, ‘this is for your own good.’ He took the first step onto the ramp and stopped. His pulse thudded in his ears, chest tightening, stomach churning, mouth suddenly dry, the Whomper shaking in his hands.
Beaton and Stein stood behind him, wrestling with the ungainly scanning gear: a canister that looked disturbingly like Private Worrall’s coffin. They were expecting Will to take the lead.
Lieutenant Emily Brand’s voice sounded in his ear. ‘You waiting for an engraved invitation?’
He crossed the threshold into the harsh sunlight. It was like walking into an oven with a two-ton weight tied to his bowels. Sherman House…
Sweat pricked across his forehead.
The forecourt was crowded with angry, silent faces, staring at the armoured troopers. Most of the locals were dressed in the colourful eclectic rags that were all the rage the year before last; some wore the tight, formal clothes that had been in vogue the year before that. On this side of the river they only followed fashion from a distance.
There’d be more of them, glowering down from the floors above. Watching. Waiting for the blood and the darkness to start all over again.
Will tightened his grip on the Whomper and marched across the sun-bleached tarmac, eyes fixed dead ahead. The building getting bigger with every step, until it blocked out everything.
The crowd just stood there, gaily-coloured tatters fluttering in the downdraft from the Dragonfly’s engines.
Only ten feet to go. Eight. Six. Four…Will pushed through the cracked and grimy doors into the shrouded atrium.
The huge, glass front wall was now almost opaque, a jigsaw of splintered panes and cloudy plasticboard. Green mould coated the glazed panels, throwing the huge room into shadow.
It should have been cooler in here out of the sun, but it wasn’t.
All around him, hundreds of people stood in silence, just like the crowd outside. Staring.
Beaton and Stein burst through the door behind him, dragging their Scene of Crime equipment, Private Floyd bringing up the rear. Will keyed his throat-mike.
‘We’re in.’
‘Roger that. Perimeter defence: prepare for dust-off in five, four, three…’ Outside, the ship’s engines built to a muffled roar as the Dragonfly leapt free of the ground, fading as it acceler ated away to safety.
Now they were on their own.
Will nodded at the six heavily armed men and women surrounding him.
‘Let’s do it.’
Sergeant Nairn led them deeper into the building, heading for the toilets. As the pickup team moved the crowd moved around them. No one came within six feet, as if beyond that distance they would be safe from the Whompers and Thrummers.
By the time they reached the stairs to the mezzanine level sweat was trickling down Will’s back. He wasn’t sure if it was the heat or being back in Sherman House that did it, but he felt terrible. He’d been right to stay away.
At the top of the steps the main lobby stretched away on both sides, circling the building’s central well. The space it surrounded was supposed to be a ‘landscaped oasis in the urban jungle’. From what little Will could see it looked more like an open landfill site.
They found the toilets next to the elevators.
‘Sergeant Nairn,’ Will pointed at the cracked blue door, ‘I want you, Floyd and Wright to guard the entrance. No one in or out without my say so.’
‘Understood.’ Nairn and his troopers took up their positions, weapons pointing at the crowd. The nearest inhabitants shifted uncomfortably, but the six foot bubble stayed exactly the same.
‘Dickson, you’re with us.’ Will eased the door open and stepped inside, blinking at the sharp, eye-nipping reek of ammonia. Bloody hell—it stunk in here: rancid piss, laced with bile and sweat. Will stopped short and gasped. God, you could even taste it…
Behind him Dickson swore.
Three separate toilets—male, female and differently-abled— took up a wall each. Beaton and Stein humped the SOC kit into the corridor. ‘Jesus, Dickson, smells worse than your house.’
‘Fuck you Stein.’ She shifted her grip on the massive Bull Thrummer, its spinners crackling, the tines trembling in the reeking air.
The door to the male toilets was slightly ajar. Covering his mouth and nose, Will pushed it all the way.
‘What th’ hell?’ A large woman wearing the distinctive navy jacket and brass buttons of a beat cop went for the Field Zapper strapped to her hip. Will had just enough time to duck before a sheath of blue lightning arced over his head and into Private Dickson.
There was a muffled squeal as all the muscles in Dickson’s body contracted at once, sending her flying. As she hit the far wall her Bull Thrummer bellowed, tearing the concrete floor into a thick mist of crackling dust.
The outside door battered against the wall as what looked like Sergeant Nairn burst in, the lightsight on his Thrummer making a solid bar of green in the cloud of concrete particles. ‘ON THE FLOOR NOW!’
‘DON’T SHOOT!’ Will stepped forward, then froze, arms pinwheeling, one foot hovering over the edge of a huge hole, straight through to some sort of maintenance room on the floor below. ‘Shit…’ He staggered backwards. ‘We’re on the same side!’
The woman with the oversized Zapper stayed where she was, the snub barrel pointing straight at Will’s face.
‘Prove it.’
‘OK. I—’ He coughed up a lungful of concrete dust. ‘I’m reaching into my inside pocket to get my ID card. Are we all happy with that?’
She didn’t object, so Will slipped the
