Page 44 of Into the Fire

Evan rolled onto his back, already reaching for his belt. With a single jerk, he whipped it free of the loops. Popping onto his feet, he fed the leather end through the buckle. Raffi was on his stomach, gathering himself to rise when Evan slung the makeshift noose over his neck.

Placing one Original S.W.A.T. boot on the back of Raffi’s head, he firmed his grip on the belt and jerked back.

A crackle as the vertebrae gave.

Raffi twitched. And then he didn’t.

Evan scooped up his ARES and surveyed the mess of a conference room, his shoulders bowed, catching his breath. The noose of the belt dangled from one fist.

The phone continued to ring, but Evan saw now that the cords had all snapped free when Yeznig had hurled the table at him.

Something moved in his peripheral vision—Terzian’s hand reaching for a gun?—and Evan swept the ARES over and fired through Terzian’s heart. But the corpse absorbed the round without complaint.

Another ring and something moved again on Terzian’s chest.

A cell phone inched further into view, worming up out of his breast pocket.

Evan recognized the rectangular slab of technology as a Turing Phone. Boasting end-to-end encryption on a security-geared operating system, it was engineered out of a rare alloy of zirconium, aluminum, silver, copper, and nickel, marketed under the comic-book name Liquidmorphium. It was physically unbreakable, unlike the RoamZone, whose broken pieces were jabbing Evan’s thigh through his cargo pants.

Evan fished the Turing Phone out of Terzian’s rumpled shirt.

It would do for now. At least until he got back to the Vault and replaced the shrapnel in his pocket with a new RoamZone.

Given Max’s circumstances Evan had to be reachable at all times, so he thumbed off a text to Max: THIS IS ME. USE THIS NUMBER IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.

Then he pocketed the Turing. He was just about to rethread his belt through the loops when shouts rained in from the lobby door, the no-neck brigade arriving in force. Through the glass wall, Evan saw two of the bouncers breach the lobby, no doubt in response to the commotion.

Putting his back to them, he raised the ARES and shot out the one-way window. Ducking through the shower of glass and holstering his pistol, he jogged toward the cafeteria and the rear gate beyond.

As he neared, a pair of bouncers spilled around either side of the cafeteria, walkie-talkies to their faces, blocking Evan’s way. They spotted Evan and froze.

He had blood on his shirt and a noose-shaped belt in one hand.

Conspicuous.

They sprinted at him.

He shot a glance over his shoulder. The other bouncers emerged through the shattered maw of the window onto the walkway. They looked stunned from the violent aftermath they’d witnessed inside. And they looked angry.

He didn’t want to kill them.

Holstering his ARES, he spun back around. The men pinched in at him from both directions.

Directly ahead, no more than twenty yards away, the side door of the cafeteria lay open. The gunfire had spurred a flurry of panicked movement inside. Most of the gamblers stood in the bleachers, confused, but a few were already running, strobing across the doorway.

He sprinted for it.

The bouncers closed in around him. He snapped the belt to the side, the buckle smacking a meaty chin and causing the others to veer and duck.

Without slowing his momentum, he flew through the doorway.

As soon as he cleared the threshold, he clipped the shoulder of a hulking guy in a biker jacket. Muscle and leather, undentable. Physics assigned them the roles of bumper and pinball.

Evan felt himself go weightless, the floor scanning by several feet below.

He hit the polished floorboard in a spin and slid a few feet. He’d just rotated around to see the gaping pit in the floor before he was weightless again, falling ten feet into the fighting arena. Impact jarred the breath out of him. Dirt in his eyes, under his nails. Grit against his chin, his cheek. The smell of musk, feces, and blood.

The bouncers appeared at the lip, leaning over Evan. They were laughing, which did not strike him as good news. Beyond them loomed the jeering gamblers in the bleachers.