A sliver of sober holds me upright, being drawn by Skarisa’s hand through my matted hair. 

“If I was a roach, I’d choose your scalp as my apartment,” she says, but I don’t respond. My snark drains as I grow cognizant of what we are about to do. I am putting my life in her hands. My brother’s as well. My father’s too. I should call up mum at this point and ask if she’d like to join. 

I never wondered why the skylight drones never caught me. I’d assumed I was just that fast. Now, the shit that those two police fucks said while blinding me is starting to make sense. Kaloaan must’ve added me to the police registry so that they wouldn’t detect me. That’s got to be illegal as illegal can be. 

But I guess it’s worked out. 

“We’re one block down,” Varan says from his cranny above. 

I look at her. Eyeliner sharp edged. Brown skin as scarred as it is tattooed. I want to ask her how this is going to work. How we’re going to enter. She expects me to just trust her and hope everything works out. You can’t trust people. You trust substances. They do the same thing every time. Unless a shitty person changes them. “How come Zorikan and Rieka didn’t come? Shark’s afraid to leave the water?” I ask. 

“They did. They’re a separate part of the operation.” 

“Wanna tell me what?” 

“No. You seem like you’d rat at first blood.” 

“Second blood at least, respect me.” 

Skarisa addresses the others. “Let the streetsweeper carry us into the unloading dock. According to the schematics that Mex gave us there’s a direct door that Kallix can get us through. Keep your safety off, but do not fucking shoot. If a single gunshot is fired before we can see the Tectonic EMP, the mission’s shot. Bail.” 

“What’s the ratio?” Deqar asks. 

Skarisa’s forked tongue threads her sharpened incisors. “I’d say two. Use your knives, but if we lose more than two, put some holes in whoever you can see and get the fuck out. One man down is worth keeping it silent.”

That is fucked up. 

“Unless its Kallix, eh,” Deqar adds. 

Skarisa nods. “Yes. Until we’re through, of course. Once we’re in, he’s just meat.” 

“Mostly bone and bruise,” Oresek chimes. 

“Dickhead,” I say. 

The grinding of metal on metal churns my brain as the gate to the unloading dock slides open. The streetsweeper rumbles inside and the dark of the night is replaced with dim, red, industrial blinking. 

“There are officers,” Varan hisses. 

“Up and over,” Skarisa orders. 

Varan and Yuli vault onto the top of the streetsweeper, moving along it’s sides as all the contents within it are being dropped into the incinerator below. 

There’s not even a shout, just a thud. 

I hop off the ledge, landing on the ground. The gate is still open. Whispers of dawn tracing the street. 

“The schema,” Oresek says. Skarisa tosses him a small device which clicks on as he darts to a control panel. 

The room smells of spoiled milk and sanitizer. It’s barely wide enough for the streetsweeper itself, with mechanical arms and appendages dangling from the roof and jutting from the wall, moving automatically into maintenance procedures for the vehicle. With the others, I duck and weave around them, getting to the stairs on the opposite side of the room from Oresek. He must’ve figured out the controls because the gate begins to shut.  

Varan and Yuli have pressed the unconscious officers into the corner.

“Could toss them in the incinerator,” Eresek suggests. 

“No need,” Skarisa says as she motions for Deqar, who twists a spray cap onto a vial, and spritzes them each in the face. 

I skip up the stairs. There is a door. A hulking block of metal, a foot thick. It has a screen and a keypad on the left hand side. ‘Authorized Officers Only,’ is written in blue print. I guess that’s me. 

I look at the screen, face twisted as I try to figure out what the buttons mean. A laser shoots out, straight into my eye. Skarisa grabs my face so I don’t move. There’s a hiss, and a clink, as the door unlocks. My eyes turn to her, looking through her fingers. “If you see my brother in there, will you kill him?” 

“Hopefully.” 

Her smile goes straight to my dick. I push the door open. 

“Half an hour early, Rutz, come on, you know you…” the officer trails off as he sees me. 

Skarisa has smashed his face into the wall before I can blink. His coffee splatters across my thighs, burning. “Everybody in! Down and to the right, first door.” 

Eresek charges down, us behind him. He smashes through the door, leading straight into a matrix of cubicles. Four officers look up from their desks, bewildered.

He barrels down the left, cutting off the furthest officer before they can escape and bodychecking them into the doorframe. 

Skarisa stops beside me, just before the entrance, out of sight of the officers. I want to ask her when her plan will take effect, but Deqar has whizzed past me, pushing me in as well. He clocks the first officer in the temple, a tiny blade between his knuckles cracking through their skull. Yuli vaults over the divider, landing atop the third officer as they try to scramble for the exit. 

The last officer backs away from the exit, which is blocked by Eresek. He turns, face to face with me. I stare at him blankly. “Kallix?” he says with a stutter, backing into his own desk. “You’re brother is here. He’s been wanting to talk to you.” 

Deqar cracks him in the jaw, snapping his head to the side and crumbling his body backwards, smashing his monitor. 

Now Skarisa enters, vaulting over the cubicle we’re in. She kneels down, looking at the underside of the desk. “Shit. Alarm has been triggered,” she says, showing the tiny switch. 

Isn’t that good? 

Deqar steps to me, his eyes impossibly dilated, his bloody hands twitching. “We’re gonna need you to lock in, runt. That hesitation of yours might cost the mission.” 

“He’s working for his brother,” Eresek says from the doorway. He pulls his military grade assault rifle from his back and loads a magazine. “We need to kill him now before he uses his next chance to double cross us.” He’s peeking down the hall, gun raised, one eye closed. 

“We trust the Shark’s decision,” Skarisa rebukes. “If he was going to double cross then the Shark would’ve known and planned for it. I stand by that and anybody who wants at him goes through me.” 

Eresek flinches as a spray of bullets whizz past his head. He drops to a crouch, peeks out again and open fires. 

Skarisa loads a pistol. One of the officers groans, and tries to pull himself up by his chair. She shoots him in the head. “Oresek, schematics.” 

Varan and the other blonde twin enter the blood splattered office. “We can take this door on the left and flank them, but it doesn’t lead to the armory. We’ll have to go up and then down again to reach it.” 

“Fine. Eresek drop a smoke and hold point, everybody else with me.” 

He pulls a smoke grenade from his belt, pulls the pin and flicks out, hurling it down the hall. In the split second that his hand is exposed, a bullet rips through his forearm. Eresek pulls back, cursing as blood begins to gush like a sprinkler. In a blink, his entire arm and shirt are red. 

“That’s an artery,” Yuli says, under her breath. She’s ripping through gauze. 

“Patch him up and get him out. Switch sectors and don’t go back to base, find a place to hide,” Skarisa orders, already leaving down the left door. 

Oresek steps to his brother. “First one dead fucks the other,” he claps him on the shoulder and takes his assault rifle. 

“Gonna be you. I guess I’m on fucking holiday now,” Eresek says through gritted teeth as Yuli staples gauze into his arm. 

“Move, runt,” Deqar says, pushing me after Skarisa. 

Oresek follows. “Oi, Skar, head up those stairs through that door.” He hands the schematic tablet to Varan and reloads the gun. Smoke is diffusing into the intersection down the hall. Already some officers are backpedaling to get better cover, assuming that we will charge through the smoke. 

Skarisa nods, kicking the door open. An officer that had been sprinting down the stairs gets knocked in the face and then shot in the face. 

Oresek lies down and open fires, ripping through two policemen before they can even realize we have changed route. 

Varan, Deqar and I use his cover fire to follow Skarisa. 

The door at the top of the staircase is locked. It’s a giant metal hunk with a vertical rectangle of gridded glass above the handle. Skarisa peeks through to see several panicked officers, each of them either loading a weapon or making a phone call. “Varan.” 

“On it,” he kneels and begins picking the lock. 

“You want to go through there? Directly? We’ll get torn apart.” I glance in. “Those desks are plastic, they won’t stop fucking bullets.” 

“Oresek should draw more of them downstairs. We’ll get them from behind.” 

I step back, running my hands through my hair. “We’re gonna die. We are going to fucking die! I’m not doing this, you’re all fucked.” I can feel my veins surging. My headache is burning. It gnaws on my consciousness. Skarisa and I can just turn now. Why is she going so deep into this? We can tell these two idiots to leave, they don’t need to get arrested. Fuck the twins, let them get shot. Better them than me. 

Deqar slaps me. “Get it together, runt!” 

My head rips to the left. I see his blurry purple mohawk as my vision settles. I could have him dead in a minute. I just need to snitch. I just need to cry out for my brother. And this fucker is lead filled. He’ll never beat me in a race again.

Down the hall, left of where we are, I see a window. It has a handle. “Fuck going through, lets go around.” I take off, sprinting down. 

“Oi! Oi, Kallix!” Skarisa shouts after me. 

I’m not fucking listening to her. I reach the window and grab the handle, heaving. It doesn’t budge. I grunt, splaying my stance and pulling harder. Nothing. One more time I pull with everything my malnourished, drug fueled muscles can manage. 

Deqar’s hands cover mine and we push it up. The window creaks open. “Leave it Varan, let’s go.” 

I scramble out the window, lowering myself onto a nylon strip sign below. We’re only two stories up, but the drizzle of rain in the dawn makes the plastic slick. Good thing I don’t fall. Can’t say the same for the others, but that’s not my problem. I begin shimmying along the outside of the wall, body pressed to the cold concrete, arms extended. Deqar follows. I can’t tell if the others do. 

We reach the first window. I glance in. The officers are still loading weapons. They’re being addressed by someone. I peer further in. 

Fuck. 

Kaloaan. 

He is barking orders, rifle resting on his shoulder. His eyes are fiery, hair perfectly brushed, goatee perfectly trimmed. His blue uniform perfectly ironed. His badge perfectly centered. If he’s bandaged, I can’t tell. It’s buried. All buried. He looks top form. Like always. As if he never got shot.  

“What is it? What d’you see?” Deqar asks, adjusting his stance as the wind picks up. 

Then, my heart nearly stops. Kaloaan’s eyes drift, and then lock onto me. 

I duck, best I can with two inches of space. 

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. 

Fuck.