The armory is cold, turning my breath to vapor. The walls are lined with rows and rows of firearms and assorted tactical and explosive grenades. They are backlit with red light from below and blue light from above, bathing the room in a synthetic purple. In the main area, there are two rows of eight chest sized machines, each covered by a sheet. Each must be a different type of experimental bomb, judging by the blueprints and calculation tables scattered across the dead engineer’s desk. 

Skarisa rolls inside, screaming, and slams the hulking door shut with her back. “Find this fucking thing!” 

“It’s at seven two!” Varan shouts, sprinting down and ripping the sheet off. 

“Get it, come ‘on, let’s go,” Skarisa shouts, reloading her pistol. 

“Wait…” Varan mutters. He looks at the schematics again. “No… that’s not right, this isn’t it. This is a light pulse, we need an EMP.” 

The glass that comprises the top half of the door shatters, and rifle bullets begin pelting trough. We dive behind the covered bombs for cover. Deqar and I press against each other, tucking our legs in as bullets ricochet past us.  

“Watch your shots!” Firida hisses. “You’ll blow us all to the sun.” 

“I’ve got ‘em trained, they can’t move,” responds the officer. “Hand me the scope.” 

“Varan?” Deqar called. 

“I’m fine. Just a graze,” he responds from behind another one of the bombs. “But I don’t get it, the schematics say it should be this one at seven two.” 

“Maybe they moved it,” Deqar says. “It could be any of these.” 

I explode to the left, kicking off him and rolling across to the next bomb. A bullet flicks off the ground, tearing a hole through my hood. I yank the sheet off and read the label. “Terra Shockwave Charge?” 

“No. It’s the Tectonic EMP,” Varan says. 

“Fucking hell.” I can’t see her, but Skarisa must still be pressed against the door. If there is any fucking time to fix everything, its now. The rifle barrel of the sniper is pushed through the shattered window of the door, directly above Skarisa’s head, as it takes aim. 

A third engineer emerges from the bathroom on the left center of the room. “Officer Skarisa! Oh thank the world, you’re here! We haven’t heard from you in…” 

Skarisa shoots him in the face. “Now!” she hollers, reaching up and grabbing the barrel of the rifle and yanking it to the side. 

I leap up. Fuck the bomb. Fuck finding it. Fuck Zorikan. Fuck the Swifters. I sprint for the bathroom, smacking the door open and ripping off a shower curtain. It’s a disinfecting zone, with a three pronged shower head and sanitization valves. 

There is screaming and bullets, and more screaming. 

Skarisa stumbles in behind me. 

“You fucking shit, you better explain what is happening right now!” I shout, from inside the dry sanitation tub. 

She curses, rolling onto her back as thick dark blood oozes from the bullet hole in her thigh. Shit. Her snake eyes whirl around the room. “The stimulant shot, that cable and the curtain. Pass them to me,” she grunts, trying to sit up and move herself from the door. 

I can hear Deqar hollering and shooting back. Varan is making himself as small as possible as bullet rain around him. “No,” I tell her, standing up. I look down at her as blood gushes from her wound. “No fuck you. You were never on Kaloaan’s side, were you? You fucking double agent. You’ve fucked us all. We’re going to die because you’re a lying bitch!” 

“Ha. Hahahahahaha,” her head rolls back and she laughs. “Yes! Look at us, inside the armory of their greatest and newest weapons. Ha! They’re so fat and content and happy and drunk off their security that they couldn’t even imagine it! They could never conceive that low lives like us could achieve this! We’ve spat in the eye of the fist of the government, and they thought they could outsmart us! You’re brother is an idiot! Do you know how easy it is to get through police training? To convince them, purely because of how I look, that I they should choose me to infiltrate the Swifters. They’re so dumb. So fucking dumb!”