Unity by Elly Bangs (free e reader txt) 📕

tree doused in napalm. I don’t know what’s happening, but if I were you, I would give serious thought to getting the fuck out of Dodge, and pronto.”

“Kat, what happened?”

“I’m still finding out. Half the keep module is flooded, but as for whether it was a torpedo strike or a bomb or an accident? I’m working on it. Mainly I’m working on finding you an escape route. And forget about getting out the way you came in. Trust me. You don’t even want to know—”

“Wait.” Something was happening outside. Shouting, then a waver shriek I knew I hadn’t imagined.

“What was that? Lex?”

“Recontact in twenty.” I hung up. I darted into the corner behind the door and rushed to strap my armor back on without ever taking one hand off my rifle. I tried to remember the layout of the surrounding corridors, think of the best positions to take, gauge the distance and direction of the feet pounding on the metal floor out there—but when my weapon was primed and ready against my chest, I couldn’t steady my hands to aim it. The same panic I’d felt on the ice fields of Antarka kept creeping in. Everywhere I looked, the eyeball’s ethereal gaze was there in the signal-static darkness in the corners of the room. Footsteps halted just outside. A red-light shadow played slowly across the translucent plastic walls, enlarging and distorting as it approached the door, each strobe flash mutating the silhouette into the next in an endless series of my victims. The door slid open. The overhead light clicked on, and a gun snapped out toward my head.

It was one of the proprietors. I lowered and disarmed my weapon in a hurry. After a twitchy moment she did the same, swearing under her breath and holstering the tiny pistol somewhere in the folds of her ornate red silk robe.

“You,” she said. “You can’t wave that thing around in here.”

“Sorry.” I wiped the sweat off my face and struggled to control my breath. “I heard a shot—”

“A customer needed to be convinced to leave. You need to leave too. Real bad news. It’s not personal. It really isn’t. I like you okay, Standard, but you’re not one of us, and we have to seal this place up, and we only have enough canned air in here for the workers—”

“I understand.”

She led me to the brothel’s big armored hatch and shoved me gently through. She watched me through the gap as it closed, her painted and sparkling eyes full of apology, and I knew there was nothing I could say to convince her I needed none. No matter how much safer it was behind that door, the last thing I wanted right now was to be locked up airtight in the middle of this city.

The bolts screeched shut. Distant shouts echoed between the narrow walls, and the smell of fire was already wafting on the recycled air. My shard rang in my pocket. “My dear Alexei Standard.” Duke’s holographic image grinned up at me through the glass. Red emergency lighting glittered on his jaw rings like monstrously curved teeth. “I take it you’ve heard the big news.”

“Norpak broke the ceasefire?” I asked. “Already?”

“No, surprisingly. It seems a lone wolf scored a lucky hit against some corroded seals with an improvised explosive. We don’t know the who or the why yet, but I doubt it was Norpak. Those ninjas take far too much pride in their work to resort to such sloppy methodologies.” He had to raise his voice over a background din of shouted orders, boots pounding on metal floors, waver fire. I heard someone read out new casualty estimates.

I had followed the corridor to another sealed hatch. Three corpses were splayed out under the flickering lights, all Medusas. Wisps of smoke rose and perfumed the air with burning plastic and cooked flesh. “If the ceasefire is still in place,” I asked, “what is this?”

“It’s an election! We are all casting our votes now to choose Dahlia’s successor.”

I averted my eyes from the dead and said, “I can’t be part of this.”

Duke guffawed. “You don’t get a vote, chum. Not that it matters. The situation is well in hand. What’s left of the keep is mine already, as will be the rest of Bloom shortly—and where Bloom goes, all of Epak follows.”

“Then why call—?”

“Because it would be a shame if you died in this petty little squabble, that’s why. I’m sending you the keys to all the safe rooms in that sector of the city. Sit tight, Alexei. When the dust settles, you’ll work for me.”

I shook my head. “I need a way out of the city.”

He ignored me. “The Clan will have lost some of its best talent in the shakeup, and there’ll be no shortage of work. I’ve had my eye on you for years, Alexei. I’ve seen what you’re capable of. I need those talents at my disposal. I need the very sharpest knife in Dahlia’s old drawer.”

I choked out the words “I should go.”

He only chuckled and leaned tighter into the camera. “You wouldn’t go against a decree straight from your new Emperor.”

Before I could respond, a series of metallic thuds sounded—on both my side of the call and Duke’s, I realized. He held his hand up to silence everyone. For a moment everything was still—but when the sound came again, I felt the vibration in my guts, the ripple of seismic violence in the plates under my feet. The pipes all began to scream.

“Section 40,” someone yelled to Duke. “The emergency seals aren’t working. It’s sabotage. We’re locked out!”

“God damnit, you said we had nodespace under control!”

“We did!”

“High ground! Everybody move!”

The call cut off.

I turned to a sudden uproar: a few other locked-out people had managed to pry open a sealed door to a stairwell. I watched panic carry them upward, but I didn’t follow. Everyone in Bloom would be rushing to higher ground now, because there was only one way to read the signs.

One