Avatar is the property of people who aren't me. This work of fiction is not authorized by those people.
Contrary to the popular, American mythos, Washington, D.C., was not originally envisioned as being the antithesis of the grandiose, monarchic capitals of European powers. To the contrary, the city's early architects studied city plans of several European capitals, envisioning an American Paris. It took a century's worth of poor adherence to the architects' master vision before America's capital underwent a reimagining. At the turn of the Twentieth Century, the same time that America became a recognized world power, it was decided that Washington, D.C., would be reshaped to make it a beacon of humble, democratic ideals.
The architectural and social engineering which followed resulted in a city of extremes. At the core of the capital city, meticulous upkeep and world-recognized monuments to the nation's ideals drew people's eyes away from the decaying conditions in the city's residential areas. Business leaders, however, had already been moving across the city's borders into neighboring Maryland and Virginia to find more favorable business conditions. By the time the social unrest of the turbulent Nineteen-Sixties hit Washington, D.C., many affluent residents were simply looking for a compelling reason to flee the city.
The resulting "white flight" phenomenon left America's capital demographically and economically gutted. Washington fell into a cycle of disrepair and crime that made the city as infamous as its monuments made it famous. Meanwhile, suburban sprawl reached from the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in the east to the feet of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the West.
As happened at the turn of the Twentieth Century, the start of the next century saw local and national leaders try to reinvent Washington, D.C., as a model of the urban renaissance which was prophesized to sweep urban centers across the United States. Gentrification projects began in every neighborhood, new construction was encouraged in its business districts, and grand plans were laid for the revitalization of the city's Monumental Core. The suburban sprawl and infill had become home to a highly educated, specialized workforce whose talents many hoped would fulfill the city's ambition to become one of America's great cities not just for being the seat of its government, but as a powerhouse for innovation and economic prowess.
For the first half of the Twenty-First Century, Washington, D.C., appeared well on its way to realizing the grand vision of a new, smarter kind of city. However, the worldwide environmental degradation which had paralyzed the national leaders in America's capital eventually laid its ambitions to ruin.
With the failure of a coherent energy policy, mountaintop removal in the Appalachian Mountains went on unchecked as the search for more plentiful coal veins intensified. The ecologic catastrophe rendered some places uninhabitable, and land values collapsed in the western part of the greater Washington metropolis. To the city's east, despite decades of activism by residents to "Save the Bay," exploitation of the Chesapeake Bay reached its zenith and resulted in the destruction of its ecosystem and much of the watershed well before the oceans rose and swallowed the Delmarva Peninsula.
The two disasters resulted in millions of people abandoning the suburban sprawl, hoping to experience the long-promised benefits of smart urban engineering. It was too much for the city to handle. Property values skyrocketed past wages, stalling growth. The transportation infrastructure collapsed, resulting in a localized economic depression as workers no longer found it feasible to commute across the metropolis. Once again, Washington, D.C., was in need of revitalization.
Before the end of the Twenty-First Century, the Congress of the United States fell into line with the laws of every other urban center in America and repealed the size restrictions on the federal city's buildings. There would be no more appearances of modesty in Washington, as such a concept could do nothing but suffocate the city. Almost overnight, the gentle lines of sight of the city's low-rise offices, which had helped define Washington's skyline for two-hundred years, were transformed into a cragged range of towering cranes.
By the time the city celebrated its three-hundredth birthday, plans were in motion to construct scores of skyscrapers of the kind which had once been reserved for American cities such as New York and Chicago. One generation later saw the city's pinnacle achievement, the Washington Monument, trapped in the shadows of progress – despite so many promises by leaders of all stripes to maintain the dignity of the National Mall.
Now almost a century after the capital city embarked on the path to become one more network of urban canyons that defined America's cities, Alan Ross, one of D.C.'s ubiquitous, federal government employees, was ready for an early lunch break. He was not hungry – at least not any more than anyone else who let themselves believe that synthetic protein packets could constitute a full meal – but he was eager to get his hands on one of the last remnants of local delicacy.
Philadelphia had its cheesesteaks, New York had cheesecake, and Washington, D.C., had half-smokes. Coarsely ground, spiced and smoked, hybrid beef-pork sausages, half-smokes had been a treat among Washingtonians for over two-hundred years. In their heyday, half-smokes were served by hotdog vendors and in restaurants across the city for a few dollars apiece. They were widely available at popular, open-air markets. Presidents indulged in them at local hotspots, as did visiting heads of state. But as meat prices began to climb with the collapse of free range pastures and grain production, genuine half-smokes became less common and, ultimately, only a feature of high class restaurants.
There were a few entrepreneurial street vendors, however, who knew that there would always be people like Alan who would pay a premium to get the real thing in a convenient location. They would save a portion of their profits – if they were turning profits – for weeks until they could afford a bulk purchase of the now-rare sausage, and then generate consumer hype by announcing a day in advance of when they would have the delicacy on hand. Despite their blatant mark-ups, the street vendors would almost always sell out of the meat before the end of the day, if not before the end of the lunch hour.
Today, one such vendor was two blocks away from Alan's office; and Alan would be damned if he missed his chance to get a half-smoke.
Hurrying out of his office's lobby into the heart of downtown Washington, Alan walked briskly along the busy avenue until he arrived at the park where the street vendor had set up his business. There was already a line of some twenty people, and he dutifully took his place in the back of that queue. By the time he was the eighth person from the vendor's station, there were thirty people waiting behind him. When he was the fourth, the line threatened to curve around the block.
Even with the mask of his exopack firmly sealed to his face, its filters working fulltime in the deceptively "clear" sky, the alluring aroma of his sought-after meal filled his nostrils. He could practically taste the spices which awaited him. His mouth was watering by the time he approached the window of the street cart to place his order.
The elderly, dark-skinned man who operated the cart gave Alan a smile that would be the envy of any television anchor. He knew what Alan wanted, and Alan could only guess that he was smiling because he knew today was going to be a profitable day.
His tongs already held one of the sausages when he asked, "What can I get for you today, sir?"
"Half-smoke," Alan replied quickly. "Load it up with cheese, onions, and chili."
"Chili is another three dollars," the man said, still smiling.
Alan balked. "Is it real chili?" he asked skeptically.
"One-hundred percent, sir." That was very likely a lie, despite the stringent laws to prevent the false advertising of food's contents, but it would be impossible to prove. Maybe the beef and beans were authentic, but the sauce was most certainly an imitation product. Alan ran through the possibilities of how he was getting ripped off more as a thought exercise than to build a legitimate claim, as he knew full well that public health authorities had better things to do than run down the nuances of how a street vendor presented his menu.
Alan shrugged. "The half-smoke is thirty-five dollars anyway," he said, "so fine. Lay it on thick."
"Forty dollars today, sir," the vendor corrected. "Grain prices climbed again." That much Alan knew was true, but whether or not the market spike occurred before the vendor made his bulk purchase was less certain. Once again, Alan would have been hard-pressed to prove otherwise if he were so inclined.
Alan snorted and said, "I'm glad I didn't ask for two."
The vendor chuckled lightly and, though he seemed to get the joke, replied, "One per customer, sir."
The half-smoke was set inside a toasted hotdog bun and then cut lengthwise, opening to reveal the perfectly cooked, deep red meat. Into that fold, the vendor provided a healthy portion of chili, onto which he piled chopped onion and lines of melted, golden yellow cheese. The vendor closed the sausage in aluminum wrapping, placed it in a bag, but kept it inside the cart until Alan paid the forty-three dollars.
"Would you like chips and drink, sir?" he asked casually as he took Alan's money.
"Maybe next time," Alan replied as he reached for the bag. "Forty-three bucks is enough for lunch."
"Okay, sir." He said with a nod. "Have a good day."
"Likewise."
If Alan had not been so fixated on his meal, he might have taken notice of the activity across the street by the Washington Parking Enforcement Authority. A lone enforcement officer approached an illegally parked garbage truck, tablet in hand, ready to provide the city with an easy two-thousand dollar profit. Alan might also have noticed the same officer back away from the garbage truck's cab in horror when he saw a battery of canisters, the principal charges of a larger bomb concealed in the truck's hopper.
After Alan crossed the first road on his way back to his office, he did see the parking enforcement officer – who had made a hasty return to his car – speeding through the nearby intersection. Before his mind could fully process the unusual sight, the garbage truck's four-thousand pound bomb detonated.
Short of three-hundred feet from the point of detonation, Alan was subjected to five pounds per square inch of overpressure from the blast. Having been unable to brace for the explosion's shock front, Alan was knocked off his feet and thrown into the concrete wall of the building next to which he had been casually strolling a moment earlier. His left arm and leg were broken, and his skull had been fractured such that intracranial hemorrhaging resulted.
Alan might have survived these injuries were he not also showered with glass and shrapnel from what little remained of the garbage truck, destroyed cars, and shattered office windows. These pieces of shrapnel, traveling in excess of one-hundred miles per hour, were lethal for up to a full city block in all directions – excepting for those on the other end of the block next to which the truck bomb had been parked, whose primary office tower had the misfortune to absorb the full effect of the bomb's destruction.
Sitting atop one of Washington's many subway stops, the tower's ease of access was considered a great convenience for the many RDA financial wizards, lawyers, and lobbyists who populated the satellite office building. However, the open space which contained the station's escalators was also a great convenience for the blast wave to separate the lower floors from their support columns. The reinforced concrete of the skyscraper might have withstood even a slightly smaller bomb, but the force of this explosion resulted in a catastrophic failure.
Seconds after Alan regained a painful consciousness, covered in dust, blood, and glass, the targeted office building collapsed into the road. Although the impromptu demolition had taken place behind him, the force of the building's collapse sent additional debris in Alan's direction.
Alan tried to stand up, but the pain was immobilizing – not that he would have gotten far with a debilitating loss of inner ear balance. Even rolling over to try and crawl out of the zone of destruction was impossible. He had enough presence of mind to realize that, in a few minutes, he would be dead. Not wanting to totally surrender, however, he tried to look around and signal somebody for help. If his eardrums had not ruptured, he would be so overwhelmed by others screaming for help that he might have given up on the effort. Even the lingering dust was so thick that he could not discern a particular individual at whom he might shout.
With his hearing gone, sight failing, and the pain in his body blocking out all other physical sensations, only two senses struggled to remain some kind of normalcy. His mouth tasted of blood and dust, and his nose was filled by gasoline and smoke. In his final moments, however, another smell cut through the horrors around him – the half-smoke. Somehow, throughout and despite the carnage, his would-have-been lunch had survived, the bag clutched in his right hand.
Alan was to become a casualty in a war between worlds that never occupied more than a few passing thoughts in his daily routine. As frightened and angry as he might have been by his untimely death, his final thought was to believe it was a sign of mercy that death's embrace would come to him smelling of a half-smoke.
"Holy shit! Did you guys see that?!" one of the Soldiers excitedly shouted. "Ka-Boom!"
"Let's go to the booth for a fucking replay," the Soldier sitting at the desk monitoring the Midwestern city replied, and moments later the screen washed out in a bright light that was soon replaced by fires, smoke, and dust. It was a near mirror image of what was unfolding on the screen of the East Coast city.
While the Soldiers expressed their jubilation at what they clearly viewed as a successful mission, Jude was in shock. She turned in her chair towards the commanding officers who were watching over the affair and shouted, "What the fuck did you people just do?"
"You didn't seriously think SecOps was going to view a protest by some bored teenagers as a threat, did you?" the woman in charge replied. "Maybe with a couple of their offices reduced to rubble, they'll react a little differently."
"You're nuts," Jude said, almost too stunned to say anything else. "How many people did you just kill to make a goddamned point?"
The woman just scoffed. "There are a billion people in this country," she replied. "They're not all special. Besides, this was Abe's plan."
Jude let out a short, sharp laugh. Even though she was well behind the curve on knowing the intricacies of Abe's plot, she had been over his biography enough times – and had enough experience spotting liars – to know the woman was not being straight. "I don't know the guy well," she said, "but I truly doubt that."
"I'm sure that's what he'll tell the fascists when they get a hold of him," the woman replied. "But it's undeniably true that he came to us looking for help. And it's true that he led an assault on RDA's headquarters at the same time that two of its satellite offices blew up. Even if there isn't any evidence that he ordered the bombings—," she grinned before commenting, "which there will be – at the very least it'll be proven that he conspired to commit an act of terrorism. You'd be amazed at how little evidence courts need these days to convict people of that."
"You're setting him up?" Jude shook her head in disbelief. "You killed hundreds of people just to set a guy up for a prison sentence?"
"Hey, this moral crusade that he's on was our idea fifteen years ago," the woman replied, her eyes narrow and voice firm. "But he swooped in and got some of our best people sent to prison on bullshit charges. He even got the RDA mole who was helping us killed. Do you really think we were going to help him become the man who self-righteously, single-handedly toppled RDA? The savior of Pandora and the Na'vi?" She snorted. "Fuck that."
Once more, Jude almost found herself at a loss for words. She had no sympathy for Abe, but the callousness of these terrorists was too much for her to take in stride. "So when SecOps finally catches wind that they've got a problem inside their headquarters, if they haven't already, on top of the bombings of their other buildings, do you think they're going to let Abe live long enough to even finish his mission? A mission which would have, I presume, helped your cause. What does blowing up buildings to get revenge on a single man do for you?"
"We still have all the evidence of the mining fraud on Pandora that he tried to suppress," the woman replied. "We don't need his help to release that. We just need RDA out of the way so we can make sure the evidence sticks. Abe was the first, real chance we've had to knock out the headquarters in a very long time."
Jude was back to her original suspicions. "You're nuts," she said. "RDA's going to kill him, and then they're going to come after you with a vengeance. You're not going to get anything out of this."
The woman took a breath, nodded slowly, and replied, "We're just going to have to agree to disagree." At that, she quickly withdrew her sidearm and fired three bullets into Jude's chest.
The force of one bullet alone would have been enough to knock Jude back; but the quick succession of strikes threw Jude to the floor, taking the chair down with her. The pain from her broken rib was now indistinguishable from the fire that seemed to be radiating throughout her body. She wanted to cry out in agony, but she found there was no air in her collapsing lungs to do so. Instead, she could only gurgle the blood that was filling her throat.
Jude's murderer knelt beside her and casually said, "To answer your next question: No, I'm not worried about what effect this is going to have on the hostage exchange. We've got that covered, too."
When the commercial ended, even before the fade-in had finished, the main camera zoomed in on the pair of lead anchors. The female lead gave a nervous look at her partner, and then turned to the camera and said, "We want to tell you what we know, as we know it. But we just got a report in that there's been some sort of explosion in Washington, D.C."
The scene changed from the familiar set of "Good Morning, San Francisco!" to what appeared to be a rooftop camera in the nation's capital. A thick, dark cloud of billowing smoke rose from between buildings and into the otherwise clear morning sky. Beneath the smoke there appeared to be a large, but thinning, plume of dust working its way between skyscrapers.
The male anchor said over the images, "One report said – and we can't confirm any of this – that a truck or bus may have exploded downtown. We have no further details than that, but you're seeing live pictures right now."
Natalie felt her stomach turn over. Every so often there would be a car bombing in one of America's cities, but those barely got headlines unless someone significant had been targeted or at least several hundred people were killed.
Some people claimed that the minimal attention given to the bombings was due to government censorship; but it was most people's opinion that a few car bombings between rival gangs, political partisans, or by anti-government lone-wolves was simply not enough to jar people's attention, given the many horrors taking place in the decaying world around them.
However, because these instances of violence had afforded Natalie ample chance to see the kind of devastation a car bomb could cause, it was clear to her from the images on television that something much larger had occurred in the nation's capital. It also occurred to her that it would be far too coincidental for a terrorist to launch an attack on the same day that her father was leading an incursion against RDA.
Confirming her suspicions that something much larger was happening, far from treating the incident on screen as a routine act of terrorism, Sue said, "We are turning programming over to our network headquarters in Atlanta for a special report. Please stay tuned."
The live images from Washington were briefly replaced by the network's "Special Report" title sequence, over which an unnamed announcer said, "From Atlanta, this is an ACN News special report."
When the title sequence faded away, the nationally recognized network anchor, Christian Brown, was on screen. Far from the homey living room set from a moment earlier, Christian stood in a pseudo-command bunker, surrounded by television monitors. She looked into the main camera and said calmly but authoritatively, "We're joined now by the entire network, America's Cable Network, interrupting your local programming to bring you news of a major, reported explosion in Washington, D.C."
Natalie could not confine her worries within her. She looked at her mother and asked, "What does RDA have in D.C.?"
"Lobbyists mainly," Krysta replied flatly, her eyes not straying from the television. "Its East Coast financial division headquarters, the high-speed rail station, and some production facilities outside of the city." She shook her head and, revealing that she shared Natalie's worries, said, "They have almost nothing to do with Pandora out there."
"Obviously you can see on your screen a major fire in the, uh, what looks like the downtown area," Christian said. "We're joined remotely by our affiliate station in D.C., senior producer Michael Erkson reporting. Mike, can you orient our viewers to what they're seeing on screen?"
"I can, Christian," Mike said. "The camera is atop our station in Arlington, Virginia, just across the river, so you're looking, uh, northeast into downtown. We have a crew on the way to set up the geonet in order to provide the viewers with full access to the scene. Of course, we have to work with emergency officials before that can go up."
With the advent and widespread use of three-dimensional entertainment systems, producers of television equipment devised a system by which viewers could immerse themselves into any program from any angle. The geonet, as it was called, was an airborne network of hundreds of small drones that communicated with each other in order to position themselves in such a manner as to create a full, three-hundred sixty-degree view of any space. This network of cameras then broadcasted a high-definition, faithfully replicated scene back to viewers, who could then manipulate the angles to their own desire. It was costly, but it saved networks from having to deploy multiple teams of camera crews and reporters around a location.
There was, however, another advent in journalism which almost made the geonet obsolete before it was created: citizen journalism. "Mike, we'll certainly wait for that to happen," Christian replied, "but I'm told by our producers here that we've achieved saturation of our ACtioN reporters, so we're going to start streaming those images live."
In order to cut costs, promote synergy across media, and improve viewer feedback with their programming, news networks at the dawn of social networking opened reporting up to their users. At first, amateur reports were intended to compliment main-stream reporting, but it did not take long before citizen journalists had as much clout as the supposed professionals.
Once smartphones and other portable, high-speed communications devices had proliferated to common use, users were able to give news networks direct access to their cameras. Once enough of these users converged on a single location and began streaming their amateur footage to the networks, producers could select mobile devices at random and broadcast the feeds live.
"Before we go to our ACtioN reporters," Christian said, "we want to remind you at home that their footage is unedited and may be graphic."
Before any normal person's reflexes might have allowed them to change channels to avoid the forewarned, graphic content, the camera cut away to someone's mobile device. They appeared to be several blocks away from a collapsed building, its rubble on fire, while secondary fires raged among adjacent buildings, cars, and in a park across the street. Scores of human bodies, some moving but many not, were visible in the streets and on sidewalks. Some bloodied people could be seen staggering away from the carnage.
Natalie buried her face in her mother's shoulder. Krysta put an arm around her, though it offered little reassurance.
"Oh, God," Christina could be heard to say. "That's – That's clearly, uh, something terrible has happened in our nation's capital."
"I know where that is," Mike interjected. "I'm watching your feed here. That's Farragut Square on the right of the screen. It's about two or three blocks north of the White House. That's near a very busy Metro station – subway station – especially this time of day."
"Could this have been an underground explosion?" Christina speculated. "A train derailment, perhaps?"
"No," Mike said. "That's clearly a surface-level blast. I served seventeen years in the Army, several in Venezuela, and that looks to me like a very, very large bomb went off."
"Okay," Christina replied. Then it sounded as though she were talking to someone off screen. "Okay, what? We're going to – I'm sorry?"
"Christina?"
"Uh, hold on, Mike. We're hearing now, well, we're going now to our affiliate in Chicago, where again, we have the same kind of reports of an explosion and fires in that city. ACN correspondent Tracy Rodriguez is standing by. Tracy, what do you know?"
"Christina, about fifteen minutes ago, our building was rocked by what felt and sounded like some kind of an explosion." Natalie turned her head away from her mom, steeling herself for the images which may be presented to her. "You can see there's this massive cloud of smoke coming from farther into downtown, and it's blanketing the city."
"Tracy, do you know what's – for our viewers who may not be familiar – where are we looking, exactly?"
"We know from the reports we're getting into the station here that this explosion took place at the high speed rail station, uh, in the western part of downtown across the Chicago River," Tracy said. "Um, that's a huge RDA facility down there, obviously with the high-speed station."
It seemed to Natalie that there was little point in denying the connection between the attacks and her father's work. Once again she turned her face away from the screen, and she cried.
Franklin had ably navigated through RDA's archives and was, at Abe's command, downloading a trove of documentation from Abe's unwitting investigation into RDA's Pandorium conspiracy from years earlier. Towards the end of the download, the edges of one of the monitors on Franklin's desk flashed a bright red. Abe knew what it was before Franklin said it.
"The chairman's calling me," he said calmly. He glanced up from his work and asked with faux sincerity, "Should I take a message?"
His gun still leveled at the executive, Abe stepped around to the other side of the desk and said, "Answer it, but don't think that will give you cover from this," he lightly dipped his gun, "if you decide to get brave."
"I wouldn't dare think so, Mister Scheller," he replied dispassionately. Franklin then answered the chairman's call. "I'm here, sir."
"And what the hell are you doing there?" Chairman Savage barked. "Do you have any idea what's going on?"
Franklin looked taken aback. "I'm working the Scheller case, sir. You wanted it…"
"Are you nuts?" Savage interrupted. "Haven't you been paying attention at all? We already know what Abe's been up to."
Abe felt the blood drain from his face, and even Franklin appeared surprised. "Uh, excuse me?"
"Doesn't your office have a-hundred monitors?" the chairman asked, sounding incredulous. "Christ, Franklin, are you not even looking at your messages? Abe's attacked us! D.C. and Chicago are offline. They're gone."
Abe still felt uneasy, but now he was thoroughly confused. Franklin, too, appeared baffled, managing a sideways glance in his direction as though to ask for clarification. Abe shrugged in response.
Franklin reached for a remote on his desk and turned on one of the office's many screens. The images which appeared were stunning: plumes of smoke across city skylines, bleeding and crying people stumbling through dust and rubble. Abe's eyes widened in horror, and he felt the gun become heavy in his hand.
He turned back to Franklin and shook his head. The executive's lip curled in response. "I'm seeing it, sir. Clearly an act of terrorism."
"Goddamned right it is," Savage replied. "So forget what you're working on, I already made the call. SecOps and the Feds are going to raid his house in thirty minutes." Abe felt his knees begin to shake and bile rising up his throat. "In the meantime," the chairman continued, "I'm calling everybody in to do a damage assessment. Is Janet still with you?"
"Not at the moment, sir."
"Well, she's not answering in her office. Her secretary said she's with you. Find her and bring her up here. The meeting's in fifteen minutes."
"Yes, sir."
"And get rid of those goddamned kids outside. I'm ordering a lockdown of the campus. Get the city to push 'em back."
"Yes, sir." The call terminated, and Franklin leaned back in his chair. He nodded towards the screen and asked, "Are you proud of yourself, Mister Scheller?"
"This isn't me," Abe said, almost pleading. "I did not organize that."
"Uh-huh."
"I'm not a terrorist!" he barked, thrusting his gun forward. Franklin just arched an eyebrow in response. Abe sighed and lowered his weapon. "Look, all I came here for is the information you're downloading. Think about this: What good does it do me to blow up RDA's buildings?"
Franklin just stared at him, his gaze occasionally turning back to the television screen. Cutting through the silence between them, a newscaster said, "Obviously, these images will recall for many the Las Vegas dirty bomb from nine years ago, and we're waiting to hear from emergency officials if, in fact, they have detected any radioactive particles in the wake of these explosions."
"Shit," Abe muttered. He raised his gun once again and touched his earpiece. "Dawn?" Silence. He felt his heart begin to race. "Dawn? Norm? Anybody?"
Before falling into a panic, Abe had a moment of clarity. The intelligence-centric office had been designed to turn into a kind of Faraday cage when sealed off, allowing only secure communications through. Cursing under his breath, Abe slowly backed towards the office door, unlocked it, and shouted down the hall, "Ashley! I need you here!"
The Soldier did not appear to be in any particular hurry when she turned down the corridor, but Abe hurried her into the office. "Watch him," he said. "I'll be right back." Before he left the office, he turned to the active monitor and added, "We're going to talk about this, too."
"What is there to say?" she asked with a wry grin. "You asked for a diversion. There it is."
Abe forced himself to keep his focus, and he withheld a reply. He raced through the empty hallways of the office suite back out to the main hallway, where his earpiece suddenly erupted in chatter. "Boss, where the fuck are you?!" Dawn said.
"I'm here," he replied. "I was in a dead zone."
"Oh yeah?" she said, sounding less than happy with his explanation. "Please tell me you know what's going on out there."
"No, not fully," he replied. "But RDA does. There's a strike team heading your way now. Get out of there." He took a deep breath and emphasized the command. "Get my family and get out."
"Roger copy," she replied. "I'm shutting down. Good luck, everyone."
"Abe!" Luke shouted into his ear. "Abe, they've sealed off all the sublevels, and they're doing their damnedest to break through my barricade. It's only—," he stopped his sentence short. "Shit."
"Luke?" Abe heard what sounded like a struggle, some shouting, and then three distinct, sharp cracks. Luke never came back on the frequency.
Norm felt like he was going to be sick. There was no question about what happened to Luke, and little doubt in his mind that they were looking at the same fate if anything else went wrong. "Norm, where are you?" Abe asked. His voice had an unusual, unsettling tinge of panic to it.
"We're on our way up," he replied.
The elevator came to a sudden halt. Soon thereafter a voice came over the car's intercom and said, "You are about to be detained. Resistance will be met with deadly force. Disarm your weapons, and stand with your faces against the wall. The freak, too."
"Like hell we are," Amy replied. She looked up to one of the corners of the elevator car, raised her weapon, and fired two shots, disabling a video camera. Norm and the others quickly put their hands over their ears and dropped to the floor.
Tseyo hissed at Amy, and Norm, his ears ringing, said, "Warning would have been nice."
"Grow up," Amy replied flatly.
The voice on the intercom replied to her provocation. "All right, have it your way." Over the guard's stolen radio they carried with them, the same voice said, "Central, Sublevel Alpha. All clear. One suspect dead, four suspects locked in maintenance elevator Charlie-Five on section three between floors sixty-seven and eight. No visual."
"We're just two floors from the last mezzanine," Matthew said. "We can make it if we can get out of here."
"I definitely don't want to stay in here too long," Norm replied with a nod. He looked around the cab and quickly spotted the access panel on the ceiling. He looked at Tseyo and asked, "Can you climb through that?"
Tseyo rubbed his ears one more time and then stood up, having to bend against the car's ceiling. He tried to lift the panel, but Norm's heart sank when it appeared to be locked. Tseyo, however, showed no loss of determination. He quickly punched up and through the thin, stainless steel panel, in the process breaking the locks and hinges.
Tseyo moved the wrecked panel aside and easily made an escape from the car. He lowered his arms into the car and said, "Let me lift you."
One by one, but quickly it seemed to Norm, they exited the car while the radio informed them of security's progress in arriving on their position. Once out of the car, they climbed the dimly lit, unnervingly confined elevator shaft's maintenance ladder to the final floor.
Norm took the chance to update Abe on their progress. "We're stuck in the elevator shaft," he said. "We're working on a way out."
"Work quickly," he replied. "We're running out of time."
"You don't need to tell me."
The outer door for the final mezzanine level operated on a powered lock. However, once they cut the power source, Tseyo was able to force the doors open. Not a second after Norm stepped out onto the floor, the last of the group to do so, the radio announced, "We have a containment breach. Suspects have escaped from the elevator."
A moment later, strobes began to flash throughout the enormous office tower, followed by a short, repeating siren. A pre-recorded announcement declared, "There has been an emergency reported in the building. Please proceed to your designated shelter-in-place stations. Do not exit the building."
They ran out of the maintenance corridor into the main part of the tower. Tseyo's emergence onto the floor immediately set off a panic among the employees who were making their way to safety zones inside the complex, and shouts began to echo inside the cavernous, conic tower. The shouting also drew the attention of the roaming teams of security, and the radio declared, "Central, suspects spotted! Section four mezzanine."
"Copy. You're cleared to engage the suspects."
Norm looked up and saw three guards leaning over open railings three floors up, preparing to fire. "Get down!" Norm shouted, going so far as to leap onto Tseyo's back to ensure he hit the floor.
He failed to consider that Tseyo might have perceived the action as hostile, given the chaos of the moment; and when they fell onto the floor, Tseyo turned to him and snarled, apparently ready to strike back, but he stopped himself when he seemed to recognize Norm. "Why did you do that?" Tseyo asked, plainly annoyed.
Before he could answer, mixed among the shouts of terrified employees, Norm heard the guards open fire, which was followed soon after by bullet impacts on the concrete railing. "That's why," he replied curtly.
After the guards' attack ended, without a word spoken between them, Norm, Amy, and Matthew reflexively sat up and returned fire. The guards dove for safety.
"We don't have enough ammo for a stand-off," Amy said as they ducked back down for their own cover. "We have to keep moving."
Matthew nodded towards a stairwell a short distance away. "There," he said. "We can't take the elevators anymore. It's our only chance of getting to Abe."
Norm was not so enthusiastic. Not only would they be slowed down, his legs started to ache at the mere thought of the task ahead. "That's fifteen flights of stairs," he said.
"What other choice do we have?"
Answering the doctor's question, the guards sent another hail of bullets their way, having adjusted their aim so that bullets impacted the floor mere inches from the group.
"You go, I'll cover," Amy declared.
"Be right behind us," Norm replied.
"You know I will." She quickly changed out the handgun's magazine and gave him a slight nod. "Ready?" He and Matthew nodded. "Go!"
Norm slapped Tseyo's shoulder as he stood and ran towards the stairwell, while Amy emptied her gun at the guards. Just as they arrived at the stairwell, Norm heard the guards return fire – it seemed much louder than Amy's report had been – and he felt a lump form in his throat.
As they started up the second flight of stairs, Amy came through the door. For a moment he was relieved, but then he saw her gripping her left shoulder, blood running down her arm.
"I thought I could block one," she said with a slight laugh as she approached him. "I probably could have thought that through better."
He did his best to not show the extent of his concerns. Norm smiled, chuckled, and replied, "I know how you feel. You'll be fine, though."
Amy nodded, took a deep breath, and said, "Let's keep going. They'll be all over us in a minute."