The Utopia Experiment

76

“Jon!” Randi screamed over the sound of bullets hammering the metal wall behind her.

De Galdiano was dead and Smith looked like he might be too, lying partially on top of the Spaniard with his hand on the keyboard.

A shot, louder than the rest, sounded and she threw herself forward as a round penetrated the steel and sprayed her back with shrapnel. It had just been a matter of time before security found something with enough heft to blast through the barrier, but she’d been hoping for a little more foot dragging on their part.

Randi looked at what was left of the windows on the far side of the room — not much more than a few loose shards clinging to the frame. A hot breeze blew through them, strong enough to swirl the smoke hanging in the air but not enough to dissipate the overwhelming stench of gunpowder. Zellerbach was lying on his stomach still absorbed by his keyboard, though there was little point to what he was doing anymore. Not that she saw any reason to tell him that. Better to just let him stay lost in his digital world until one of the Dresner’s storm troopers got lucky and took his head off.

She scanned right again, finding it much harder than it should have been to look at Smith. His plan had been too convoluted from the start — an ungodly Hail Mary with a thousand paths to disaster and only one path to success. But they’d been in similar jams before and somehow always managed to walk away.

Not this time.

She stared at him for too long, eyes clouding with a sensation so unfamiliar that it took a moment for her to decipher it. Tears.

Pull it together, Randi!

She forced her left brain back into gear and calculated that she had only one round remaining. Options for survival were limited — but limited wasn’t the same thing as nonexistent.

First order of business was to get Smith’s gun — he still had a full clip. With his body stacked on top of de Galdiano’s they would make a functional shield that she could drag along with her to the shattered windows. The building’s facade was too featureless to climb, but it was possible she could shoot out the windows of the floor below and swing down.

Even if all that worked, her chances of getting out of the building alive were still slim. At least it would be a running fight, though. A hell of a lot better than lying around waiting to catch a bullet.

She felt uncharacteristically sluggish as she moved forward. It was easy to ignore the burning wounds in her back, but ignoring the image of Smith lying so still in front of her was less so. She’d lost friends and team members before. Why did this feel so different?

The steel behind her took another hit from the big-caliber weapon security had found and a pile of soccer balls in front of her burst and scattered around the room. The sudden chaotic motion created the illusion of Smith’s head moving. Or maybe it wasn’t the soccer balls at all — maybe she was just seeing what she wanted to see. Randi blinked hard, trying to clear her vision. Her mind wasn’t normally prone to playing tricks and now wasn’t the time for it to start.

But then his chest suddenly expanded and he rolled off de Galdiano onto the blood-soaked carpet. She froze, staring at him for a moment before looking up at the one surviving monitor bolted near the ceiling. It took a moment to make sense of the image made hazy by the smoke, but finally she managed to combine the shapes and colors into something coherent: Christian Dresner facedown on the floor.

Bullets continued to hiss overhead and security kept punching through the steel wall with their goddamn elephant gun, but all that seemed to fade away for a moment. Jon was alive and they’d done it. They’d actually pulled it off.

The moment of elation wasn’t particularly well reasoned, she knew — her chances of survival had actually just taken a turn for the worse. After his partial heart attack, she’d be lucky if Smith could operate at half speed. And he was almost certainly going to frown on her plan to use him as a human shield. But why question the sudden surge in her mood? Better to just enjoy it while it lasted.

She slithered forward and rolled over de Galdiano’s body, landing on her back next to a very confused Smith.

“You got him, Jon! Dresner’s dead. But we will be too unless—”

A gun appeared over the steel wall and she aimed at it, waiting for the top of the guard’s head to appear before firing her last round. It got close enough to make him drop behind cover again but confirmed her initial impression that the manufacturer had exaggerated the accuracy of her weapon.

She shoved Smith onto his stomach and pulled the pistol from his waistband, then started dragging him toward the empty window frames at the back of the room. There wasn’t much time. If one of the security men had made it to the wall, the others weren’t going to be far behind. And when they all got into position, they’d jump up in unison and spray the entire office. Game over.

“Marty!” she shouted as Smith came around enough to start providing some of his own propulsion. “Get off that damn computer and go to the windows. We’re leaving!”

He ignored her and she swore under her breath, knowing that she’d have to go back for him. There was no time for this crap.

Smith’s eyes had cleared by the time they made it to the windows and he grabbed her arm when she started back for Zellerbach. He didn’t seem to be able to speak, and instead motioned toward the edge of the floor where it dropped to the parking lot below. She leaned out, careful not to cut herself on the glass still clinging to the frame, and immediately understood what he was trying to communicate. The building’s facade was even smoother than she’d anticipated — making getting to the floor above or below unlikely for her and virtually impossible for the two men she was saddled with.

Another face appeared over the wall and she fired at it, but this time the man got a few rounds off first, taking out the leg of a pinball machine only inches from Zellerbach’s head. Randi looked around for anything they could use, but there was nothing. With more time, they could probably string together some cables, but time was something they didn’t have. She looked over at Smith, hoping for one of his inspired plans, but got just a smile and a shrug.

“I’m in!” Zellerbach shouted, and a moment later the sprinklers in the ceiling were dowsing them with frigid water.

“You get ’em, Marty,” Randi said, appreciating the effort. With a little luck, a few of the sons of bitches who were about to kill them would go home with nasty colds.

“I have access to security’s personnel files!”

She fired at a man sprinting for the barrier while Smith crawled toward a basketball goal and pulled it over, providing them with cover that was probably more psychological than real.

“Give ’em all a pay cut, Marty!” she said, opting not to bother with the few visible inches of a man’s back as he ran from right to left across some cubicles.

“How many rounds left?” Smith said, speaking for the first time since he’d revived.

“Not many. Doesn’t matter, though. Can’t hit the broad side of a barn with this thing.”

Randi tensed when someone shouted orders for the final assault, but instead of the rush of armed men she expected, everything just went silent.

She kept her gun leveled at the steel wall and Smith rolled to the edge of the basketball goal to spot for her. But there was nothing. No security forces pouring into the office, no barked orders, no gunshots. Just the sound of the wind coming through the empty window panes.

Zellerbach slid his keyboard away and stood, putting a hand up to block a sprinkler spraying in his face.

“Marty!” Smith shouted. “Get the hell down!”

He ignored the order and instead stepped gingerly through he broken glass at his feet. “I hate this place. Let’s go home.”

“Marty!” Randi cautioned, trying to cover the man, but still finding no targets.

“Don’t be scared,” Zellerbach said, heading for the door. “It turns out that the entire security detail loved dachshunds and hated their mothers.”