bloomed, from the trees right into one of the club’s narrow windows, and the explosion threw chunks of the wall into the crowd ahead of the fireball.
“Sweet mother of— Go!” Verres yelled.
“All Sentinels, cancel containment, assume public-safety priorities!” Lei Zi seconded.
Artemis leaped off the edge and I caught her hands as we fell, free-fall most of the way down to pull into a gee-ripping arc under the trees. I dropped her into the middle of the fight and kept going, landing on the sidewalk at the edge of the dust-choked blast zone. Where a guy with a sign took a swing at me.
“Are you completely insane?”
I took the broken sign away and zip-cuffed him, then did the same for the idiot covered in cement dust who emptied his pistol into my back. From the suit and tie, I guessed the guy fancied himself one of Shankman’s bodyguards. The Next Great Statesman himself ran for it, surrounded by more suits. With no more threats of violence, I turned to examine the stunned and fallen demonstrators in time to see Rush drop Quin off in a blur of speed.
“Astra, we have the street, take the interior,” Lei Zi instructed.
“Interior, on it!” I launched myself for the hole in the wall, and the second rocket caught me. It helpfully blew me through the hole, throwing me through the tables to slide across the dance floor.
“Astra! Status!” Lei Zi called through the ringing in my head.
“Just— Hit but mobile.” I sat up to prove it and sucked in a breath, eyes tearing. Not the ribs again.
A moment ticked by, then “Rush has found the launchers, two laser-guided throwaways. They put a guy on top of the Marino Park coffee kiosk with them. Stand down till you’re able.”
“Thanks,” I said, then looked up. Marcus tossed a table aside to loom over me, offering a hand up I gladly accepted.
“You okay?” the bouncer asked. “Rough entrance.”
I nodded. “I’m good. Is anybody hurt?”
“Nah. Hardly anybody’s here before ten, and I sent everyone else out the back way when Shankman and his boys started their scene. Figured I could take them myself if they got through the door.” He looked around at the shattered and scattered tables. A few were burning, and flames crept up the outside wall’s interior paneling.
“I don’t think we’re opening for lunch. Let me get the extinguisher before the fire-system goes off.”
“Don’t mind me.” He got busy while I hugged my ribs and tried to think. My head rang, the world wobbled, spent rocket and explosive burned my nose, and I was beginning to see a sad trend. Enter a house, get blown out the window. Visit a dealership, get blown out into the parking lot. Drop in on a riot, get blown into the club. Did the Hollywood Knights have weeks like this?
When the wobbliness faded, I exited through the club’s front door. The “park” was chaos, but, amazingly, there were no fatalities. Probably nobody would ever know the credit belonged to Seven. He’d left his GQ look behind and I’d flown right by him without noticing. Collar open and shirtsleeves up, he’d worked his way through the mob so that when the rockets went in he’d been standing right next to the tight group of mourners by the wall. Later he told me he’d been focusing hard on nobody getting killed, and apparently his luck listened to him.
Paramedics stepped carefully among sitting and prone protestors. Captain Verres’ riot-trained officers moved through the crowd in threes and fours, efficiently cuffing and directing. They didn’t have a lot of fighting to put down; the explosions had changed most demonstrator’s priorities and, going with the flow, they’d thrown flash-bangs to encourage confusion and flight (I’d heard them from inside). Now they swept through a mostly pacified crowd. The air reeked of burned magnesium-ammonium perchlorate, and I stepped around rows of zip-cuffed detainees, searching.
I couldn’t see them. Focus. Be Astra.
“Dispatch.” I queried. “Status nominal. Location of Lei Zi?”
“Lei Zi location police command center, A-One. Standing order: do not engage. Assist at discretion.”
“Thank you. Artemis’ location?”
“A-Two location 300 feet to your southwest.”
I didn’t run.
Chapter Thirty
Every concentration of power creates its own opposition, whether that power is military, political, monetary, or social. Opposition groups may or may not be violent, largely depending upon their aims and whether or not they believe the political environment favors them. Citizen-militia groups existed previous to the Event, and their membership has grown in the wake of each superhuman-caused disaster.
Department of Superhuman Affairs,