The shadow snuck across the floor of the bank, laying itself behind Jopek’s feet.
I’ll get the cure. I’ll keep everyone safe.
Not everyone, his mind said. You. You never keep everyone safe. You can’t even keep one person safe.
Michael swore he heard the click of a safety snicking off.
Patrick’s not safe yet. But he will be. In the end.
Holly moved in front of Jopek just as Michael was closing his eyes against the coming fire. Her dark expression told her motive instantly: she was furious. She was going to demand Jopek help Patrick, or else.
Won’t work, Holly! You do not KNOW HIM!
Michael found he was holding his breath.
Michael dived for her, catching Holly at the waist, and they flew through space.
A second thud followed their own: a brick, tossed from outside, splashing through the window.
The brick landed in a crash of color.
Jopek spun. Alarmed, not yet comprehending. He looked at them. At the splayed rainbow. His stare then trailed up into the new shaft of sun. It was blazing him, transforming his face and, for one single second in that light, he looked almost like an angel.
The first shot came with a rocket of sound, a solid crack that made Holly kick out her feet on the floor beside Michael in a dance of terror. Shock registered on Jopek’s features as the floor tiles at his feet blew up in a storm of particles.
Jopek had been blinking blindly in a spotlight . . . and the shot hadn’t come close.
Jopek leapt out of the dusk light. In one single movement, he rolled into a crouched shooting stance, aiming for the high gunman through the shattered pane.
A second shot rang. And what followed was a sound Michael had never heard before:
Jopek’s pain.
The captain’s face contorted with naked surprise. His rifle fell, discharging. The bullet had taken him in the left leg, midway up the shin. The spot became a sudden rose.
DID IT! Triumph, frightening and powerful, roared in Michael.
Jopek tried to pull his sidearm pistol from his belt, but the silhouette fired again and Jopek was grabbing a curve of blood that traced down his screaming face.
Captain Horace Jopek collapsed.
Enemy Team down, Michael thought madly. I did it, he’s down, Enemy freaking down!
Michael’s blood towered up his throat and seemed to drive him onto his feet and he thought, BRB, Holly, even as she screamed, “Wait, Michael, wait!” Jopek’s pistol had skidded across the floor and Michael grabbed it and put it in his spacesuit pocket, and he ran and dived into the tunnel. Darkness ate up his vision through his panting-fogged faceplate, rocks sliced through the knees and palms of his suit; now gun sounds from the sniper spiraled after him and he flinched and something shifted in the stone layers overhead: a chattering of rock crashing down. Michael squeezed forward, scrambling insanely and, a second later, shot out the other end of the tunnel.
The bank was a pharaoh’s tomb.
Bills and coins in every direction, dust and debris covering all. Brass-rimmed nameplates still sat on rows of parallel desks, winking dully. On one desk, a water-bird paperweight dipped down and up, down and up. Electricity came and went in pulses, desk lamps and ceiling lights crackled on and off; computers kept booting momentarily before the power shorted, the Apple start-up gong! echoing like some eerie electronic doom-song. Flickering light, lots of shadows. Oh, too many.
Holly’s voice from the other end of the tunnel: “Michael!”
“Come on, Holly! The tunnel’s safe!”
“I—but—” she said.
Why wasn’t she just coming?
She’s just afraid, he forced himself to think. She’ll come. No time to wait. Move!
“Bub!” he called across the shadowy lobby.
Only his echo. Where did they even keep vaults? Basement? Some kind of manager’s office? Behind the counter—
Yes!
“One-two-three!” Michael called as a precaution, but he realized he didn’t know if the Shriek would echo as a Bellow would. A banner over the counter read BEFORE YOU CHANGE YOUR DREAMS, GET A SECOND OPINION! and Michael dashed, hurtled over the counter. He landed awkwardly on his side, tried to pull out the pistol in his pocket; it got caught in the space-suit fabric. He grappled desperately for another weapon, came up with two things, a plastic capsule used to zip cash through pneumatic tubes to drive-thru customers, and a pen on a chain; he chose the pen, wielded it knifelike, whipped around, and saw nothing.
Except the vault.
Tens and twenties and hundreds eddied over the dozen pneumatic bullets that lay between him and the vault at the end of