or knew that Miller wouldn’t be coming back.
“Time’s ticking,” I said. “If the response time is eight minutes, you’re down to…” I queried Sarah. “Six minutes and fourteen seconds.”
“Now, now, Mr. Langston. Don’t be in such a rush. Still, there is no reason this needs to be difficult. If you’ll simply step into the doorway, I’ll make it quick. A few weeks from now you’ll wake up in a re-coiling facility and it will be as if all this never happened. Is that so bad?”
Given what happened to Miller, and the “difficulties” that the med center on Prospect had experienced with my backup, I seriously doubted things would be so cut and dried as that. Besides, my re-coiling insurance plan only allowed for one deductible-free re-coiling per annual cycle. Who wanted to wake up to a pile of debt? “I appreciate the offer, I really do, but I think I’ll just take my chances and see if I can’t hold out for, oh, I don’t know… another five minutes and forty-eight seconds or so.”
Another message popped up from Chan. Monitoring the HabSec band. Response is looking more like twelve minutes. From now.
Shit. Well, hopefully the well-dressed assassin didn’t know that. The video window showed that he had finished reloading and was, apparently, waiting calmly for an opportunity to check me off his list. “Who sent you?” I called. I didn’t really expect a response, but if he was talking, maybe he wouldn’t be shooting.
“Come now. I couldn’t possibly reveal that information.” As he spoke the words, he rolled out from behind the counter, bringing his weapon to bear and unleashing a stream of bullets at the doorway. Apparently, he had no problem talking and shooting.
I dropped prone once again as the rounds punched through the wall and sent dust and bits of plastic flying through the air. My answering fire—still made from blindly sticking only my hand around the doorjamb—was better aimed than before, since I had the apartment camera feeds to help line things up. I burned through another dozen rounds, leaving me with only fourteen shots remaining, but the barrage of fire sent the assassin diving for cover once more, this time through an open door and into what, I assumed, was a bedroom or an office. There was a moment where the Net feed from Chan showed only the empty living room, but the scene changed again, giving me a view of a bedroom. The angle was much tighter this time, and the picture grainier, but I could still make out a dark form crouched by the wall, once more calmly reloading.
It hardly seemed fair. How many bullets did he have?
Blind fire—or maybe half-blind through the grace of Chan’s hacking—wasn’t getting me anywhere except closer to being out of ammo. I popped back to my feet, and, staying as close as I could to the wall, leaned out around the doorframe, Gauss pistol trained toward the bedroom door. “You seem to have an uncommonly good sense for battle,” the man called from the darkness. “Particularly given that the files I have on you indicate you are a salvage specialist. I take it that means the hacker is with you?”
Before I could respond, a rapid succession of shots rang out. I ducked back behind cover again, but it only took a moment to realize what the assassin was about. On the third shot, the video feed in my view went blank.
“Dammit,” Chan muttered aloud. “He’s taking out anything that might have a camera built in.”
I leaned back around the corner, trying to force myself to control my breathing. Panicked and panting didn’t make for the best marksmanship, but the sudden not-knowing had sent my guts into a twisting knot and turned my mouth into a parched wasteland. Better, though, if the other guy didn’t know that.
“You’re down to three minutes,” I said, forcing my tone to be as casual as possible. It was a lie, of course. By Chan’s estimation, there were closer to ten minutes before any kind of police response.
“Average response time, Mr. Langston. Average. Who knows how long we might have?”
There was an edge to that voice, a knowledge, that sent a trill of fear dancing along my spine. He knew. Maybe he was listening in on the HabSec frequencies. Or maybe he had paid someone off. But he knew the authorities were still a long way out.
“Just a few more seconds,” Chan whispered over the Net. “I’ve got something else planned. Just need a