Page 121 of Sky Song
A sizzling pop didn’t let her finish. The crazy Sakka dropped to the cage floor, a neat black hole between his eyes smoking a little.
Cricket screamed. She tried to grab his gun hand but Lyle held her fast.
“My hearts…”
“No! Stop! They’re people.” She made the mistake of looking into his eyes. Impassive, flat, snake eyes. She’d seen thatblack ice of a stare recently in a fuzzy video feed that Paloma had unearthed. In a moment of terrifying clarity, she knew that he would kill the caged subjects, kill them all, without regard for their pain, without any emotion. He wasnotbetter than Simon.
She continued wrestling with Lyle, putting all her weight in to prevent him from using the weapon. She managed to get him distracted, but in the end, he subdued her and liberated his gun hand from her clutches.
The aliens in cages - the subjects - started shouting and banging on the metal bars.
With a war cry, Kim erupted from her confinement, the barred door banging loudly against the opposite side.
“You thought you could kill me? I’m two steps ahead of you, dumb aliens. Ha!” In her hand, she held a tiny stunner, and she pressed the trigger without warning. Lyle jerked Cricket violently to the side and Kim’s shot went wide, but not so wide that Cricket hadn’t felt a tickling electric current pass her by, terrifyingly close.
“Let’s fucking go!” Ren shouted, palming his own weapon.
Cricket let go of Lyle and dashed to the cages. Surprised, he didn’t stop her. “Cricket!” His voice rang above the commotion. “We have to leavenow.”
“In a second!” She wrestled with the lock on the cage, pulling at it, banging on it with a metal tray she grabbed from the counter. She was strong, but the lock was stronger.
Lyle was upon her. His hand manacled both of hers, rendering them completely useless.
“Go,” he said in her face, and for once his eyes weren’t merry.
“They deserve to be free. You know what it’s like behind bars, and they are innocent. Please!”
More shouts, another shot - and an answering one, and then Ren, “Move it, goddamn you.”
Lyle snarled, a mythical beast, and pushed her away. “Go with Ren.” Hooking a finger under a padlock, he yanked. The lock held, but the part of the cage door on which it hung didn’t, and he wrestled the mangled door away. The alien squeezed in the opening and streaked toward the door.
“Go, blast you,” Lyle snarled at her as he moved to the next occupied cage, and this time Cricket ran toward the door.
As she reached it together with the escaping alien, it opened, and Dr. Nura stood in the glowing blue opening, cool and composed, with a robotic facial expression of a pre-programmed fembot. She came armed, and not with a small stunner like Cricket held.
“No one is leaving,” Deja Nura snarled before releasing a shower of shots inside the lab.
They all ducked, dove for the floor as Dr. Nura advanced. In the resulting chaos, the cacophony of shouts was underscored by a wail of pain and Kim shot back, or maybe it was Ren. Cricket dropped down, rolling into a wall, hitting a metal pole with her cheek, tasting blood. There were more zaps and curses, and someone’s thumping feet ran next to her face.
“Out! Out now.” She was yanked upright by the neck of her sweater and pushed toward the door.
Stumbling, catching her balance against the now-smashed and smoking imaging machine, she gripped the small stunner in her hand.
“Lyle, I…”
But it was Ren by her side. “Don’t talk, just go.”
“Where’s Lyle?”
“Go! Don’t look back.”
“It’s the witch doctor!” Kim’s maniacal laughter rose above the mayhem and bounced off the walls, confirming that she, at least, was still alive.
Ren dragged her along.
“Emma! Over here,” someone called her name from outside.
“Terrance?”
