Page 3 of Coldwire
A scream interrupts the rest of her sentence, piercing into the shared comm link. I flinch, my hand flying up to my ear in haste. It must be someone directly beside Mint if her mic has picked it up. I barely have a moment to brace before the door in front of me flies open and a mass of patrons pour into the stairwell. They’re funneling from the thin hallway outside the nightclub’s side entrance, moving in such a stream that the two adjacent doors don’t have the opportunity to close behind anyone. It pierces a gaping hole throughthe nightclub’s soundproofing. The music is suddenly loud enough to taste, the bass piping up and down the stairwell.
“What’s going on?” Smith demands. “What’s all that screaming?”
I barely make way for the crush, pressing to the wall to avoid the patrons scrambling through the threshold of the exit and hurrying down the stairs. I catalog each of their faces, needing to ensure Nik Grant isn’t slipping out in this chaos, but the ultraviolet light plays tricks on my sight. Everything has an odd sheen to it.
“Excuse me!”
I grab a girl out of the crowd at random, stopping her in her tracks. Though she attempts to continue forward, her arm stretching out for a friend who proceeds without her, she can’t break free. My grip is immovable.
“What happened?” I demand.
They don’t turn off the thunderous music inside. I have to shout to be heard. Electric strobe lights dart into the stairwell too, slashing through the bodies like a skipping rope I’m not jumping with in time.
“Let go of me,” she screams. The three piercings through her left eyebrow catch the strobe. Its glare almost blots out my vision. “Someone fired a gun in there.”
I do let go of her then. My own firearm is still clutched in my other hand, hiding at my side. The girl is quick to run off down the steps. The rest of my unit continues shouting instructions through the earpiece, but I haven’t been listening. My attention returns to the patrons. Teenagers with scarves tied over their faces to hide from facial recognition cameras. Older men in suits ushered by personal guards.
A server in waitstaff uniform coming through the door and making an immediate right, walking up the stairs. I can’t make out any other detail under the strobe lights. It doesn’t matter. No one else is ascending.
I bolt forward, pushing through the crush of people.
“I’ve got him,” I say. “I’ve got him. He’s in the stairwell.”
The moment my feet hit the stairs, taking three at a time, Nik Grant bolts. He hurtles skyward, trading subtlety for speed. Teryn demands that Iwait for her. Smith is yelling for me to hurry with a location so he can block Nik’s exit from the correct floor.
A bang echoes from above. One of the stairwell doors has been flung open, striking the wall. I crane my neck and risk looking up directly through the middle of the railing, catching the telltale flicker that betrays his location before its door closes again.
“Fifth floor,” I report. “Get to the fifth floor!”
I close the distance rapidly. There’s a moment of resistance when I try to tug—he’s tied something to the handle—but I yank again and snap the plastic cord that he looped with a knot.
I emerge into a ghostly hallway. The floors that aren’t utilized by downcountry opportunists appear largely the same, exactly how their owners left them. They’re the remains of abandoned offices, crowded with boxes along the walls and mold climbing up the side of the tall windows. I’m careful while I walk toward the open-plan desks, stepping over a broken chair arm and the faulty bolt lying beside it.
A creak sounds behind me.
I whirl around, lifting my firearm. “Freeze.”
Nik Grant goes still. There’s little light at the mouth of the hallway, so I can’t parse his expression. He lingers in the shadows, only half his face visible under blue and flickering pink bleeding in from the billboards on the street level.
“Put your hands up,” I say evenly.
His hands stay where they are. His head tilts. “You again.”
I was the one who almost got him on our last capture attempt. I had him blocked in, within a few feet and my cuffs prepared, but then somehow he’d set off a glaring flash bomb. By the time I opened my eyes, he was gone.
“There’s nowhere to run,” I say. “Put your hands up, or I have instructions to shoot.”
“You know, it’s never made sense to me why Wards work for NileCorp,” Nik says. His tone is easy, as though we’re making small talk on the bus. “Itmay be law that you enroll in military school, but no law says you have to continue on as a corporate soldier to clear your debt. What’s your opinion?”
I keep my arm steady. I don’t speak my question aloud, but…
“Yes, I know you’re a Ward,” he says, answering it anyway. “Eirale Ward. I looked you up.”
“I’m giving you three seconds.” It’s not a far cry to see a Medan face in Atahua and assume they’re a Ward. When the cold war between Atahua and Medaluo started, most Medans living in Atahua decided to flee rather than be treated as the enemy. For centuries there had been a significant presence of Medan immigrants in Atahua, and within a few years—as people raised the funds to escape to Cega or another island in the Western Territories—the number dropped to paltry amounts. Those who remain now either have too many ties to give up, or they’re orphans born into this war with nowhere else to go. Wards of the state, branded as property of Atahua down to the very name.
Nik Grant takes a step forward.
I shoot.
