Chapter Six

»Maintainer Team 14d to Data Node 1903.«
  I feel as if I have stepped into another world.
  I had become used to the heat and pollution of Micropolis, but here, the air is cool and clean. Even under my armor, my skin tingles, welcoming its balmy touch. I take deep breaths, quenching a fire that I had almost forgotten burnt in my lungs.
  “Ki’s personal quarters must feel like this,” I murmur in wonder.
  “The System’s function is impaired by excess heat,” explains Persephone. “The maintainers have to keep the temperature down.”
  »Maintainer Team 9p to tertiary coolant tank D.«
  I remember that we have business here. “Where is the System?”
  She makes a sweeping gesture with her arm. “Everywhere. It’s all around us.”
  I look, but I see nothing. Just gray walls, punctuated by air-conditioning vents; strips of lighting panels, bathing us in their sterile white glow; and, fixed in every corner at ceiling level, speakers, to relay the voice of the computerized intelligence that runs this place.
  Impatiently, Persephone raps the nearest wall with her knuckles. It gives off a metallic ring. “It’s behind here, Nanissar. Under the floor. Above the ceiling. Unlike the rest of this world, the System has never been starved of resources. For centuries, it has grown.”
  “You sound as if you admire it, after all.”
  She sighs. “Maybe I do. Ki ignores the development of the microchip, because it would mean decommissioning this monster and starting all over again. But he has paid, blackmailed and bullied some of the greatest engineers in the galaxy to work on the System over the years, and what they have achieved…” She lets out a soft whistle, and for a moment, her eyes mist over. Then, she snaps out of it, becoming her old dispassionate self. “Still, we are not here to admire the System. We’re here to destroy it!”
  She sets off at a purposeful stride, leading me down a side passageway, then taking the right fork at a T-junction. To me, every corridor looks the same, but Persephone seems to know where she is going. She must have studied a plan of this place.
  We round another corner, and see two people ahead of us. A man and a woman. Ordinary citizens, from the look of their coveralls. They have removed a wall panel, and the woman is poking at something behind it with a tubular, plastic tool. The man is watching over her shoulder, making notes on a clipboard. My first impulse to duck back out of sight, but Persephone marches toward them, intent on bluffing this out. With some misgiving, I follow. As we draw level with the couple, the man nods and smiles at us, and bids us good morning. Persephone returns the greeting, and we breeze on by.
  “Is it safe to be out in the open like this?” I ask, when we are alone again.
  “You saw what just happened,” she says. “We look like any other maintainer team.”
  “Until somebody realizes that they haven’t seen us before.”
  “Hundreds of people work in this complex. New maintainers are brought in every week. Nobody expects to recognize every face they see.”
  “Even so,” I persist, “the people here seem more alert than those in the city.”
  “Naturally. Ki needs only two things from the citizens of Micropolis: their muscle and their unstinting loyalty. Here, it is different. The maintainers are chosen for their intellect. Were Ki to allow the System to dull their brains, they would be useless to him.”
  “Then how does he keep them in line?”
  “As I said, he pays them, blackmails them, bullies them; whatever it takes. They are not mindless slaves, Nanissar. Many of them are here by choice. They were taken from the city and offered a more comfortable life, which they accepted.”
  “Then they are unlikely to stand by while we end that life.”
  “Indeed. We have to consider the maintainers, every one of them, hostile.”
  The System broadcasts another terse instruction, and I think about what Persephone said. The maintainers may not be mindless, but that does not mean they aren’t still slaves.
  “But if the main processor is at the center of the complex, we have—” I make a quick calculation. “—at least three miles to cover. Can we evade suspicion for so long?”
  “The journey will take a little more than fifteen minutes.”
  “How is that possible?” I ask.

Persephone doesn’t answer my question. Instead, she leads me down another gray corridor. We emerge into a much wider passageway, where the walls are tiled and the air carries a faint ozone scent. Set into the ground, running parallel down the center of the passageway, are two narrow steel rails. They curve slightly, and disappear into tunnel entrances to each side of us. Three large digits are stenciled onto the wall in red: 271. A station number, I assume.
  Persephone finds a wall-mounted control box, into which a single red button is set. She presses the button, and a light snaps on behind it. We wait.
  “Ki has long promised a light rail system for Micropolis,” I say quietly.
  Within a few minutes, I hear the hissing and clanking of an oncoming vehicle. Two balls of light appear in the tunnel to our left, like the bright eyes of an approaching monster.
  It erupts from the tunnel mouth like a steel serpent, stale air gusting in front of it. It is dirtier than I expected, its metal sides scratched and dented. So long as it functions, though, its aesthetic qualities are of little importance. The train’s braking power is phenomenal; at first, I think it is going to barrel straight through our station, but suddenly it is motionless, its lighted windows stretched out in front of us, its doors sliding open with a synchronized hiss.
  I count seven and a half carriages. The eighth has not fully emerged from the tunnel, but its entrance is visible, and Persephone takes my hand and pulls me toward it. The train carries only a few passengers, perhaps two or three per carriage. They stare at their clipboards and scribble hasty notes, or simply doze, their heads lolling against the backs of their seats.
  The rearmost carriage is empty. We climb into it, and Persephone enters two digits into a keypad behind the door. We sink onto opposite benches with a shared feeling of relief; a moment later, the doors hiss together, and the train jerks into motion.
  “We will arrive at Station 13 in approximately seven minutes,” says Persephone in a brusque, businesslike tone. I stare through the window behind her, past my deceptive reflection, trying to judge the speed at which the tunnel wall is blurring past. For our journey to take as long as she suggests, the train must take something of a circular route. “Maybe a little longer, if we make too many stops. From 13, it’s only a short walk to Station Zero.”
  “We cannot ride to Station Zero?”
  “We could, but I’d rather not disembark there. It would be hard to explain our presence, if questioned. Anyway, we’re ahead of schedule. We’ll be out of here, on our way back to the city, before most of the maintainers even wake for the morning shift.”
  I nod distractedly, deep in thought. Everything is going well. Too well. Several stations flash by – 109, 83, 194; the numbers follow no logical order – and then we make another stop. I tense, my fingers gripping the edge of the bench. Is this it? Is this where we are discovered, where the future catches up to us?
  Two more pairs of maintainers are waiting on the platform. They board the train, choosing a carriage toward its center, leaving us undisturbed. We pull out, and I allow myself to relax.
  Too soon.
  A shape cuts across the corner of my field of vision, momentarily framed in the carriage’s rear window. A leather wing, the shape of my nightmares. Gone, before I can examine it in the light. We plunge into the tunnel again, dragged by the rest of the train, and suddenly there is nothing outside but darkness. Still, my mind paints pictures on the shadows, hearing scratches and creaks above the rumbling of wheels. I glance at Persephone, who frowns at me in return. She hasn’t noticed anything amiss.
  I try to drive the nightmares, my fear of the future, away.
  Then, something bangs on the carriage roof, and my fear becomes real.
  This time, Persephone hears it. She leaps out of her seat and snatches her gun from inside her coveralls, pointing it upward. I stand too, and draw my sword.
  Something is moving up there. Shuffling, scraping footsteps.
  Three bone claws punch through the thin roof, like nails driven by a sledgehammer. Persephone fires at them, and something lets out an animal roar. The claws close together, tearing through metal, as another set punctures the roof beside them.
  And another. And another.
  I swipe at them, my energy blade slicing the tip from one of them.
  Something hits the side of our carriage, threatening to derail us. A window cracks, and, through its crazed glass, I see the mad yellow eyes of a Repto. It’s holding on to the roof of the train with one clawed hand, smashing at the window with the other, its jaws slavering in anticipation of a kill. The window shatters, and the Repto leaps at me, but I am ready for it. It impales itself on my sword, but the wound only seems to drive it into a frenzy. The Repto screams, and lashes out with its claws. If it weren’t for my armor – if my only protection were the coveralls I appear to be wearing – it would have shredded my skin.
  Confused by my refusal to die, it whips its tail around my legs and trips me. The maneuver would not have worked, were I not still trying to pull my sword out of its scaly chest. I stumble back into the carriage wall, and brace myself as the Repto lunges at me, jaws gaping, its long, serrated rows of teeth ready to clamp themselves about my neck.
  I dissuade the creature with a solid punch to its snout. It reels, tries to recover, but feels the effects of my sword thrust at last and crashes to the floor, its head glancing off a bench on the way down. A long, thin tongue lolls out of its mouth between broken teeth.
  A terrible rending of metal fills my ears, and vibrates through my nervous system. Persephone has been fighting a losing battle against the creatures above us. They tear back the roof, peeling open the carriage like a sardine can. Four sets of yellow eyes glare down at us, gleaming slits of malevolence in the darkness. “This way, Nanissar!” yells Persephone, snatching open the door to the next carriage.
  I hesitate. I need my weapon. I brace my foot against the stomach of my fallen enemy, and drag my blade from its heart. While I am thus occupied, Persephone tries to hold off the other Reptos. Her gun barks out a staccato rhythm, its energy beams stinging its targets but doing no real damage. It is only a matter of time before one of them gets brave.
  It sets its sights on me, perhaps seeing my sword as the deadlier of our weapons. I am turning to withdraw when it swoops at me, shrugging off Persephone’s frantic shots at its back. Suddenly, my head is buried in its wings, and I cannot see what I am doing. The creature wraps itself around me: I can feel its feet digging into my stomach, its claws piercing the armor on my back to scratch the skin below.
  I’m ducking and twisting, unable to swing my blade, trusting to instinct and blind fortune to aid me against a threat that I can’t see. Pain stabs into my back as the claws dig deeper, but the teeth are the greater threat; if I let them get a hold on me, I’m as good as dead.
  Fortunately, the Repto’s hisses and growls – of eagerness, triumph, anger and frustration in turn – give me a virtual running commentary of its progress, and help me to pinpoint its head. I duck under it and come up quickly, my helmet cracking into the Repto’s chin. Its claws withdraw from my back, and I take the opportunity to grab its thick arm, plant my foot in its stomach, fall back and throw the creature over my head. It flaps its wings, but lacks the space to unfurl them to their full span. It lands headfirst, but it is already struggling to stand.
  I dive for the exit. Persephone sees me coming, and backs out of the carriage ahead of me. I almost make it, but another Repto descends and, even as I attain the doorway, its claws slash at me from behind, raking across my injured back. The agony is red hot.
  My voices guide me. I spin around, and cut out the Repto’s throat with the tip of my sword. As black blood drips down its front, it freezes, stunned, its eyes glazing over. Its fellows push at it from behind, hissing violently as they try to reach past its dead weight.
  Persephone has reached the far end of the carriage, and she screams at me to join her. I see no passengers; I assume that they have fled ahead of her.
  My voices tell me to fight, but three Reptos remain and I do not know if I can take them all. So far, only our close quarters have saved me, preventing them from attacking me in concert. Anyway, news of our battle will surely spread fast. If the Harrowers and maintainers do not know of our presence already, they will know of it soon. I can’t fight all of Ki’s forces.
  I run, following Persephone through three carriages in quick succession. Passengers stare blankly at her as she bursts in on them, but their reactions when they see the Reptos and me are more animated. Some dive for cover under their seats, others cower in fear, covering their heads with their arms as if it might protect them. I catch sight of my reflection, and realize that my illusory disguise has fallen. The holo-belt is no longer around my waist; it must have been cut off by a flailing claw.
  My pursuers are unused to running, but they don’t have room to fly. They move with an ungainly shuffle, their wings wrapped around their bodies. Still, they are fast. Alone, I could outpace them, but Persephone is slower. I remain at her back, shielding her, as the Reptos snap at my heels. I swing my sword indiscriminately behind me, keeping them at bay. The next door offers a useful bottleneck, and I turn and slash fiercely at the creature immediately behind me. It evades most of my swings, taking only a shallow cut to its arm, but I keep it pinned in the doorway, a living obstruction, for a second and a half. Long enough for Persephone to gain some distance again. Now, I can do the same.
  I sprint into the next carriage with seconds to spare. Time, I think, to try something more extreme. I raise my sword, and slash at one of the wooden passenger benches. I wrench a section of it away from the wall, and turn to face the door again, even as the Reptos come at me. I push the bench into the first one, driving it back into the others. My makeshift barricade is now clamped across the doorway, and the strength in my arms keeps it there.
  It doesn’t last long. Unable to push me back, or to reach me around the bench, the leading Repto concentrates its fury on the bench itself. Its claws rise and fall, its teeth rend, and my shield disintegrates into a shower of wood splinters.
  We hurtle through a station, light streaming past the windows for a brief moment. I’m uncomfortably aware that we have nowhere to run, only a dead end some three carriages ahead. If I knew the number of the next station, I could request a stop there, but I don’t; I can only hope that, by chance, somebody halts the train for us.
  By the time I crash through the final door, I have decided not to trust to luck. We have collected six passengers in front of us; they cower at the far end of the carriage, two of them fighting each other to pull hopelessly at the locked door to the engine car. Persephone brushes them aside. “Help me get through here,” she instructs me. “If we can get to the braking system, I might be able to override the remote—”
  “My way’s quicker,” I grunt. I pry my fingers into the gap between the exit doors, and pull them apart. Glass pops, metal shrieks, and I’m almost snatched out of the train by its slipstream. In the meantime, the Reptos have caught up to us again.
  Persephone is trying to fight them off with her gun, to no avail. Fortunately, there are six bystanders in their way, delaying them just long enough.
  I curl my arm around Persephone’s waist, and pull her to me. We stand in the open doorway, the passing air blowing her newly short hair to one side. A Repto sees a clear path to us, and bares its teeth, but I discourage it from attacking with a prod of my blade.
  I see light, and leap for it.
  Persephone begins to shriek my name, but her voice is whipped away. I wrap myself around her, becoming her armored cocoon.
  We seem to fly forever. But, when we hit the ground, we hit hard. We skip and roll, still sharing the train’s sideways momentum, until a wall brings us up short. I lie, entangled in Persephone’s limbs, until the spots clear from my eyes and my breathing slows to normal. My armor is scuffed, and holed in several places. I will have to find something to patch it. Slowly, gingerly, I lift myself onto my elbows.
  Persephone raises her head to glare at me. Her hair is bedraggled, her face pale. She pouts angrily, and punches me in the chest with both fists. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
  “You’re welcome,” I say.
  We pick ourselves up, checking ourselves for injuries. Thankfully, we find only minor bruising. Persephone has developed a slight limp, favoring her left foot, but she insists that it is nothing. “222,” she says, reading the station number from the wall. “If I remember correctly, we are not too far from our destination.”
  One of the creatures tried to follow us. It jumped a fraction of a second too late. Its broken corpse lies a short way into the exit tunnel, its blood staining the wall.
  “You should go on alone,” I say. “I will hold off the remaining Reptos.”
  They are on their way. The future, closing in upon me. I can hear their cries already, although I have to concede that this might be imagination. There isn’t enough space between the train and the tunnel wall for the Reptos to unfurl their wings – but the train will stop soon, and they will fly back down the tunnel. We can’t outrun them. But there are only two of them now. Battered and shaken though I am, I think it will be a fair fight.
  “Don’t be ridiculous, Nanissar!” snaps Persephone. “I need you!”
  “You need to reach the main processor,” I counter. “Without a holo-belt, I can only be a hindrance to you. We must separate. I will draw our enemies away from you.”
  I want to protect her. If we are not together, then she might avoid sharing my fate.
  Persephone shakes her head fiercely. “The Reptos know we’re here. They can’t be the only ones. The System will have placed its guards on full alert. Reinforcements will be on their way from the city. We won’t reach the processors without a fight.”
  “Then maybe we should retreat for now, and pick our next battle more carefully.”
  “If we fail now,” says Persephone grimly, “there won’t be a next battle. Come on!”

We race down more gray corridors, the metallic floor ringing under our feet. We see several more maintainers – and they can hardly fail to notice, now, that we don’t belong here – but they see my sword and think twice about trying to stop us. Still, I have little doubt that every one of them will report their sighting of us to the System. The Harrowers will know, by now, where we are headed. Our only hope is to get there before they do.
  We have sacrificed subtlety for speed, and abandoned all hope of escape once our job is done. I wish Persephone could have turned back. I wish I could have done this without her.
  A door slides open for us, and she leads me into a circular room. A bridge stretches to the opposite door – and it’s only as I step onto it that I see the scale of the drop below us.
  “We’re in one of the memory storage units,” explains Persephone. “They reach up to a mile down into the earth.” I can’t see quite that far. The bottom of the pit is filled with a blue liquid, which reflects the light from the ceiling panels back at us. The walls are scored with horizontal slots, thousands of them, each with a hole-punched plastic card protruding from it. I can see no way to reach them without wings or antigravity technology.
  Nor was the bridge designed for heavy use. It comprises four chains, the top pair acting as handrails while the lower pair are connected by a series of wooden slats. It sways perilously as we cross it, forcing us to slow to a walking pace.
  All in all, then, there could hardly be a worse time for the surviving Reptos to find us.
  They swoop from behind each door, converging upon us. They are more cunning than I thought; they were waiting for us. Again, they concentrate their attack upon me.
  I swipe at the creature in front, but the one behind tackles me, sinking its talons into the flesh of my neck, where my shoulder harness does not protect me. It carries me into the air: its wings are beating rapidly, and I can feel it struggling with my weight, but the bridge is receding below me, and the first Repto is flying at me again. With nothing to brace against, I have to strain my stomach muscles to bring up my feet, but I succeed in kicking its head aside. Not for long, though. It thrusts forward again, and I ready my sword, but I am off-balance. The Repto feints, gets past my guard, and suddenly, its jaws are around my weapon arm. I try to pry them apart, but their grip only tightens, and I can feel tiny, sharp teeth tearing into muscle. My fingers spasm involuntarily, and the sword slips out of their grasp.
  Persephone fires shot after shot, targeting the Reptos’ wings. She knows she cannot penetrate their armor, but she hopes to cripple them, at least, to bring them down. I cannot wait for her to succeed. Blood rushes to my head, and I feel faint. I have to act now.
  With my free hand, I gouge at the biting Repto’s eye. It flinches, and I pull my bloodied arm from its maw and kick it again. It falls away from me, but not far enough. It comes at me again, its jaws wide open; I can see right down its throat.
  I pull out my blaster weapon, and blow out its tonsils.
  I hear the distant splash of my sword hitting the blue liquid. Even with my gun, I feel suddenly defenseless.
  I twist in my captor’s grip, reaching back over my shoulders to take hold of its wrists. I’m hit by the rotting meat stench of its breath, and I realize that it’s about to fasten its teeth around my head. Desperately, I tear myself free from it, leaving lumps of flesh behind.
  I’m falling, and the Reptos are swooping after me. I reach out instinctively, catching a chain handrail of the bridge as I pass it. Pain sears down my injured arm, and yanks at my shoulder, but I do not let go.
  The Reptos overshoot me, having not anticipated my sudden stop. Persephone runs to me, rendering what help she can as I haul myself up over the chain. My armored weight is too much for it, and it snaps its mooring at one end, going suddenly slack. I fall clumsily onto the bridge, making it sway so furiously that I have to hold on to a wooden slat to keep myself from being pitched over the edge.
  A Repto blocks out the light above me, swaying from side to side in my vision, and I fire repeatedly in its direction, unable to get a lock on it. Something guides me: instinct or luck. Its head snaps back, its cracked-voice squeal telling me that this is the same creature I shot before. As it plummets past me, dead or dying, the final Repto circles warily. I raise the blaster again, but a red indicator light on its grip tells me that its power is low.
  I hesitate. Sensing my weakness, the Repto dives at me.
  I snatch up the broken chain, gathering its trailing end. The Repto hits me, clawing and biting at me. Persephone leaps gamely onto its back, and it half-turns to lash out at her, giving me an opening. I loop the chain around its neck and tighten it. The creature squawks in impotent fury as I cut off its air supply. It puts its claws to its throat, trying to pull the chain away, but I give it a hefty kick and, unbalanced, it stumbles and topples off the bridge.
  The chain slips through my hands. I tighten my grip, and brace myself.
  The creature unfurls its wings, too late. The chain tightens.
  Compared to the Photon Sled two nights ago, the Repto’s weight is slight. But I am tired and losing blood, and, in that frenzied, pain-filled instant, I think I will have to let it go or risk plunging after it. But my voices tell me to hold on, and somehow I bear the agony.
  The creature’s neck snaps.
  I let it fall.
  I watch as it drops into the pit, as it hits the blue liquid and floats facedown. I keep watching as it sinks slowly, until the bridge has stopped swaying and there is nothing more to see.
  All dead. All dead at my hands.
  I had no choice. I fought in self-defense. But that does not warm the chill in my marrow that comes with the realization of what I have become. My true self.
  Then, I look back at Persephone, and I see that she is bleeding, too.

Her breathing becomes ragged as we stumble onward. The Repto’s claws struck deep, her wounds are open and sucking, but still she won’t rest. She will not let me tend to her. Even if she did, I do not think I could help her.
  Persephone is dying. That knowledge is a ball of hurt in my chest, which I don’t dare acknowledge. Not yet. I have to remain focused. Her final wish is to reach the central processor, to plant her virus, to destroy the System. And it is my wish that, if she must die, then at least she will do so fulfilled.
  But I am tired, myself. Persephone leans on my shoulder, and I drag us both, with painful slowness, along the latest gray corridor. We can only consider ourselves fortunate not to have encountered more opposition.
  She pulls away from me, and sinks into a heap. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles breathlessly, her eyelids fluttering. “I can’t… can’t go on…”
  “You must!” I insist. “We are almost there!” Or so she told me, a lifetime ago.
  “Just… around the next corner,” she wheezes, “and straight on into the… main chamber. Just… just do what you can, Nanissar.”
  “I will carry you,” I offer.
  She shakes her head, lethargically. For all my protestations, I know she will not leave this spot. It is a miracle – a testament to her determination – that she came this far. “Harrowers. You’ll have to fight. I would… weigh you down.”
  “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to input the virus.”
  “No time to… teach you. Just do… do as much damage as you… can.”
  “I won’t leave you!” I protest, knowing that it is hopeless.
  “You must,” she whispers as her eyes close.
  She is so still. Still breathing, but barely conscious. I cannot look at the livid red marks across her chest, the spreading bloodstains on her tattered coveralls. I lean closer to her, until I can see only her beautiful face, her expression dignified as always but tinged with a pale betrayal of the suffering she bears. I long to be able to touch her skin with mine, to bid her goodbye with a kiss to her white forehead. But I am trapped inside my cold shell, and my emotions are trapped in here with me, screaming inside me.
  Tears form in my eyes, but I fight them back. I must see clearly.
  There is only one thing I can do for her, now.
  I straighten up slowly, hardening my grief, turning it into anger. I inspect my blaster: the low-power light is still shining, but the power pack should have two, maybe three, good shots left in it before it dies. I will make them count.
  Around the next corner, she said, and straight on into the main chamber. I set off at a determined march, head up, back straight. My own injuries, my weariness, are all but forgotten. They don’t matter. I know what I must do. I can hear the future, calling to me.
  A pair of thick blast doors stands open, at the end of a long corridor. At first, the distance to them seems insurmountable, and I cannot believe that I will reach them unmolested. But suddenly, I am there, marching between them, and I am just beginning to realize that the total absence of Harrower guards goes beyond the scope of mere good fortune.
  The chamber beyond the doors is dark, but the echo of my footsteps tells me that I have entered a large space. I begin to cross it, listening for any sign of movement.
  I know what to expect, by now. I have resolved to face it, anyway.
  The blast doors slam shut behind me. I come to a halt, but I don’t look round. A light snaps on, faint at first but growing brighter. I am beginning to make out shapes.
  A large room, as I had already guessed, ringed by a balcony some three meters high. Lining the walls: black-uniformed Harrowers, shock batons raised. And more of them, above me, sighting down the barrels of their blaster weapons from behind balcony rails. Dozens of them, in all. Many more than I could hope to beat, even if I were armed and ready.
  And, as the light grows, I realize that there is nothing else. No consoles, no banks of machinery, nothing that could be a processing unit for the System. Nothing.
  Somehow, Persephone’s information was wrong. I am numbed by the thought of everything we risked, everything she sacrificed, for this. Our ultimate goal: an empty room, where our enemies were waiting for us. A trap.
  “Lay down your weapon,” instructs a Harrower Captain from the balcony. I do not respond. “Put down the gun, Nanissar, and raise your hands!”
  I accept that I am beaten. But I also know that I have nothing to lose.
  Two, maybe three, good shots left.
  I leap forward, presenting a moving target to the Harrowers, simultaneously snapping up my blaster weapon and firing at their Captain. My second shot hits him, knocking him backward. I don’t know if it was enough to kill. I fire again, but my gun whines and discharges a feeble, sputtering cough of smoke. And now, a barrage of fire from the balcony, striking from all sides, tearing fresh holes in my armor, knocking the wind out of me, sending me to my knees.
  I expect to die. But, to my surprise, the onslaught ceases.
  It is the turn of the ground level troops, now. They swarm over me, batons sending jolt after jolt through my battered body, until I can’t see, can’t hear, can’t feel anything but the searing, electric pain. And then, this too stops, at the signal of single clap.
  I’m drenched in sweat, arms wrapped about myself, trembling, no longer in control of my own body. And, as my hearing returns, I hear ringing footsteps. The sound of somebody climbing down a ladder from the balcony, marching toward me.
  The boots of a green battle suit, under my nose. I make a supreme effort, to force my head to tilt upward, wanting to look even though I have no doubt of what I will see.
  I am staring up into the sneering face of Maruunus Ki.