Out of the Black - Lee Doty [170]
"What if you're wrong again?" Hawthorne asked, still sitting unsteadily on the edge of her gurney. "What if this is just a trick to get you out of the way?"
Issak nodded. "Power I've got. But against this thing, this is my only weapon. If it fails, I won't be much more use in a fight with it."
"This is a bad plan." Ping shook his head.
Issak continued as if he hadn't heard. "When I'm gone, there's still the problem of Asado... they're already on their way to gaining dominance among the clans. If this happens, the world would be a much darker place. You've already met Shiva... she was a lot sweeter than most of them."
"Shiva?" Ping looked confused.
"Really nice Indian girl; looks a lot younger than she is. Loves platinum, rubies, and the suffering of others."
Rae shivered. "Yeah... we've had the pleasure."
"I didn't see it, but I was close enough to feel her death through the Underworld. I must say, I didn't see how that was possible until you folks tried the same thing on me..." his smile was cold, "She's been ducking me for years now... though even if I'd found her, it wouldn't have been easy."
"Right!" Alex snorted.
"Well, it wouldn't have been trivial." Issak smiled, then turned toward the ER.
"Hey!" Anne yelled, "Where are you going?"
"Deep as I can get." He said without turning back. "It's time... and they'll be coming."
***
The crowd piled out of "We-Oui!", a near-north-side nightclub frequented by the Link set. Some of the runners moved like antelope, others stumbled and fell, but they were all smiling. As much as their various levels of the change allowed, they moved in harmony.
Rodriguez had never seen anything like it before. On other raids, he'd seen the somewhat spooky syncopation of link dancingthis was different. It was like watching the end of a marathon burst from the nightclub's doors. The shock of the human explosion was intensified because the runners seemed to move like low-budget digital extras in a video- all controlled by the same program.
The sprinters were really hauling too. The first and fastest were already out of sight. Others fell by the wayside, lost in convulsions. At first Rodriguez thought the crowd was heading for the van he shared with the other officers and detectives preparing for tonight's vice raid. There was a tense moment as the human wave crashed toward their unmarked van before turning left like a school of fish and heading off down the road.
This spooked him way more than he hoped he showed... O'Flannahan was still being a jerk about the bullet hole in that overpass. The next guy that jumped out and yelled "Boo!" down at the station was going to be paying for it in teeth.
"Don't shoot, Junior!" Malloy O'Flannahan hissed from the back seat as they began to realize they weren't the targets of a drug-crazed riot.
Everyone laughed. Paying in teeth, Rodriguez mused, as he 'ha ha ha'-ed along with his friends. "You notice my weapon's the only one not out, old man?"
The other officers had a self-conscious laugh as they looked down at their pistols and white knuckles. "You can't hold me accountable for my superior reflexes, sonny." Malloy said.
"Hey, at least that 'asthma' is back under control, hey chief?" Rodriguez glanced back to appropriately relish his partner's consternation.
"Yeah, maybe all those inhalers you got in your locker this morning did some good after all?" Ashok from vice said as he jumped out the door and looked toward the fleeing partygoers.
Rodriguez radioed the disturbance to the dispatcher while the others piled out of the van. He hoped that the mass exodus wasn't caused by anything grisly inside. Hopefully, it wasn't another Harm on a killing spree... maybe someone just tipped the