Damien raised his arms high in the air and lowered himself to his knees. The officers moved behind him in a loose semi-circle. One officer moved closer, but not close enough to endanger himself.

‘On the ground!’ he shouted.

Damien did as instructed.

An explosion detonated behind them. Damien felt a wave of heat roll over him as the standing officers were knocked from their feet. Glass blasted inward from the vestibule, lacerating the officers, and sending the officer issuing instructions right into Damien. They collided and tumbled together across the floor. The officer came to rest half lying on top of him, but the UMP was almost in reach. Now was his chance.

Damien wriggled out from under the dazed officer and collected the UMP, then quickly crawled behind a transaction booth. Rounds cracked on the glass, but the glass didn’t break. Damien crouched, noticing the tiny speaking hole in the center.

That will do nicely, he thought.

He checked the long magazine that protruded from under the UMP—it was still full. Safety off, cocked, round in the chamber.

He jumped to his feet and poked the stubby barrel through the hole, then peppered the officers with rounds. Three dropped. A fourth was quick enough to circle around the bullet-resistant glass and take aim at his side. Damien withdrew his UMP from the glass hole, or tried to. A protruding lip under the barrel kept it stuck in place.

The vestibule door exploded behind the officer, kicking out another spray of glass. A border control 4x4 crashed through the processing center as the officer rolled to one side, just clear of the impact. Still holding the trapped UMP with his left hand, Damien drew the subcompact pistol with his right and stared down its three-dot sights. He squeezed the heavy trigger and fired his last four rounds into the officer. Then he jiggled the UMP, pried it from the glass, holstered his pistol and aimed the submachine gun.

Behind the wheel of the 4x4, he could see Nasira, eyes narrowed with concentration. Her copper skin was shiny with sweat and her dark coiled hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She held the steering wheel with one hand and changed gears with her pistol hand.

‘Get your goddamn ass moving!’ she yelled, taking aim at an officer.

Damien saw the officers sprinting into the processing center. He ran from the booth, firing on the move, and jumped into the passenger’s seat. Nasira was already in reverse, grazing nearby parked vehicles. She blasted her way through the parking lot.

The officers appeared in front of them. Damien aimed and fired, punching holes through the windshield. He saw another vehicle just before it rammed into the 4x4’s side. The door crumpled but held.

Nasira pulled hard on the wheel, moving with the impact and spinning their vehicle around. She rammed the stick to second, peeled from the intercepting vehicle and accelerated for a set of reinforced steel gates. They were open, but that was changing now that someone was closing them. Nasira changed gears and pushed the 4x4 harder.

‘Watch this,’ she said.

He double-checked his seatbelt. ‘I’d rather not.’

Nasira’s foot was to the floor and even if he wrestled the wheel from her, she wasn’t about to slow down. The gates were already half closed. They were committed.

In the side mirror, Damien saw two 4x4s hurtling from the parking lot and accelerating toward them. He dumped his UMP in the footwell and pinned it with his shoe.

Nasira aimed for the gap between the closing gates and punched through. The side mirror popped off and the gates scraped the doors, ripping their rear bumper off. But they made it. Damien looked behind and saw the pursuing vehicles pull up short.

‘Holy crap,’ Damien said.

He patted himself down, checking for wounds. As Nasira steered the 4x4 into a bus depot, weaving around buses, he looked over at her and was relieved to see she wasn’t bleeding. She whipped the 4x4 onto the southbound and floored it again.

‘Have to say it, we are kicking ass,’ Nasira said. ‘Or we might be once we catch up to the bus again.’ She shot him a sidelong glance. ‘You good?’

Damien saluted her. ‘Border control officer, at your service.’

‘Bleeding all over my upholstery.’

He looked down at his blood-stained seat. ‘It’s not your upholstery.’

Nasira focused on the road ahead. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

He loaded a new mag into his pistol and flipped the mirror under his sun visor. His face was covered in blood. Once he saw it, the pain kicked in. He stung all over from shattered glass.

At least Nasira didn’t look injured. There was no blood or lacerations across her face or limbs. Only sweat. He saw the muscles shift in her arms as she weaved between traffic.

Damien had to admit, he felt slightly embarrassed that he needed to be extracted like this. All it took was one minor complication for everything to go to hell. Those nutjob officers with white armbands had derailed everything. He wanted to explain to Nasira but he knew that would make it worse. He kept things simple, the way she liked it.

‘Thanks for getting me out,’ he said.

‘You got the tracker on the bus, that’s all that matters,’ Nasira said. ‘Now we just follow it and find Jay.’

‘I should’ve been on the bus.’ Damien shook his head. ‘That was the plan, right? So you could track wherever they take me.’

‘Plans change.’ Nasira looked over at him. ‘The important thing is you found who took Jay.’

‘I didn’t find who took Jay,’ he said.

Her grip on the steering wheel tightened. ‘Bullshit.’

‘If I knew, I’d tell you,’ he said.

‘My money’s on the covert multinational agency who trained and programmed us.’

‘It’s not the Fifth Column,’ Damien said. ‘Someone else took Jay.’

Nasira refused to look at him now. ‘That’s not helping. You’re supposed to help. That’s the whole freaking point.’

Damien clenched his fists. ‘I am helping.’

His hands felt like they were on fire, which told him his adrenaline—or epinephrine—was rapidly wearing off. He opened his fists and noticed the top layer of his palms were seared red.

Nasira nodded to her rucksack in the back seat. ‘Bandages. And there’s some—’

Damien already had her rucksack, a slim black military-grade backpack, in one hand.

‘—morphine,’ she said.

He injected half a dose into one palm, then tried to focus through the pain. It would take a few minutes for the drug to cut off his pain receptors. He injected his other palm, then dropped the rucksack between his feet.

‘Don’t take too much,’ Nasira said, watching the road. ‘I don’t need you crashing on me.’

‘We can swap injuries if you want.’ Both of his hands trembled and he had trouble pushing the last of the morphine into the muscle.

‘I’m good,’ she said. ‘You … take what you need.’

He capped the needle and tried to put it back in her medical pouch, but it fell loose into her rucksack.

‘What about your fancy regeneration genes?’ Nasira asked. ‘That chameleon thing’ll heal you up soon, right?’

‘Salamander,’ he whispered. ‘Takes a while.’

It was a nice little upgrade and he was glad to have it. He rested his hands on his knees, palms facing up, and focused on the road ahead.

Nasira moved swiftly around traffic. ‘We need new wheels. You up for that?’

Damien looked between his legs at the open rucksack. ‘I’m up for not being killed or captured.’

‘I’m taking that as a yes,’ she said. ‘I got what we need in that rucksack, including a passport that won’t get you caught.’

Damien looked up and realized they were in a small town already. Nasira pulled into a side street and got them away from traffic. She stopped behind an old pickup and cut the engine. Damien moved his hand carefully through the rucksack’s strap, shrugging it onto his shoulder without touching his raw hand on anything. Half the missing skin from his palm was likely still attached to his pistol grip.

Before she stepped out, Nasira took a set of jiggler keys from the rucksack. Through the gunfire-peppered windshield, he watched her move for the pickup. She examined the ring, flicking through and trying one key after another. The second key was a good enough match and the door opened. She jumped inside and a moment later the engine coughed.

Damien lifted himself into the driver’s seat of the 4x4 and drove it ahead, taking the first left. He parked it there and waited for Nasira to catch up. Once she did, he grabbed the UMP and jumped in beside her.

‘Thanks,’ Nasira said.

‘You don’t need to thank me,’ Damien said.

He looked down and realized his hands had stopped shaking. The pain was still there, dulled by opioids. The cuts on his face itched as they slowly healed, but he suppressed the urge to scratch them.

‘I mean it,’ Nasira said. ‘I really didn’t know who else to ask.’

‘There is no one else to ask,’ he said. ‘Not on this side of the world anyway.’

‘Yeah.’ She actually agreed with him.

Damien felt suddenly tired. He leaned back in his seat with his palms still open.

‘This bus,’ she said. ‘They load people on there with flagged passports, just like Jay?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah. There should be two other people on the bus right now. Whoever abducted Jay is taking these people somewhere. We just need to keep on the bus trail and follow whoever picks them up.’

‘So why did they kick you off the bus?’ she asked.

Damien looked down at his own uniform. ‘These border control guys were different. They had white armbands. I think they called the Fifth Column on me, then they decided it was better to kill me.’

‘That makes no sense.’ Nasira looked at him, her eyebrows pressed together. ‘Is that the morphine talking?’

‘I wish,’ Damien said. ‘But they weren’t the ones who took Jay.’

‘There some kind of auction price on him now?’

‘Rogue operatives with activated pseudogenes.’ Damien shrugged. His body ached. ‘Maybe we’re in high demand.’

Nasira was watching the road ahead. They couldn’t see the bus, but the GPS tracker he’d stowed onboard was transmitting loud and clear from just over the hill. The tracker was heading for the northeast coast of Guatemala, pushing GPS data at five-second intervals over a cellular network. It was only the size of a micro USB stick, small enough for him to wedge into a seat where no one would notice. He’d managed to shove it in before border control climbed aboard and pulled him off the bus. The tracker carried its own Nano SIM and a tiny battery that could keep it alive for four days. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Nasira rubbed her eyes. ‘Don’t matter who’s waiting for us at the end of the bus trip, whether it’s Fifth Column or some human trafficking ring or a boy band reunion.’ She sighed. ‘As long as there’s someone who can lead us back to Jay. Else we got shit.’

‘Jay was on a bus just like this one, I know that much,’ Damien said. ‘We stay on this bus like glue and we find him.’

Nasira blinked. ‘He better be alive.’