Chapter Six

(Angel)

"YOU'VE SERVED YOUR COUNTRY. YOU'RE A HERO. WE DON'T WANT TO KILL YOU. SURRENDER NOW AND YOU WILL BE UNHARMED," echoed the megaphoned voice through the walls.

"This isn't happening," Carin said for the seventh time.

Gripping her wife's frail arm with an invisible hand, Angel led her down a windowless corridor of the NYU Cancer Center. Night vision made sepia of the darkness and red emergency lights. Whispers and weeping drifted from occupied rooms.

Carin rubbed at her wrist where the IV had been and looked around with scared puppy eyes too big for her emaciated features. Angel could feel her tremble and had to stop herself from holding her, kissing her and stroking her big, bald bandannaed head.

"I'm probably having a seizure right now. Or I'm dead and my brain's throwing it's last hurrah. I mean, aliens, magic mecha suits?" Carin's titter sounded more like a sob. "Occam's Razor makes short work of that."

Who the fuck is Occam? Angel thought, finding the term vaguely familiar. Something to do with philosophy. For an English Lit major, Carin sure knew a lot about everything.

"No, babe, you're thinking about it too much," Angel said. "Look at the Aztecs. They were cutting out hearts on pyramids or whatever when one day the Spanish sail up and say 'Hey, some dude was nailed to a tree for your sins. Give us gold.' I bet there was a whole lot of, 'Who are these pale faces? Holy shit! This can't be happening! This can't be happening . . .' And look what happened to them."

Angel stopped by an open bedroom--a good a place to hide her as any--and turned Carin to face her. Carin flinched as unseen fingers' brushed her cheek. The HUD rendered the cloaked hand, along with the rest of her body, in violet wire-frame.

"This is all kinds of crazy, I know," Angel said. "But the crazy's real. And if we're going to survive, we better keep our heads on and our eyes open"

"Behind you," the elf said.

A light swung from around the corner. Angel reached for the pulse carbine dangling by its strap, but it was only a hospital security guard. She'd seen the fat bullfrog of a man before, swaggering down the halls. His hand hovered near his holster.

"Ms. Yovanovitch," the guard said, frowning with surprise. He shined the flashlight in Carin's face, then wobbled it in a search. The beam passed through Angel effortlessly.

Carin froze like a frightened doe. Her eyes kept darting where she thought Angel stood.

"I thought I heard someone else," the guard said. When she gave no reply, he went on, "I think a SWAT team landed on the roof. I don't know what's going on with your, uh, girlfriend, but until this all gets straightened out, I think you should come with me. For your own safety."

Carin was shaking now. Tears broke past twitchy blinks. "I . . ." she began.

Outside: gunfire.

Reflex made the guard draw his weapon. Angel struck.

She'd learned combatives in the army, mostly grapples and escapes, with a few quick and dirty moves. Later, she and Carin had taken jujutsu classes, which taught various locks, chokes and throws.

Angel used none of that. She grabbed and snapped his wrist and then punched him in the head until he fell. And kept on punching. That her suit augmented her strength certainly helped. That she was also invisible didn't hurt.

"Stop it! Stop it!" Carin cried, backing away from the poltergeist blows. Angel climbed to her feet. Her balled fists tingled; her helmeted breath echoed in her ears. His face was a mess, but he looked alive enough. With sudden shame she remembered the night Carin locked herself in the bathroom and called the cops. But that was a long time ago. Angel wasn't that person anymore.

An explosion faintly tremored the floor.

Attaching the pistol to a side pouch, Angel gripped her wife's elbow and dragged her around the corner. From the floor above, she heard a crash of glass and masonry. A few seconds later came the continuous ear-piercing spits that could only be miniguns.

Carin crouched so low she nearly curled into a ball, her whimpers drowned by the buzz-sawing fire. Angel didn't have time for this; she slung her in a fireman's carry and ran as fast as she could down the hall. Over the shooting, bullets chewed loudly through wood and drywall. Screams sounded through the ceiling.

"What the fuck? They're shooting into a hospital!" Angel cried.

"They may have encountered another Suit," said the elf.

"But . . . they're the FBI. And they're shooting into a hospital!"

"There's a media blackout. The Web is offline," the elf explained. "They can act with impunity."

Angel opened a maintenance closet and thumped Carin's head against the door frame as she entered. Her wife yelped through her sobbing, but that didn't matter: the room was near the center of the floor, away from the outer walls and windows.

She not-quite dumped her wife between a mop bucket, a push broom and a Tetris-pile of paper towel rolls.

"Keep down!" Angel ordered. "I'll be back."

In the darkness, Carin's wide eyes goggled through where Angel stood. The night vision left her in shades of gray and black, giving her the grainy tragedy of a last known photograph.

"Angie, please don't leave me . . ."

Angel slapped her--not hard--and fought to keep the crack out of her voice. The helmet's modulation helped.

"No, listen to me. You lie here. Do not stand, do not sit. The lower you are, the less likely you'll get shot. Do you understand?"

Carin nodded and reached up blindly until she touched the invisible mask. "I love you," she said. Too much like, goodbye.

Angel nodded against the slender fingers, held them in her hand. Burning eyes blurred sight, but somehow the suit siphoned away the tears.

"Love you too, babe," she managed through the lump. "It's . . . it's a bumpy ride, I know, but after this my elf juju can fix you up, and it'll be smooth cruising. See you in a few."

Angel closed the door. As she stalked away, she fought the impulse to go back and leave Carin the guard's pistol, but aside from some backwoods plinking with a .22 rifle, her wife had never touched a firearm. And what good would it do?

No, if anyone was going to save her, it was going to be Angel. Which was bad, because Angel didn't know what to do.

The gunfire ceased, but helicopter chops still whispered ghostlike through the building. A herd of footsteps ran from somewhere above. Readying her pulse carbine, Angel leaned against a wall and spared precious seconds mulling her options.

Her first, wild-monkey 'fight-or-flight' instinct had been to snatch Carin, smash out a window and fly off like Superman. But the helicopters would see them, and the miniguns of those AH-6 Little Birds could chainsaw the sky. The next idea had been to race down eight flights to the ground floor and try to sneak out. But if they'd landed a SWAT team on the roof, no doubt they also entered through the front doors. One goes down, one goes up. Search and destroy.

And now that the Feds were showing themselves to be bullet-spraying crazies . . .

"You need to act," the elf said.

Angel ran down the hall until she reached the stairwell and half expected gunfire as she palmed open the door, but only darkness greeted her. With almost no ambient light, her vision rendered the stairs as black sooty angles which contrasted weirdly with her purple HUD-drawn legs racing down the steps. She looked unreal to herself, like a computer generated spirit.

She exited on the seventh story. From an open room, a hunched over doctor peered down the hall at the swinging door, but of course saw no one. Angel situated herself by the edge of a window, yanked the curtain down and shouldered her carbine. Her fishbowl peripheral allowed her to watch both ways down the hallway: the long stretch to the left, the stairway to the right. Outside, across the street, ran a long wall of buildings that made an urban canyon of 34th. The rotors grew louder. She waited.

The strategy seemed sound enough: the SWAT were somewhere out there, and she would deal with them when they appeared. In the meantime, the helicopters were the greater threat. So she was going to shoot them down. Helicopters full of cops.

For Carin, anything.

Serving in the Military Police Corps, she cleared more houses than she could count during her four tours of duty, and by the end she even led a Special Reaction Team. Each raid had always been preceded by a fear-buzz. She might catch a bullet in the face. There might be a IED under a couch. Hell, maybe it was all an ambush, and she'll end up snuff-fodder in some Liveleak video. If nothing else, the uncertainty made her alive, and at least she knew her buddies had her back.

Now it was just her. And an elf in her ear.

"You can help my aim, right?" Angel asked.

"Within limits."

"Do so."

Violet cross-hairs appeared on her HUD. It moved with her carbine.

"You should deploy your drones," the elf said.

Angel frowned. She forgot she had them.

Shots rang from the stairs. Running steps. Angel turned in time for the door to fly open and a tall, thin man in battered full plate armor to barge into the hallway. Angel opened fire.

It wasn't like Star Wars. The carbine had the recoil of a flashlight. It hummed. No dramatic red bolts jetted from the barrel. Instead, a bright, lime-white spot hissed and blossomed sparks as it zigzagged across the man's silver chest.

Screaming like a girl, the man raised his hands to his face and fell on his back. He flopped like a startled cat and sprinted practically on all fours back into the stairwell. She listened to his footsteps scamper down. From above she heard voices.

Outside the window, about twenty meters out, one of the Little Birds swung into view, and Angel realized she had stepped out from the wall. The helicopter swiveled as it spotted her.

Angel shot first. The window spat and fissured against the heat, and through the spiderweb of cracks she saw the cockpit bubble do the same as the panicked craft wobbled in place.

Miniguns shredded the wall to her right. Angel sprinted left.

"You should deploy your drones," the elf said again.

"I know!" Angel shouted, ducking beside a window. Light and smoke exploded outside the stairway door, and the SWAT team charged through the flashbang's wake already shooting. Hammers smacked Angel's bicep, knee and breastplate. She toppled backwards before huddling behind a nearby janitor cart.

Molded plastic and cleaning supplies proved poor protection against automatic assault rifle fire. Angel cried, screamed, clutching her pulse carbine as bullets beat her back. Don't go bananas, she told the monkey in her brain. You've been in this fix before. Only one way out.

The impacts threw off her aim, but with a laser that scarcely matters. Crouched and leaning out, she lit up one of the cops until his black body armor burst into smoke and his neck steamed red. Another dropped her weapon and clawed at her melted gas-mask and goggles. The remaining two fired off a few wild rounds before retreating through the doorway, their surviving teammate stumbling after them.

Watching them disappear, Angel tried to steady her shaking hands, her pounding chest. She was pretty sure she'd wet herself. But aside from a few bruises, she seemed intact. She looked to the body smoldering on the tiled floor.

"I don't want to fight you!" Angel shouted. "Stay back!"

Then, quieter: "Let's see these drones."

They slid out from a vent in her side. Three silver frisbees unfolded magically into floating, motorcycle-length craft shaped like shark spaceships. A smaller disc, about the size of an Eisenhower dollar, rose into the air and extended into a crystal dildo before vanishing from sight.

Her HUD sprouted four video feeds along the edge. Two of the attack drones she used to cover the stairway door, while the third watched the hallway to her rear. The cloaked one she carefully guided by thought down the hall and out the burned hole in the window.

Though her eyes outside could not yet see, by the sound of the rotors, Angel could tell the approaching helicopter was one of the Little Birds. She frowned at her carbine.

"Nice gun," she said, "but a little too 'small arms.' How's the plasma bow compare?"

"Slower rate of fire; much greater damage."

"What's its penetration?"

"Approximately twenty centimeters of rolled homogeneous armor."

"All right, then."

Hanging the laser by its shoulder strap, she held out her hand and a spindly complex compound bow butterfly-knifed out of her arm. Fashioned as a stylized 'M,' the weapon eerily resembled her own Bear Siren, except with a few extra centuries of refinement.

Angel tugged one of the five arrows from the attached quiver, and as she notched it to the hair-thin, almost ethereal string, the arrowhead ignited into a incandescent point so bright she was sure it would sear her retinas were it not for the protective visor. She turned in her crouch and aimed at the bullet-pocked wall and drew back. The pull felt perfect.

The spy drone spotted the Little Bird--not the one she'd damaged--flying sideways, its miniguns spooling up for a strafe. The drone also projected an adjusted perspective window on Angel's HUD, allowing her in effect x-ray vision.

The bow's purple aiming reticle rotated in anticipation as the blazing arrowhead scorched wallpaper and melted like wax the janitor's cart by her side, setting fire to its towels and toilet paper. Angel could feel the sting through her black gloves, even though her suit was spec'd for outer space.

The helicopter crossed her line of fire, and hesitated, probably sensing the heat behind her cover. Angel released. Fiery ash sneezed in her face as the starlike arrow passed through drywall and brick as if they were paper mache, and though she fell backwards off her heels, she saw through the spy drone's high-vantage the blinding streak stab the Little Bird full in the face. Debris from the explosion smacked like bullets through the burning, foot-wide hole.

Angel climbed to her feet, suddenly giddy with crazy pride. How many hunters could say they bow-bagged an attack chopper? Maybe after this was all over she could gather up the rotors, mount them above her fireplace beside her whitetail buck.

Smoke blanketing down the hallway, twenty or so meters to her left, slapped her back to her senses. Another four-man SWAT team swarmed out from the fog, guns blazing. Angel ducked down, taking grazes across her deltoid and ribs, and with a thought fired one of her drone's grenade launchers. A burst, and they tumbled like bowling pins. She held her fire as they limped their retreat, dragging their dead or wounded with them.

This had gone on long enough.

Angel crossed the hall to a open room. The doctor she'd seen earlier was there with a nurse, and both were huddled behind what looked like a MRI scanner. It sounded like they were praying. Of course, they didn't see her. Even her footsteps were somehow dampened.

She folded the bow back into her arm, readied her carbine and squatted by the door. Thinking off her external speaker, she said, "I need to speak to Agent what's his name."

"I'm now broadcasting on their frequency," the elf replied. "You may speak now."

Angel paused. She actually didn't know what to say. "Stop this," she demanded finally. "You're shooting into a fucking hospital."

"Because you're making us," the rough, male voice replied over the rotors' roar. He sounded different when not on a megaphone, older, more of a lifelong smoker. "Give yourself up. I promise you'll be taken care of. We know this is not your fault. You're under alien influence."

"But why me?" Angel said, sounding more like a whine than she intended. "Shouldn't you be fighting one of the mecha-Godzillas fucking up the city?"

The agent chuckled. "Because fighting you is easier. In case you haven't noticed, we're at war now. Our scientists need a suit, and we'll do anything to get one. Do you think we're going to turn tail and run just because you ray-gunned one of our birds? You're surrounded, and I assure you reinforcements are on the way. You and your accomplice would be better off surrendering now."

Angel practically hissed with anger. "Accomplice? Look, asshole, my wife has nothing to do with--"

"I think he's talking about me," said another male voice. Younger. That of a ragged stoner. "And no way are we accomplices. The bitch shot me! Lasered a fucking Zorro on my chest!"

"Yeah, my bad," Angel said. "Whoever you are."

"No biggie. I have Wolverine healing powers. Just itches a little now. Hey, I Wiki'd you earlier. You're that Angel Zacarias, right?"

Angel sighed at the mispronunciation. "That's what my birth certificate says."

"Man, I saw you shoot down that chopper. That was awesome."

"I know, right?" Angel said. Despite everything, she laughed. "It was with a bow and arrow. Can you believe that?"

"You chose the plasma bow? No shit. This is just like Rambo, except it's in a hospital. And there's mechas. And you're a lesbian."

"I hate reboots," the agent said. "But to get back on topic here: we're not leaving without you two. Just give up. There's no way out."

Angel chewed her lip, suddenly wishing she could smoke through her mask. She tried a different approach. "That's where you're wrong. I didn't want to play this card, but you've left me no choice. My suit comes with a small antimatter device. You let me and my wife go, or Manhattan goes Hiroshima."

"Wait, you have one of those?" asked the stoner. "I don't remember that option."

Shut up! Angel thought.

"I see," the agent said. "Well, could you at least allow us to study your suit? Under your terms, of course."

"Don't trust them, lady," said the stoner. "They shot at me as soon as they saw me!"

From the her spy-drone, Angel watched all five helicopters (four Black Hawks and the wounded Little Bird) converge on her side of the hospital. Outside, their rotors overlapped with whirlwind slices.

"I'm serious," Angel said. "Let us go."

The Little Bird fired a rocket.

"No! Wa--" Angel cried.

The fiery shock wave flipped her like a rag-doll, and she skidded across the ceiling before landing behind the MRI scanner. A minigun hailstorm poured into the room, chipping the floor, obliterating the walls. Together Angel, the doctor and the nurse cowered behind the medical machine's great cylinder as never-ending bullet-swarms gouged away the metal innards.

"STOP!" Angel shouted. "STOP IT!"

She had only enough time to notice the doctor and nurse were staring at her with wild, bewildered eyes before another rocket struck the floor nearby and blasted her backwards. Flash. Fire. Concrete fell, dumping a hospital bed from above.

"Get up, Angel," the elf said. "Get up and fight."

Sobbing, brain swimming, Angel splayed drunkenly in a pile of studs and drywall. Flames and smoke coffined her in nightmare. She heard another rocket, and debris dumped on her as if shoveled by unseen demons. One horrible thought rattled her skull.

Carin. Carin, oh God.

"I surrender!" she cried hoarsly. On knees that felt like shattered glass, she propped herself up and screamed, "I SURRENDER! PLEASE, JUST MAKE IT STOP!"

But if the FBI heard, they gave no sign. Gunfire continued its crackle; a fourth rocket blew out another wall and knocked her off her feet. Parts of the ceiling fell like domino slabs. Water gushed along her back from broken pipes. She clawed the shattered floor like a baby, blubbering over the radio for mercy.

"Get up," the elf said. "Get up. You must save your wife."

Angel didn't get up but crawled forward through the haphazard labyrinth of collapsed concrete. She'd lost her laser, so she again folded out her bow. A rocket screamed overhead, but exploded somewhere distant.

Through rubble and rebar and over a flaming spring mattress, Angel crawled to the MRI scanner, which was now half-skeletal, though still more or less intact. She crouched behind the exposed donut of one of the magnets, beside something that looked too much like a severed leg. Bullets dinged against the metal, but only as afterthoughts. They didn't know where she was; they were just going to shoot and blow the hospital to hell and root through the remains for her precious suit.

Or at least pin her down until reinforcements arrived.

Her wounds had already regenerated, but her hands trembled. She took out and notched one of the arrows and prayed to a God she didn't believe in as the tip shone like a pebbled sun. She had to get through this. She had to see it to the end.

All of her attack drones were blown up, but the spy-drone was all that really mattered. Through it's bird's eye view she zeroed on the Little Bird and watched as it let fly yet another rocket. Somewhere: an avalanche.

Leaning out, she followed the HUD reticle and released. Broken concrete splashed away molten as the plasma shaft blazed a silica-searing tunnel to the Little Bird. Angel didn't wait for the fireball but notched another: it was the Black Hawks' turn.

She shot down four of them. The fifth got away. Ran out of arrows.

Refolding the bow, she climbed a miniature Mt. Everest of rocks to reach the jagged, crumbling face of 34th Street Canyon. The sun had set, and the sky was black. Below burned the fiery abyss where bad helicopters go.

Ice clutched her heart, but she had to see. She might still be . . .

It was too much trouble to excavate back to whatever was left of the stairway, so she used the suit's prowess to leap up and grab the exposed rebar along the wall-less edge of the floor above. She hauled herself up, scraping the already scarred breastplate of her now de-cloaked hide, and stepped with dread into the dark, rocket-blasted cavern where she'd left her wife.

All was shredded walls and blackened studs. Holes in the floor dropped to the story below. Sprinklers drizzled. Her throat tightened; she could not call Carin's name. She'd seen what IEDs could do. She knew.

She found the body under scorched paper towels and drywall. The bald, delicate head was seared bright red. Overpressure had ruptured the eyes. Still wet blood trailed from the ears and nose and a mouth that would never finish its scream.

The sob began as a vague moan, a titter, but then Angel was on her knees and burrowing through the smoldering trash to clutch her wife to her chest as wailing sobs rang inside her helmet. She cried, she begged. She said she was sorry.

"Angel!" shouted a woman's voice. The elf. There was an elf in her ear. She knew that. And the elf was shouting. It'd been doing so for a while.

"The brain is intact," the elf said. "You must hurry. Find someplace below freezing! Someplace cold! There's still a chance."

Angel stood up dumbly. "Someplace cold," she said. Something in her mind sputtered and stirred, like an idling engine revved somewhat to life. "A chance."

"There will be damage. You must hurry."

With her wife's frail corpse cradled in her arms, she spread her wings and blasted off from the ruins of the NYU Cancer Center. The last Black Hawk, circling menacingly, strafed at her as she ascended above the wounded city. Behind her, a blinding white beam connected a hospital window with the helicopter, and it dropped out of the night sky like a smashed toy on fire.

"Take that, G-man!" said the stoner. "Hey, Angel, er, Ms. Zacarias, is that you up in the sky? Hello? Are you there?"

A chance is just a chance. That's all they had before, so nothing had changed. Either the chemo would work or it would not. Either the elf magic would work or it would not.

But win or lose, Angel knew what she would do: find someplace cold and hold onto her wife and never let go.

To be continued . . .