Finity's End

Catwalks, dark. Lose a body in the tu

The gunman walked them back through the double row of shelves, back to a set of boxes.

“Move those.”

“Do it,” Fletcher said, afraid Jeremy would try something desperate. The kid was scared. And the kid had reflexes like steel springs. “ Do it, Jeremy .”

“Yessir,” Jeremy said, and moved boxes back from the maintenance door.

Shopkeepers weren’t supposed to have keys to places that gave access to the maintenance tu

“Open it,” the man said, and Jeremy didn’t know how to work the latch. Ski

“Fletcher,” Jeremy said plaintively.

“They don’t dare do us harm,” Fletcher said, playing the absolute, trusting fool. “They know our ship knows where we are. And they’ll search this entire section.”

Ski

“Move,” the first man said, and Fletcher said carefully, “Go on, Jeremy.”

Jeremy went and Fletcher followed right against him, took firm hold of the kid’s sweater and gave a sharp tug when they passed the door and the gun. Down !

“ Run !” he yelled then, and shoved ski

Total black. The maintenance doors latched automatically when shut. There was that second of total blindness… but ski

“Jeremy, look out!”

He ran, down the steps in the dark, knew by memory where a landing was, where Jeremy’s thin body was huddled, clinging to the metal stairs. The man falling must have gone right over him.

And in the same second, light blazed out from the opening door above.

He jerked Jeremy loose from his handhold and dragged him with him—oxygen atmosphere in Esperance tu

Pursuit came down the steps and thundered along the catwalk, shaking the rail in his hand. Somebody yelled—“Get a light, dammit!”

They were in Blue, in the fives. Next door, in the fours… they’d be in another recess of shops. They could come out there. Get away. Get help.

“Where are we going?” Jeremy gasped.

“Just stay with me!” He didn’t want Jeremy behind him as a target… but a buried bit of knowledge said it didn’t matter where Jeremy was: they were shooting bullets, not needles, and a shot could go right through him and hit the kid. It was distance and turns that could save them, and he took them in the dark, in the lead.

The tu

He ran behind the beam, raced, lungs burning, toward the exit stairs for the next section of shops. Climbed, towing Jeremy after him. His sides ached. Jeremy’s gasps were as loud as his as he reached the door and flipped the emergency latch on a locked door with expert fingers.

The door opened into warmer dark, almost stifling warmth after the cold of the tu

Then light blazed around them. A burglar-light had come on. That meant an alarm had sounded somewhere. He tugged Jeremy through the door into the warehouse of some shipping company, and shut the door. It would latch. Please God it would latch. The other one had been jimmied, surely. They didn’t know how to open the emergency latch: that was a tricky piece of business.

He got a breath. Two. Slid down the wall, feet braced on the store. “What did you think you were doing?”

Jeremy sank down by him, gasping. “Nobody else was going to do anything!”

“Dammit, they hadn’t had time !”

“ Well, they weren’t ! They didn’t! I walked in there and I asked to see it again and I just ran—”

“Yeah, and they had a shoplifter lock and they triggered it from under the counter before you ever got to the door!”

“Yeah,” Jeremy admitted, with a sheepish glance up. “The door locked.”

He didn’t want to explain to Jeremy how he’d ever learned about such tricks. The kid was white-faced, sweating.

“Thanks for the help,” he said, elbow pressed against ribs aching from the ru

Meanwhile there was a burglar alarm reporting their presence to the police. He wasn’t averse to being found by the cops. It was a lot better than where they’d been. But he wanted to get out of it if they could; and he’d caught breath enough. “Come on. Let’s see if we can get a door open.”

“Fletcher…”

He heard the note of fear. Heard the sound of footsteps coming down metal steps, behind the wall.

He grabbed Jeremy’s arm, pulled him through the warehoused boxes and barrels toward a door that ought to lead out.

Hoping for a slow-down, for their pursuers to be baffled by the door latch.

Hearing it open behind them.

“Fletcher!” Jeremy had heard it.

He pulled Jeremy with him, ducked over an aisle and spotted a door with Fire Access in red and white letters. That had to have a simple turn-toggle latch.

They’d broken through. He heard the footsteps, back among the aisles of boxes. He felt the cold draft. His fingers sought the toggle and twisted. He shoved the door open, shoved, against the air-pressure from the docks. Fools had left the door open. He strained, established a crack, and a siren went off as a gale streamed into his face. Jeremy pushed. He braced it wide enough for Jeremy to get by him, and scraped his body out, jerked his leg free last, with a bash on the ankle as it slammed.

“Come on,” he said, hurrying Jeremy along. He limped, forced the leg to operate despite the pain and ran for the docks.

Wanting all the witnesses they could get.

The wind began to wail again. They were opening that door behind them. A shot rang out, hitting what, he didn’t wait to see.

There was a free-standing block of shops at a right angle to the warehouse frontage. He dragged Jeremy around the corner, in among spacers window-shopping and bar-hopping, ran through, startled outcries in their wake.

Gunshots came from behind them. There were outcries, outrage, panic. He kept ru

“Stop!” someone yelled, and they didn’t stop. Then Jeremy knocked someone down and fell, himself, twisting in Fletcher’s grip as Fletcher tried to get him on his feet and keep going.

“What’s going on,” spacers around them demanded.

“ Finity’s End !” was all Fletcher could say, trying to hold a winded kid on his feet. “Somebody call our ship!” He tried to run on, but the pain in his side was all but overwhelming. Hands were helping him now, and he pulled Jeremy with him, hearing the sounds of resistance behind him, shouts and curses around the gunfire. There was nothing to say, no wind to say it with. He just took Jeremy the direction open to him, vision too jarred and blurred to know where he was going until he hit someone else and that someone grabbed him.

“Fletcher!”

Chad. Chad and Nike and Toby.

“The whole ship’s looking for you!” Chad yelled at him.

“Guys after us,” he tried to say, but about that time something sailed past their heads and rebounded off a pressure window, bang !