Frequency Interference

Two searchlights locked onto my chest before I could stand.

I dragged the oxygen condenser behind the doorframe before the atrium squad opened fire. My ribs ached from the fall, but the metal casing stayed intact. That was the only win that mattered. If we lost this compressor, Misk'illa died in the dark three floors below.

"Get down," Pomaq rasped.

He grabbed my shoulder and yanked me deeper into the corridor. His grip was rough and uncalibrated. A man who had just thrown away ten years of surgical steel to keep me from falling into an abyss. My shoulder hit the tiled wall of an adjoining imaging lab.

The smell of stale fixer chemical and damp drywall hit me instantly.

"Footsteps," I whispered.

"Four pairs of boots," he said. "Heavy soles."

"They're taking the south radiology ramp."

"We have nowhere to run."

He held his steel pry bar low against his thigh. His knuckles were raw from the expansion joint. No scalpel. No field kit. Just eight pounds of hardened construction alloy and a surgeon's desperate temper.

I crouched behind a lead-lined mobile partition.

The heavy beams from the atrium swept the shattered sill outside, then angled away. Down the hall, booted footsteps clicked against loose plaster. Tactical flashlights danced across the ceiling in sharp, rhythmic sweeps.

"They'll box us against the chasm in forty seconds," I said.

"Then I'll break the first collarbone that rounds that frame."

"He has a riot baton, Pomaq. You have a scrap of iron."

"It's high-grade steel."

I let out a breath and pulled the tactical hand radio from my belt.

Mallki's stolen transceiver was still warm against my palm. The LED panel glowed amber on Channel 4. Through the speaker, a burst of compressed static hissed into the darkroom.

—Perimeter Two to Sweep Lead. Bridge is down. Visual on debris in the central basin. Pushing south annex.—

—Copy, Sweep Lead. Advance in wedge formation. Maintain line-of-sight.—

I studied the small frequency switch.

"What are you doing?" Pomaq muttered.

"Fixing your odds."

"Sisaqa, don't touch that dial."

"Be quiet."

I had spent three years processing K'illu administrative compliance filings. I knew the triage protocol codes better than the guards carrying the carbines. Every security dispatcher on the executive payroll was trained to obey standard phonetic dispatch syntax without hesitation.

I set the dial to Channel 1.

The frequency popped with open carrier hum.

I pressed the push-to-talk button, pitched my voice half an octave lower, and clipped every syllable like a bored bureaucrat on double overtime.

"Central Dispatch to Perimeter Lead," I said. "Hold position at Grid Six-South."

The hallway went instantly silent. The boots stopped scuffing.

A voice crackled over the speaker: —Perimeter Lead. Go ahead, Dispatch.—

"Priority Zero structural breach at Sub-Core 4," I rattled off, reading the imaginary crisis from my mental map of the lower ducts. "Boiler release valve sheared on the lower tier. Toxic vapor venting into the primary riser. Divert three units to secure the southern blast gate immediately. Leave one sentry on perimeter watch."

Static churned across the channel.

Pomaq stared at me from behind the lead partition. His dark eyes were wide in the gloom.

—Dispatch, we have active trespass signatures on Six-South sill—

"Perimeter Lead, Sub-Core 4 is flooding the executive intake duct," I snapped, letting cold administrative irritation bleed into the mic. "If Ch'aska loses pressure in the bunker, your team answers for the containment breach. Move three men to the riser now. Confirm compliance."

A two-second pause hung in the dark.

—Understood, Dispatch. Units Two, Three, and Four, break off to Sub-Core 4. Unit One, clear the radiology wing.—

I released the button.

Heavy boots pivoted on the tile outside. Three sets of rapid footfalls sprinted back toward the service ramp, their echoes fading toward the east stairwell.

One set of slow, methodical boots remained.

Pomaq leaned his forehead against the partition and exhaled. "You sounded like an auditor with a migraine."

"It worked."

"It was terrifying."

"You like terrifying."

He didn't argue. His gaze dropped to my hands, then to the heavy oxygen condenser wedged safely between my knees. His face was gray with dust and sweat, but the tension in his shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch.

"Single guard," he whispered.

"He's carrying a respirator," I noted.

Through the frosted glass of the imaging door, the bobbing cone of a tactical flashlight illuminated the hallway. The sentry moved with deliberate caution, his carbine lowered, his face concealed behind a twin-canister rubber mask.

We needed that mask. The Qhari sublevel was flooding with containment gas. Without a sealed respirator, we wouldn't last sixty seconds on Misk'illa's floor.

"I'll take his legs," Pomaq murmured.

"He outweighs you by fifty pounds."

"I know where the femoral artery runs."

"Don't kill him. Just put him to sleep."

Pomaq shifted his grip on the pry bar. He moved to the hinged edge of the darkroom door, melting into the pitch-black shadow behind a row of heavy lead aprons.

The door swung inward with a faint squeak of rusty hinges.

The guard stepped across the threshold. The white beam of his weapon light sliced across the developer trays, reflecting off the stagnant chemical soup. He swung the barrel left, scanning the empty counter.

I shifted my boot on purpose. A single scrape of rubber against tile.

The guard whipped around toward my corner. "Hands where I can—"

Pomaq struck from the dark.

He didn't swing the steel bar like a club. He hooked the curved end behind the guard's knee and drove his shoulder straight into the man's chest.

Both bodies crashed into the steel developer basin. Chemical wash sloshed across the floor in a foul, vinegar-scented wave. The guard's weapon clattered against the ceramic tiles, skidding under the sink.

The guard threw an elbow into Pomaq's ribs. Pomaq grunted, his breath tearing out in a sharp hiss, but he didn't let go. He wrapped one forearm around the sentry's neck, driving his thumb hard into the carotid sinus behind the jawbone.

"Sisaqa," Pomaq gasped. "The straps."

I lunged forward through the spilled chemical wash. I grabbed the guard's tactical harness, unbuckling the heavy quick-release clips with trembling fingers. The rubber respirator peeled away from the man's sweaty face with a wet suction pop.

The guard thrashed once, his fingers clawing at Pomaq's forearms.

Pomaq tightened the vascular hold, his jaw set like iron. "Down," he growled. "Stay down."

The guard's eyes rolled back. His limbs went slack against the basin edge.

Pomaq held the choke for two more seconds, then released him. The guard slumped into the chemical puddles, breathing in deep, unconscious rattles.

Pomaq sat back against the tank, clutching his left ribs. His breath came in ragged, wheezing pulls.

"You broke something," I said, dropping beside him.

"Just bruised."

"You're a terrible liar, Doctor."

"And you're a thief." He pointed at the heavy rubber mask in my lap. "Good work."

I wiped a smear of soot from his cheekbone. My fingers lingered against the rough stubble of his jaw for half a second before I pulled my hand back. He didn't flinch away. He just looked at me, the dark brown of his eyes steady and impossibly warm beneath the grime.

"We have thirty seconds before they realize Sub-Core 4 is empty," I whispered.

"Then we run."

He started to push himself up from the floor.

Beneath us, the guard's hand spasmed on the tile.

Before either of us could stop him, the unconscious sentry's reflex drove his fingers into the collar of his tactical vest. A red emergency beacon flashed on his shoulder harness.

A piercing screech of electronic feedback tore through the open radio channel.

The dying squawk of the open mic broadcast his slurred, half-conscious gasp across every receiver in the hospital:

—Officer down... Level 6 radiology... It's Pomaq... Sisaqa is with him...—

The frequency fell dead.

Then Ch'aska's cold, unmistakable voice cut through the static on maximum volume:

—All units, seal the south hoist. Kill them on sight.—

The static dissolved into a dead carrier hum.

In the darkroom, the guard's collar beacon pulsed in rhythmic sweeps of red across the tiled walls. Pomaq didn't let go of my hand. His grip was steady and calloused against my palm, anchoring us against the cold reality that our anonymity was gone.

"She knows," I whispered.

"Let her," Pomaq said, hauling me up. "We're taking that hoist anyway."