Cibola Burn

He is standing next to Cate. He has no memory of getting up. She is firing her shotgun, and the sound of it going off in the tight space is deafening. He wonders if he will suffer permanent hearing loss. In the next room, three men and two women in RCE security uniforms are scrambling to take cover, or draw weapons, or return fire. They have looks of panic on their faces. They shout to each other as they move. He doesn’t recognize any of the words. One of them fires a pistol, and a bullet slams into the wall near Cate. A piece of the bullet or a piece of the wall punches a small hole in her cheek. She continues to fire as if the injury is beneath notice.

Skip.

An RCE security woman clutches at her chest as blood fountains out of it. Her face is pale and terrified. He is just a meter away from her, standing next to Scotty. Scotty shoots her again, this time in the neck. She falls backward in slow motion, hands reaching up to the wound but going limp and lifeless halfway there, and she just looks like she’s shrugging.

Skip.

He stands by himself in a corridor. He doesn’t know where it is or how he got there. He hears gunfire behind him, and screams. An RCE security man is a few meters ahead of him, holding a stun gun. The man has dark skin and bright green eyes, wide with fear. Basia suddenly remembers that the man’s name is Zeb, though he can’t remember why he knows that. Zeb throws the stun gun at him and reaches for the pistol he still has in a holster on his hip. The stun gun bounces off Basia’s head, opening up a three-centimeter gash that begins bleeding heavily, but he doesn’t feel it. He sees Zeb pulling his pistol, and without thinking about it he points his own gun at him. He’s surprised to see that he’s holding it correctly, by the handle, with his finger on the trigger. He doesn’t remember doing that. He pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. He’s about to pull it a second time when there is a loud bang from behind him, and Zeb begins to fall, blood gushing from his forehead. He waits for the blackout.

There was no skipping. No respite. No escape.

“Good job,” Coop said behind him. “That one almost got away.”

Basia turned slowly, still in a dream. A fugue. A dissociative state. The impulse to lift his hand one more time, to let the violence carry him just one step farther and shoot Coop almost lifted his arm. Almost, but not quite. Zeb bled out on the floor. The sounds of gunfire stopped.

Behind him, the rest of his group whooped and hollered in happy and excited voices. Basia looked at his gun, remembering how they work in action videos. You put the magazine with the bullets in it in the gun, and then you have to put a bullet in the chamber. He remembered Cate pulling back the breech on her shotgun. Coop pulling back the slide on his automatic. Basia’s gun wouldn’t have fired no matter how many times he pulled the trigger.