“Everybody up.”

Dun, the leader of the group, stood over Tila, his fingers drumming against his thigh. There was something about the movement that spoke of nerves, and she pulled herself warily to a crouch.

All around her, her colleagues stumbled to their feet.

“Yasmi, too?” she asked Dun, her arm going behind Yasmi's shoulder to help her up.

“No.” Dun stepped back. “The wounded stay where they are. Everyone else, come to the middle of the room.”

While he spoke, one of the other hostage-takers, Kirt, picked up a bulky screen bag and laid it carefully on the conference table.

He opened the bag and took out a slim, silver box, then looked over at Dun.

“Set it for ten minutes.” Dun walked to the window, looked down. “No, make it fifteen.”

Kirt seemed to relax a little at that.

And then Tila understood.

They were setting the timer on the explosive.

Her horrified gaze went to Yasmi, and the three others lying beside her.

“We could carry them,” she said as Dun turned away from the window.

His gaze focused on her, and he looked her over for a long, tense beat. “No. They'll give the Protection Unit something to do. If they're as good as they say they are, the PU will have them out before it goes off.”

“Are you arming the bomb?” Ahn's voice rose as he stared at the device on the table.

His words created an immediate reaction, gasps and cries of fear.

“Quiet!” Dun lifted his laz. “Or I'll make sure a few more of you are injured and have to stay here.”

There was dead silence.

“Come here,” he said to Tila.

She hesitated, and he shifted his arm to point his laz at Carin, the tiny, bubbly office administrator.

Tila came.

He grabbed the back of her dress, pulling her back against his chest, and she felt the cool metal bar of the laz against her spine.

“Start the countdown.” Dun's voice was a little less steady as he said that.

They're afraid, Tila realized. They aren't invincible.

And Nick and his team could hopefully see and hear everything that was happening in here. She twisted a little in Kirt's direction as she thought that, so the camera would record what he was doing. He touched the device and then turned, face tense, and nodded.

Dun gave a signal, and Kirt and the third member of the team, Timbo, came to stand with her and Dun. They stood so that Tila was in the middle, with the hostage-takers forming a circle around her.

“Everyone, gather around us.”

Her colleagues didn't move.

Dun lifted his arm again and fired at Rei, the stocky information systems analyst who worked a few desks from her. He went down with a cry, holding his leg.

Everyone went utterly still with shock.

“Move! Every second you delay is a second your injured friends won't have to get out before the explosive detonates.”

The words galvanized everyone. They shuffled forward, and soon they were a tight crowd, with Tila and the three hostage-takers in the center.

“Hook arms with someone to your left and your right.” Dun waved his laz to attract everyone's attention. “Try to run, and we'll shoot. You've just seen how I'm perfectly happy to do it. Maybe we'll hit you, maybe we'll hit one of your friends instead. At this distance, we'll probably hit more than one.” His voice was calmer now, and he kept his tone soft, so everyone had to be quiet to hear him. “Does everyone understand me?”

There were a few nods.

“Good. Move to the door.”

They shuffled forward, and Tila looked back at Yasmi and the others, propped against the wall, at Rei lying pale and panting on the floor.

Their faces were pinched with fear, and the anger that had been burning in her licked higher.

Someone at the front opened the door and they spilled out into the reception area, and came to a dead stop.

Tila tried to crane her neck to see what was going on, but her view was blocked.

“Protection Unit,” Nick called out. “Put down your weapons and surrender.”

Relief sang through her just at the sound of his voice, but Dun was directly in front of her, and Tila saw the thick muscles in Dun's back tense and his fists bunch.

He would not go down without a fight.

“I would suggest you put down your weapons.” Dun's words were cool. He lifted his laz, moving it almost lazily as he swung around and shot Ahn, standing close to her, in the leg.

He cried out and Tila reached for him, trying to grab him as he fell.

There was panic in the group now, they were on the verge of running, fear driving them more than Dun's threats.

He must have realized it. “You and you,” he pointed at two young info techs. “Take him into the conference room.”

His words were calm, the order matter-of-fact, and the tension notched down a little. He jerked his head at Timbo, and then made a sign with his hand, and the big hostage-taker followed the two techs as they got their arms under Ahn's shoulders and half-carried him into the room.

“No need for anyone to get hurt,” Nick's voice was rock solid and soothing. “We'll retreat.”

“Good.” As Dun spoke, they all heard two more shots, and the cries of Ahn's teammates.

“We're moving back.” Nick's shout came from further away this time, and Dun's attention was focused toward the passageway but he turned his head when Timbo stepped back out, closed the door behind him, and gave Dun a nod.

“Don't let it be said I'm not generous.” Dun raised his voice to a shout so Nick could hear. “You have,” Dun looked down at the time, “eleven minutes until the explosive detonates and eight injured to evacuate. One for each member of your team. Now stay back until we're gone, or we'll injure a few more, and then you'll have to choose who to save.”

“Agreed,” Nick called after a moment's silence.

What choice did he have?

“Get in the lift,” Dun ordered, and they moved toward it immediately, no hesitation now. Whoever was leading took a slightly angled route. It confused Tila until she remembered the bodies of the security officers on the floor.

She breathed through the nausea that suddenly gripped her.

When the lift doors pivoted open, they stepped in, jostling each other, but there were too many of them to fit.

Five of her colleagues were pushed out, and then the lift doors spun closed. Her friend Sarta was forced up against her, and Tila gripped her hand in solidarity.

They were swept downward to an empty lobby.

“Out.”

The group, much smaller now, lurched like a demented spider to the building's entrance, and then they were in a street as empty as the lobby.

“Go right.” Dun clamped his hand on Tila's shoulder, his grip tight, as if he expected her to run.

They moved in their strange shuffle and lurch beside the EM tracks, and Tila caught a glimpse of a barrier up ahead.

People were pushing against it, craning to see what was going on.

“Don't slow down,” Dun's hand on her shoulder tightened even more, and he touched his laz to Sarta's throat. “Head straight at the barrier. They'll let us through.”

“What if they don't?” Timbo asked.

Dun raised his laz. “They will.”

* * *

The injured hostages were all out, and the dull black containment box around the explosive shook and then emitted a thick, foul-smelling smoke.

“Threat contained.” Cris spoke into her comm unit and then turned to cough.

Nick didn't feel as if the threat had been contained at all.

Dun and his crew were on the streets, and they still had ten hostages.

He signaled to Cris that he was going down, and then took the lift, his gaze on his screen, watching Dun force Tila and her colleagues straight at the barrier with a sense of dread and powerlessness.

Tila's camera was blocked by Dun's back most of the time, but he caught glimpses of the City Watch officers. They held their posts, their expressions tense, while the crowds behind them tried to work out what was going on.

The lift reached the ground floor, and Nick ran, glancing down at his screen every few steps.

Just before the hostages reached the barrier, one of the officers put his hand on his laz, and Nick had the perfect view of Dun reaching for his own weapon, lifting his arm up from the middle of the hostage group, and shooting straight into the onlookers behind the barrier.

The flash of the laz, the screams of the people as two victims went down, created a panicked reaction, and the crowd began shoving as they tried to flee.

The hostages hit the barrier, and then they were through it, amongst the wild crowd.

The impact of their arrival was like a stone dropping into a pond, displacing people in a ripple around them, but then the group broke up, and Nick sped up as he saw from the camera footage that Tila was still sandwiched between Dun and Timbo, but they were moving much faster, shoving and pushing their way through the crowd.

He caught a glimpse of another of Tila's colleagues, Sarta, with a laz to her throat, and guessed they were using her to secure Tila's cooperation.

But why?

Nick had seen the hostage-takers' reaction when Tila had stepped into the foyer. They'd been shocked, and then they'd regrouped. Ever since, they'd behaved as if she was a prize.

“Bartega.”

The call came from his left, and Nick looked over to find Drake running just behind him, and catching up.

The commander held a screen as well, and Nick guessed he was viewing the same footage.

“There.” He pointed up ahead. “They're taking her down a side street.”

Drake's face was hard to read, but he was another whose reaction to Tila seemed more intense than Nick could explain.

He fell into step with Nick, breathing a little harder, perhaps, but keeping up.

Tila seemed to have decided the time had come to stop cooperating because they started dragging her along, and then there was a cry, and she twisted her body, the camera catching a glimpse of Sarta being shoved to the ground and left behind.

“They've let the colleague go,” he called to Drake. “Tila's the only hostage they have left.”

Drake picked up the pace, and Nick matched it. He had to concentrate on his footing now, rather than the screen, as they reached the corner and saw Sarta Falcon pulling herself up to a sitting position on the street, and a number of people coming to her aid.

“Which way did they take her?” Drake barked at her, and she lifted her head in shock, took in the uniform, and then pointed with a shaking arm behind her.

Nick looked down at the screen, but all he could see now was Dun's back and Timbo's front.

Tila stumbled, and a flicker of movement told Nick that Timbo must have reached out an arm to steady her.

There was the clatter of feet on stairs, and the camera jiggled as Tila was herded downward, and then there was darkness.

“I can't see,” Tila whispered.

And then she went quiet.

The screen went black.

Nick looked over at Drake. “We've lost her.”