The door to 314 smashed inward, the latch assembly splintering the frame, the swing bar tearing the fastened bolt free.
Evan was airborne before he was fully awake, a lifetime of muscle memory moving him from horizontal to vertical. His consciousness caught up to his body an instant before his boots struck the floor, and he had a split second to contemplate why no one was charging the room when a small blur of movement from the doorway caught his focus.
A bouncing ball, thudding on the carpet once, twice, spinning to a stop in the dead center of the room.
Not a bouncing ball.
A frag grenade.
Evan bounded once, twice, clearing the threshold of the bathroom and diving for the bathtub.
He struck the cast-iron side hard, bucketing into the bottom as the floor heaved, accompanied by a rush of sound and heat. A metal-on-metal clang rocked the tub, the side studding in, black denting through the enameled white surface at the impact points.
Dust powdered the air, cut through with a torrent of sparks from a shattered ceiling light above. A buzz-saw whine filled Evan’s head, his ears vibrating with a concussive roar.
He flipped over in the tub, shards from the blown-out light crunching beneath his elbows and shoulder blades.
Over the wavering white-noise rush, he heard a voice. “The fuck is he? Is he here?”
“I thought I saw him.”
“Safe the bathroom, Carl. I’ll go balcony.”
Footsteps thudded the floor, muted taps Evan registered as if he were underwater.
A gunshot shattered the shower enclosure, the pane giving way in strobe-light bursts thrown from the sparking wires.
A form cut through the pixelated air, pistol swinging down at the bathtub.
Evan reared up.
He caught Carl’s gun hand at the wrist and hooked his other thumb so it rode the knuckle of Carl’s trigger finger. Evan fired down twice, once through the meat of the thigh, once through the top of the foot.
Carl sagged forward, clutching Evan in a limp hug, howling in his ear. Over Carl’s shoulder Evan spotted a massive figure pivoting back in from the balcony, phone raised to his mouth—Ricky Collins.
Evan hooked an arm around Carl, holding him upright, a two-hundred-plus-pound shield. Blood spurted from Carl’s thigh, painting the wall beside them. Inches from Evan’s cheek, the bellowing continued.
Evan couldn’t hear Ricky, but he read his lips against the nighttime lights spilling in from outside—Here, he’s here!
Ricky hoisted an FN P90, but there was no shooting Evan without shooting the slab of meat between them.
Evan released Carl, his hands blurring. In the instant before gravity caught up, Evan seized Carl’s meaty forearm, firmed his clamp on the pistol, and drove the man’s arm back through the resistance point of the elbow, hyperextending it ninety degrees.
Carl’s scream reached operatic heights.
The barrel was now aimed directly behind Carl, his arm bent precisely the wrong way. Evan stayed behind the gun-turret safety of Carl’s mass, chin resting on the ledge of the man’s shoulder, their cheeks slapped together, faces pointing in opposite ways.
Evan jerked his thumb backward against Carl’s trigger finger twice, firing the upside-down gun across the room at Ricky. The first shot missed, but the second clipped his shoulder, sending him in a half spin to the floor.
Carl fell away, the pistol spinning loose and clattering off into the darkness by the toilet. He reached weakly with both hands to clamp the arterial gush.
Evan stepped out of the bathtub, kicking Carl’s right hand off the wound and grinding it into the shard-layered floor. Bones popped.
He’d be unable to stop the bleeding now.
Ricky rolled onto all fours as Evan darted through the ragged doorway into the main room. Ricky rose, yanking the FN P90 across his barrel chest, catching Evan in its wobbling sights.
The submachine gun purred, unleashing lead at a rate of 850 rounds per minute. Evan dove at Ricky, rolling over a shoulder, sensing the air vibrate around him, the wall disintegrating at his back.
He came up beneath the gun, driving it up, the barrel smacking Ricky’s jaw before the weapon was knocked free.
But now he was in the grasp of the big man.
Ricky bear-hugged him, tilting back so Evan’s boots lifted off the carpet. Without a base, Evan dangled ineffectively in the vise grip, his chest mashed to Ricky’s vest, which looked to be laden with grenades, an explosive overlay to the Kevlar vest beneath.
Ricky drove his face forward, head-butting Evan.
Evan dipped his face, letting his forehead take the brunt, a clack of bone on bone. He crumpled, free-falling, and didn’t realize he’d been laid flat until his head smacked against his backpack, blown onto the floor by the explosion.
Ricky readied to deliver a kick to Evan’s face, and Evan scissored his legs, spinning around the pivot of his hip, hooking Ricky’s planted ankle.
The leg sweep worked, Ricky knocked flat on his back beside Evan. Ricky hammered the bar of his forearm at Evan’s face, Evan catching it just before it smashed the bridge of his nose.
Ricky followed with a kidney punch, the men grappling on the wreckage of the floor, planks poking up into them. The bullet wound at Ricky’s shoulder didn’t slow him at all.
The big man quickly got the upper hand, rolling on top of Evan. One sweaty palm shoved into Evan’s jaw, twisting his head back so hard it felt as though it might pop off.
The excruciating upside-down perspective gave Evan a whirligig view across the room, the front door hanging crookedly from one remaining hinge.
A smaller man filled the frame, compact muscle and hunched build, silhouetted by light from the hall.
Orphan A.
The pressure on Evan’s jaw intensified. Evan sensed Ricky draw back a fist. If he landed a direct punch, it was over.
Evan bucked, Ricky’s palm slipping off his face.
For a suspended moment, Evan had both arms free. He grabbed blindly at Ricky’s grenade-loaded vest, fingers spread, gathering safety-pin rings in both hands.
He caught a few and ripped them free.
Stunned, Ricky looked down at his vest, now studded with live grenades.
Evan flipped free, a grappling reversal. He knocked Ricky over, slapping him facedown into the crater of the floor. Then he rolled atop the big man and crouched with one knee planted between the impossibly broad shoulder blades.
He looked up at the doorway.
Orphan A’s hands moved and produced a pistol, a picture-perfect shooting stance. He was backlit, shadow and shape and nothing more.
Evan’s backpack rested an arm’s length away. He grabbed it by a strap, hauled it into his gut, and curled over it.
The grenades detonated, the effect propagating as one after another caught.
Evan pressed himself into Ricky’s back, shielded by two layers of the man’s oversize Kevlar vest. Shrapnel flew up all around him, a cone of destruction, Evan in the eye of a man-made hurricane.
And then he was falling, the already damaged floor giving way entirely.
His stomach lurched as he tumbled into the void.
He rode what remained of Ricky down and hit the floor below with a wet thud.
A woman had backed herself against the headboard, clutching a sheet to her breasts as her panicked paramour stood at the nightstand, phone cord coiled around his bare ass.
Evan stood up, one leg buckling before he righted himself.
“Excuse me,” he said, and bolted for the sliding glass door.
Raking aside the curtains, he threw the lock and shoved the door open. He glanced back at the blast hole in the ceiling in time to see Orphan A step into view.
Two muzzle flares lit Orphan A’s face, rounds embedding in the floor at Evan’s feet. The man holding the telephone screamed.
Evan stumbled across the threshold onto the balcony of 214, straddled the stone ledge, and looked around. The neighboring balcony was out of reach. If he jumped down, he’d risk shattering a leg or blowing out a knee on the service driveway running below. He glanced up the driveway’s length, spotting a laundry truck as it rumbled away from a loading dock.
Already he could hear sirens on the breeze, not far away.
As Orphan A appeared on the balcony above, Evan let himself fall out of sight, gripping a stone post, his legs dangling.
A round grazed the ledge above, showering stone chips across his head.
Evan held, held, gauging the sound of the truck engine as it neared.
The box truck coasted underfoot, and Evan swung away from the balcony, falling five feet and landing lightly atop the cargo area.
He stood up, the breeze riffling his hair, and looked back. Before the truck banked around the building’s curve, Orphan A came into view on the balcony above. He stared across the widening distance at Evan.
Evan stared back.
The laundry truck turned onto the main road, wiping Orphan A from sight.