Free Shadow Unit 15 by Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear Page A

beside them. It would be enough for fifteen minutes with Suze.
    "You look distracted," the cashier said. "Have you eaten?"
    Hafidha stopped her "I'm fine, thanks," to actually think about that. "Actually, I'm not going to get to eat for a couple hours if I don't do it now. Can I get a BLT cheeseburger, fries, gravy, and mozzarella cheese?"
    Hafidha hadn't yet paid for her burger when the lights went out.
     
    *
     
    Hurry, Ash whispers. Hurry. Hurry.
    You run.
    Sam asks you to watch the station while he goes to the bathroom. You couldn't ask for anything better.Video shows Hakes in his cell, methodically tearing a copy of People magazine into confetti. An empty, soggy plate and fork rest on a cardboard tray. The second the bathroom door closes behind Sam, you open the monster's cage and take off like he's after you, because it could become true in an instant.
    Hurry. Hurry.
    You run. Your booted feet pound down the linoleum hallway, and you run faster than you ever lope down the trail, just short of a sprint. You slap the doors open and burst through, cutting a hard left to supermax's power box.
    "Hey! Partridge! HALT!"
    Sam.
    Hurryhurryhurryhurry
    You're out of reach of the Taser. You think. But you set Ash free with a casting of the power, send her to curse Sam with terror.
    When you hear a man screaming a few moments later, you don't know if it's his fear that makes him scream, or if Hakes has made it past the doors to supermax.
    You don't really need to know.
    You skid to a halt in front of the power room, pull the big switch, and dash out the door.
    You can get back to the cage, with the power to protect you. You can get rid of the lightning caller, and if Hafidha Gates manages to survive Hakes, your power can take her down long enough to put her back where she belongs.
    Where she can't take Ash away from you.
     
    *
     
    Solomon Todd stares at his computer screen. A cold heady pressure sits inside him, under and behind the rib cage, as if somebody reached inside him and grabbed a handful of intestine and twisted. Icy fear, cold and sharp.
    A credit card transaction. Just one; and it could be coincidence or carelessness or arrogance, but he knows. He knows what it means.
    He picks up his phone to call Hafidha, and it rings to voice mail, which by itself is enough to give him a nasty start. But then he glances at the screen when he cancels the call and sees the date. Wednesday, May 21st, 2014.
    Visiting day at the monster zoo.
    He shoves his feet into loafers on the way out the door, grabs his keys, stops with his hand on the knob. Calls Falkner as he heads back into the bedroom to open the gun safe and get heeled. He'll feel like an idiot if he's overreacting. He'll feel like more of an idiot if he's lying there bleeding out on the floor.
     
    *
     
    "It was just another day," Brady says. "We thought we had a missing girl, but she'd just gone for a nap outside. Happy ending. So I decided that I would bring home dinner and get some boyfriend points. I didn't know that anything was wrong."
    "Sno-ore," Saito says. "So worn out. Gates has gone rogue, hasn't she? She's put on a pretty face and everyone's fooled except you."
    Brady doesn't cross his arms. He wants to. "It really didn't hit me until I realized that he didn't have a scalpel in his hand. That's what I thought it was."
    "You're the only one who can tell that the monster's loose, and no one will believe you if you try to say anything. I know what you're hiding, Agent Brady."
    "But when it did... I trusted Andre. I remembered how many nights I'd just sleep next to him, let him touch me with hands that could do that."
    "You let her touch everyone on the team. You have to. You are supposed to believe in her. But she's doing things, isn't she? She's going backward, not forward, and she's going to catch everyone by surprise."
    "He could cut. He could stitch it back up. And he didn't use it to help people. He used it to torture. It didn't matter that he believed that he