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

was doing justice."
    "You're the one who sees her doing what she thinks is justice. You can see her failing. And you're going to have to kill her. Just like you had to kill Andre."
    "If I could go back to that day I'd talk him down. If I'd known about the ACTF, I could have saved him."
    "You can't save her. You can't save anyone."
    The room went dark, and Brady hit the floor rolling, right and backwards, came up in a crouch. Pure instinct
    "Oh..." Saito purrs in the dark. "Oh, Agent Brady. This. Oh yes, this. Perfect. All these years you've been stringing me along, and all we had to do was turn the lights out."

Act IV
     
    The lights go out and everyone looks up. The generator will kick in. They'll have to wait for the computers running the cash register to reboot. Hafs sighs. That burger she wants rests in its own grease on top of a cooling grill, and right at the minute she's hungry. In another minute she'll be irritable. In another minute after that she'll have trouble remembering that the people around her don't deserve what she'll dish out. A hungry gamma ain't nobody's friend.
    The lights still aren't on. Hafidha reaches out, probing for working computers, smartphones, tablets. All she finds are mobile devices, struggling on the shitty data network that passes for coverage. She reaches for the programmable controls on the emergency generators and finds nothing—just a black hole.
    And that should not be happening.
    "FBI," Hafidha says in a carrying voice. "Please remain calm. Look around, and find someone who could use your help, and use that emergency exit." She spots one guy headed toward the door to the corridor: the wrong way. Toward the monsters. The other monsters. I am the evil that exists to oppose other evils. "Please don't leave this room, sir. Everybody needs to go outside, get away from the building, and take cover."
    She reaches out into the wide world, surfing the two and a half bars Sprint offers. A text message to Falkner, a text message to Chaz. Bad things at Arkham. Power out. Evacuating staff such as I can. She is doing okay. Doing okay. She opens the pastry case for the last four brownies, peels the plastic off of one, and starts eating. Between bites: "Everyone, it's very important that you remain calm and leave. Who's in the kitchen?"
    She gets people assigned to each other and sends them out the cafeteria emergency exits. No alarms greet the opening doors. She sweeps the kitchen to be sure everyone is out, and finishes the second brownie.
    She needs more milk, and the bottles in the fridge aren't doing anything but going bad. She takes one and washes the gooey chocolate treat down, eats her third, and tucks the fourth away with the rest.
    The civilians are leaving. Orderly evacuation. She thinks about school shootings, workplace violence. All the things it could be that aren't the monster zoo with its cages wide open. She touches her hip, where her Glock isn't. The only thing that stops a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun.
    She thinks, Well now, there's a simplistic morality for you.
    She steps out through the hall door she shooed everyone away from, staying low, moving quick. It's even darker in the hall, just the red glow of the battery-operated emergency exit signs to guide her. She steps out of her boots, snaps the heels off with bare hands. Gamma-strong. She feels a pang when she does it that's not just a shallow attachment to material goods.
    The boots go back on her feet. The heels go in her pocket. She knows a cobbler who might be able to fix them, later. Now she walks softer.
    She doesn't get very far before she hears fear.
    She doesn't get much farther than that before she finds blood.
     
    *
     
    Jason Saito is a shadow among shadows. He rustles faintly as he stands. "Finally," he says, in a tone that makes Brady imagine a stretching, satisfied cat. "It's my big break. Let's go."
    Brady hears his heart in his ears. He forces himself to relax, to feel nonchalant. His best