Free Root of Unity by SL Huang Page A

found my Colt. The crushing heat pressed against me, making me heady and faint. The air molecules scorched my trachea.
    My unseen enemies had devolved into chaos, shouting and shrieking. I rolled under the van—the narrow band of visible ground across from me was full of blood and fire and flailing limbs curdling into blackness as they burned. A few of the men had escaped the carnage and were still standing. I shot them all in the legs. And I didn’t shoot to wound. I shot for the arteries.
    Their feet splayed and collapsed under them, and blood spurted along with a few abortive bursts of gunfire. Bodies hit the asphalt and weapons clattered to the ground, and more people screamed.
    It was hard to focus through the flames. It was hard to breathe. The sips of hot air kept choking me.
    I’d counted six burning bodies on the ground and shot three more. That was nine, plus the one I’d killed in the SUV made ten. Would they really have sent more than twelve? Would they?
    I might’ve gotten them all already. If there were any left, they were probably fruitlessly trying to stop their friends from bleeding out or burning to death…
    Or they had their sights set on the van, ready to pop me the instant I showed myself.
    I tried to think. My brain felt like it was cooking in my skull. My eyes scratched and watered; I tried to blink them clear. Options. What were my options?
    Only one back quarter panel of the van wasn’t on fire. I rolled in that direction and scooted back out from underneath, then snuck toward the tailgate, shrugging out of my jacket as I went. I stuck my gun hand under it like a tent pole, and then poked the jacket-covered gun out past the back of the van.
    More gunfire deafened me, and I yanked my arm back down, tearing the cloth off my Colt. It had one hole torn in it.
    One hole. They’d fired fourteen rounds in two seconds with those freakin’ automatic rifles, and only one had hit. Idiots and their automatics.
    I had no time: I wasn’t behind the engine block anymore, this heat was undoing me, and if these guys let loose, one of the rounds would eventually go straight through the van and hit me. But I didn’t need time, because the gunfire had pinpointed their locations.
    A little less than one chance in fourteen I’d get my hand shot off, depending on how fast I pulled the trigger. Thirteen in fourteen that I wouldn’t. Those were pretty good odds.
    I closed my tearing eyes, drew the trajectories in my head, and poked my Colt out again, this time with the muzzle pointed out and without a jacket covering it. My finger jumped against the trigger twice.
    The second guy got a four-round burst off. Then I heard two thumps.
    Better than I expected.
    I took a choking, ragged breath and leaned against the side of the van. I had to move, I kept telling myself. Had to move.
    I pushed off and stumbled away, at an angle so I was still hidden from the SUVs and the majority of the men I’d taken out. Just in case there were any more. I smacked into the cement of the overpass and slid down, breathing shallowly. The cement was cool. I pressed myself against it.
    My head was ringing—or maybe it was my ears, or maybe it was a combination and I was concussed again. I concentrated. I have a fine-tuned awareness of my own body—it’s necessary for me to align with the mathematics to take out mooks, but it’s also terribly convenient for injuries.
    Of course, that assumes I can concentrate.
    It took me a few minutes, but I figured it out. Both ear trauma and another concussion. Fantastic. And I was suffering damage from the heat, my system going haywire in a dozen minor ways. Lungs. Skin. Eyes. Throat. My stomach flipping into nausea in response, as if it thought it could vomit up everything that was wrong.
    The top of my shoulder was bleeding, too, though not badly. I mashed my torn jacket against it and concentrated on breathing. Inhaling stung, the air scraping through my trachea like it wanted to shred me from