Free Quantum Break by Cam Rogers Page A

you okay?”
    The shooter popped out, fired. Reflexively Jack shielded his face and fired twice before his pistol clicked out.
    They were both done.
    The shooter stood there, a silhouette a little darker than the shadow in which he stood. The shooter’s gun hit the floor. Eyeshine blinked off, then on, and he toppled back against the wall. Gravity did the rest.
    “Hey,” Jack said, moving toward the man. The shooter slid down to a sitting position, despondent, like someone getting bad news. “Hey, brother. Are you…?” It was dark, and he was half-blind, but the truth of the situation was clear.
    Will said, “Oh dear.”
    “Will,” Jack asked, “why isn’t he wearing black like the others? Where’s his mask?”
    Will’s voice was reluctant, deeply sad. “Oh Jack … I’m afraid you’ve crossed a most unfortunate Rubicon.”
    The shooter was wearing a buttoned beige shirt. Jack could make that out. There was an insignia on the short sleeve.
    “Wait here,” his brother said. Jack heard something tumble heavily to the bottom of the vending machine. A seal crackled as it was broken, and he felt Will’s hand rest on his forehead. “Water. Open your eyes.” Will gently tilted his brother’s head back. Coolness was palmed onto his burning face. “Does it hurt?”
    Jack didn’t say anything.
    His vision improved. Details were clearer, edges sharper. The dead man came into focus. Jack let out a breath.
    Quietly: “He was shooting at us, Jack.”
    “He was just confused,” Jack stated. “Hiding, probably.” The badge on the man’s sleeve belonged to Monarch Protective Services. Not Monarch Security. Not a soldier. Just a rent-a-cop. Just a guy with an Xbox and a crappy car and a half-eaten pizza in the fridge. “I saw him outside. He knew me. From school.” If Jack hadn’t divorced himself from Will and Riverport six years ago he would have needed a job as badly as this guy, and he would have been wearing the same uniform.

 
    5
    Jack removed the man’s gun and two spare magazines from his belt. He stood, walked through the open doorway, past the elevators, and looked out the wall window. Will followed.
    The geodesic undulations of the Quantum Physics Building’s laminated glass shell, lit from within, illuminated the surrounding grounds. Jack could see masked “Peace” troops down the length of Founders’ Walk. At the end of the path: the ramshackle outline of the protest camp. There, too, idiot-faced men, working, searching, carrying away limp forms in teams of two. Occasionally, single gunshots.
    “What the fuck is going on?” He turned to his brother, his face an accusation. “Paul told me Monarch Innovations was funding the research. Why attack the building? The protestors? Where are the cops? The media?”
    Will struggled to find words. The elevator beat him to it.
    Ding.
    Smiley-faced troopers flowed into the hallway with practiced precision—implacable, unfeeling—the first three dropping to one knee so the three behind them could also take aim.
    PEACE .
    This is what it felt like for Jack, meeting his death. Colors were richer, smells stronger, time slowed, each moment a meal. Some clown had posted a Far Side cartoon to the corkboard; the spalling around one hole in the vending machine shone like chrome. A moment returned from ten years ago, now clear as day: he had bought a beer for the man he killed.
    Ten years. The Tavern. Jack had finished a late shift delivering pizza. He had met Paul at the end of the bar, a spot that smelled equally of hoppy microbrew and acrid wafts from the nearby men’s room. He and Paul had a few, and this guy had appeared and let them in on a secret: the Tavern was named for the owner’s love of Dungeons & Dragons . Jack had bought a round. They’d burned maybe a half hour and another round, and went their separate ways.
    He remembered the moment, but he couldn’t remember the guy’s name.
    Jack turned his attention to the present.
    Behind their