Free Ultraviolet by Joseph Robert Lewis Page A

black shield appeared just as the first shots were fired, but the bullets pinged harmlessly off the cold photons and clattered on the ground.
    “Stay behind me!”
    Felix scrambled around behind me, putting his hands on my back like he was afraid to lose me. He probably was, what with the guns and the shooting.
    They fired a few more shots at the shield, and a few more smashed bullets rattled on the ground at my feet. I knew I should have been more scared at that moment, but the shield didn’t even let me feel the impacts, so it sort of felt unreal.
    “Carmen Zhao, put down the weapons and surrender immediately,” one of them said.
    “Is that you, Frost?” I asked.
    “Give it up, Carmen. You’re surrounded. No one wants to hurt you.”
    “Then shooting at me just now was a really bad idea, wasn’t it?”
    “Cygnus wants the gloves, not your head.”
    “No, they want what’s in my head, they want the tech.”
    “That’s the law.”
    “The law is wrong!” I shuffled sideways toward one of the cars.
    “Maybe, but I’m no lawyer. And where are you going? You think you’re going to drive out of here?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe.” I glanced at the car. “Lux, sword.”
    “Hey, what are you doing?” Felix asked as the black blade appeared in my right hand.
    “Auto repair.” I jabbed the sword into the hood of the car and felt it cutting into something big and heavy, which I assumed was the engine. “Oops. Sorry, Frost. Guess I’m not that good with cars.”
    I started shuffling toward the second car, still holding the shield between us and them so I could only barely peek around to see the bottoms of their shoes or the tops of their heads.
    “Carmen, stop!” Frost ordered.
    “What’s that? I can’t hear you.” I killed the second car with a swing of my glowing sword. The blade nicked the tire as I pulled it out and the whole car sagged a little as the wheel deflated.
    “Think about your parents,” Frost said. “Think about what you’re doing to them.”
    “I’m not doing anything to them!” I wanted to run out there and wrap my hands around his neck for that. “You’re the one who took the job, you’re the one who went to their house, you’re the one who shot them full of drugs and carried them off! That’s you! Not me! I don’t hurt people for a living!”
    “I enforce the law.”
    “The law is wrong!”
    “Take it up with the government.”
    “Yeah, I’ll get right on that. I’ll just throw a little party, maybe a thousand dollars a plate, to do a little fundraising for my best friends in Congress to buy a few votes. Easy. No problem. We’ll have freedom and justice for all by the dessert course, right?”
    Someone fired a bullet into the car behind us and we shuffled over to the third car. I nudged Felix and said, “Get in the car and start it.”
    He got in and I covered him.
    “I need the password to start the car,” he said.
    “Password!” I yelled at Frost. “I won’t kill you, but you don’t want me to start poking you with this thing.” I waved the sword over the shield.
    “Farmhurst,” he said calmly.
    The engine started.
    “Where will you go?” Frost asked. “Everyone’s looking for you. If you run now, you’re just setting yourself up for another confrontation, another shoot-out, somewhere else, maybe with lots of innocent bystanders nearby. But if you surrender now, right now, then no one gets hurt.”
    I hesitated. He was right. It was only going to get worse, more dangerous, more desperate. And I could stop it whenever I wanted. I could choose, right now. I could. “Pass.”
    I jumped into the back seat of the car behind Felix and he tore out of the parking lot as I held my shield-arm out the window to cover us. We roared out onto the main road, leaving Frost and his friends stranded in the dark.
    “Lux, off.”
    I leaned back in my seat and let myself just breathe for a minute. The guns had been less scary this time, for some reason, but my