Free Ultraviolet by Yvonne Navarro Page B

she had to allow herself a precious few seconds to orient herself. Being in here at least gave her several choices, although predictably most of those would already be compromised—the security forces might not be as quick as she was, but they weren’t dummies either. They also had access to computer blueprint imagery showing every last space in this building, including all the ductwork, ingress and egress. There was nothing to do but charge ahead and let her instincts guide her toward her outside rendezvous and freedom. And she was
not
leaving this installation without this briefcase.
    Violet nearly fell when she came to the intersection of another part of the ductwork, this one a vertical air shaft. With its drop-off only an inch or two in front of her feet, it fell away into muted silver shadows, backlit periodically by workers’ tube lights set into the metal every four yards or so. When she looked up the shaft, she could just spot the Medical Commandos getting ready to drop toward her.
    She grinned, checked the integrity of the small gyroscope at her belt, then jumped into the air shaft and fell upward.
    The Commandos writhed on their drop ropes and tried to get out of the way of her bullets, but there was simply no escaping the barrage of gunfire as she twisted and fired behind herself, taking advantage of the still activated technology. Good old gravity, that one thing that in the past had always been so very inescapable turned out to be their doom— in seconds they all hung there, limp and lifeless at the end of their rappeling cords; in another instant, Violet hit the grating at the top of the shaft with a
crash!
and exploded through it without having a clue about what was on the other side. She somersaulted up, then came back down as her body’s inner ear adjusted itself and intervened. When she landed, she was straddling one of the skylights and already belting out hundreds of rounds at the waiting security forces. They went down easily, and before their superiors could think to regroup and send more, Violet leaped off the skylight and ran for the edge of the roof. Again without bothering to look, she vaulted over the side.
    She swung and, for the barest of seconds, went into free fall. Did birds feel like this? It was wonderful—weightless and giddy—and it was a damned shame she didn’t have the time to enjoy it. Then her trajectory, angled ever so slightly, took her back against the side of the building. She touched it and stuck, then instantly sprinted down its slick metal side. When she came to a huge plate-glass window, she jumped over its ten-foot expanse; there would be security forces on the other side of the glass, so she beat them to the draw and fired into it, showering them with jagged pieces of glass and the remains of the window frame, driving them solidly back into the interior. They returned fire even as they fell, until what was left of the heavy plate glass seemed to be going in all directions at once.
    She sprinted onto the earth-gravity surface of the alley behind the building with the gyroscope still giving off a reassuring pulse at her hip. She blinked once and started to turn, then froze as she looked eye-to-barrel at the auto-rifle pointed directly at her nose, a mere half a foot separating her skin from the cold metal.
    For the first time since she’d come out of the air shaft, Violet realized it was raining. Not that hard, but enough to coat her skin and slick her hair down against her scalp at the same time it drifted against the face visors of the seven Command Marines surrounding her. Raindrops trickled slowly down the dark shields, making it impossible for her to see the eyes of the men she was about to kill.
    No matter. She never did.
    She whirled within the circle of rifle barrels, becoming a blur that was moving too fast for them to see, much less track. Then she stopped and simply stood there, and for a very long moment no one else moved—not a muscle twitch, a word, or