Tactical retreat was practical, certainly, but after all their effort and planning, the resistance had to be feeling extremely shitty. Eva sympathized deeply, but she couldn’t let those sympathies overshadow her own goals.
Eva squinted at Jei’s dog hoverboard. “How many people can your bot carry, Jei?” she asked.
“Two at most,” he replied. “Why?”
“Take Sue with you,” she said. “Pink and Nara and I will meet you at the top.”
“Why?” Jei repeated, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “I can do this on my own.”
“Or you can do it more easily with help,” Eva retorted. “Sue can hack the Pod Pals, and the rest of us can watch your back.”
Jei seemed inclined to argue, but a new wave of security appeared: xana this time, wearing gliding suits and harnesses that let them leap from pod to pod or slide down the cables connecting the buildings. They all carried stun batons and wore helmets with large antenna-like protrusions covering their horns, and they moved with a grace and agility and cohesion that made Eva freeze.
They were mind-linked, she was sure of it. Someone else was controlling them, guiding them . . .
Flashbacks to her mission with Tito flooded her vision. It was happening again, she’d sworn she would never be here again, do this again, but here she was and here they were and she could almost hear the shouts of her team as they fought against the nearly silent foes assailing them from every direction, feel her cheek being torn open by a razor-sharp claw as her blood poured down her face, smell the smoke as the chemical fires she had set raged below until the branch was finally cut, and then the ragged breath she held as she took aim at Mother, squeezed the trigger, the delayed sonic boom and the bodies falling around her, graceless and limp and empty—
Someone was flashing a light in her face. Pink. “Eva, can you hear me?” Pink was saying. “Listen to me. Take a deep breath.”
Eva struggled to fill her lungs with air. Her chest was tight, like her diaphragm was being crushed, like she’d been spaced without a suit and the void was trying to get in.
“We don’t have time for this,” someone else said. Nara?
“You think this shit cares about time?” Pink snapped. “It takes as long as it takes.” Then, more gently, “Eva, honey, you’re having a flashback. It’s not real. There is other, very real shit happening right now, but you’re not in Rilia. Deep breaths, Bee, come on, come on back.”
Eva tried to press her hands to her ears, but her isohelmet was in the way. Just as she was about to deactivate it, Pink shouted, “Sweet deep-fried fucksticks!” and someone kicked Eva in the back hard enough to send her sprawling across the top of the pod. Her spacesuit took the brunt of the damage, and she instinctively curled up into a ball.
Her vision cleared, and there was Sue hiding in her isosphere, her bots running back and forth waving their tiny pans and torches and other random weapons. Mala had appeared as well—had she been hiding in Sue’s backpack? Eva had sworn she’d left the damn cat with Dr. Lucien. But she was out now, hissing at the xana attackers with her fur raised and her tail as bushy as a pipe brush, even though she was a tiny fucking animal and they were ten times her size.
The absurdity of it coupled with the danger Sue was in yanked Eva back to reality hard enough to leave her dizzy. Someone kicked her back again, and she groaned in pain; that would leave a bruise. But Sue needed help, and Eva had a mission, and one of Sue’s bots definitely had her chancleta, the little cabróncito.
Eva sucked in a breath and let out a ragged laugh. It helped, a little. An inhumanly fast punch came flying toward her and she sidestepped, too slowly, catching it on her shoulder. She ducked a kick next, and the tail that whipped around immediately after, briefly glad to be so much shorter than the xana. One moment at a time, the flashback retreated into the past where it belonged so Eva could focus on the present. It would always be there, waiting for the chance to drag her down again like an ocean undertow, but for now she was lucky enough to once again be in calmer waters.
For a particular definition of calm. The resistance had made it through the shielding of the first pod, finally, and broken into the interior. More rebels had arrived to protect them from the xana security guards who had swooped down from above, and who were also coming after Eva and her team. The xana she’d been fighting launched another flurry of punches, kicks, and tail swipes, which Eva blocked and evaded as best she could until Nara body-checked the guard and shoved him over the edge of the pod.
“Pink,” Eva croaked, and Pink was at her side in a moment.
“You okay?” Pink asked.
“Hell no,” Eva said, her voice growing steadier as she spoke. “I’m never okay. But we need to get to the top platform before this shitshow gets any worse.”
“You got a plan under all that hair?” Pink asked.
Jei hadn’t left yet, thankfully, choosing instead to help protect the resistance as their reinforcements arrived. Eva stumbled over to Sue while waving at Jei.
“Come on,” Eva told him. “We can do this if we work together!”
Jei hesitated, his expression as dark as before. But finally he nodded and hovered over, lowering his dog-bot so Sue could jump on. Sue hurriedly stuffed her tiny yellow bots into her backpack and deactivated her isosphere, climbing aboard next to Jei and crouching down to grab the side of the contraption for balance.
Mala, meanwhile, was still hissing at the xana guards like she was a tiger instead of a calico. Eva was astonished that none of them had punted her into the ocean yet.
“Get in the damn backpack, comemierda,” Eva snapped at Mala.
“Miau,” Mala replied, trotting over to wind around Eva’s legs instead.
“Madre de dios, you’re so fucking stubborn,” Eva said. She reached down to grab the cat, tucking her under one arm like a furry sportsball. Mala writhed in protest before apparently settling into a sufficiently comfortable position to allow the great indignity to proceed.
“Nara,” Eva said, “can you get Pink to the top platform?”
“Claro,” Nara replied, “but you’re not paying me to.”
“Me cago en diez, can you do one single thing pro bono? Just this once?”
“Nope,” Nara said, firing off a plasma ball at an incoming Pod Pal. “But if you’re going to do something that will make my job easier or more successful . . .”
Eva hesitated. “Possibly?”
Nara barked out a laugh. “You’re worse at telling the truth than you are at lying. Good enough, though.” She sidled over to Pink, a lazy but powerful punch picking off an approaching xana in the process.
“You ready to go?” Nara asked Pink.
“What, you’re going to carry me like a cat?” Pink asked, gesturing at Mala.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Give me your arm.”
Pink shouldered her sniper rifle and offered Nara her arm. Nara crouched slightly and, in a series of motions almost too fast for Eva to follow, tossed Pink over her shoulder. Pink yelped and began to cuss Nara and Eva out smooth as butter, which Nara ignored and Eva snorted at. Pink’s cussing intensified as Nara took a running leap off the edge of the pod toward the next one up, easily twenty meters away, landing with a grace and ease that gave Eva a twinge of envy.