I grab Winn’s wrist. “Pink hair. Ahead. Do you see it?”
Winn cranes his neck. “No—yeah.”
I see her again. Arleen.
She’s staring right at us. Walking toward us with purpose.
Oh, fuck. What’d I miss? “Chameleon, we got a problem. Arleen is here about to make contact.” How is she here?
Puo doesn’t respond. The slow symphony featuring violins keeps playing.
People suddenly gasp all around us.
All the large float screens overhead have morphed into the image of my father with the countdown on it. Except it’s live. And about to hit zero.
I can’t breathe. How’d they find us?
I look around wildly. Everyone is looking up at the screens except for six people. They are only focused on us, encircling us.
Winn says something but I can’t hear properly.
The clock hits zero.
My father’s forehead explodes outward in a puff of red and purple.
My mouth opens to scream, but I can’t hear it. Other people are screaming, but I can’t hear them properly either.
I clutch my chest, trying to hold it together. I’m kneeling on the ground with no memory of how I got here, a small black bag on its side nearby.
There’s a struggle to my right. The man I was with. He’s fighting with three people. They’ve surround him and he’s fighting. He keeps looking at me and yelling. What is it?
Then it all snaps back into place. It’s Winn. Sound crashes down all around me. Winn is screaming one word over and over, “Run!”
Before I can, three people surround me. Lift me forcibly up by my arms. I can’t seem to stand on my own.
“Isa Schmidt,” the one closest to me with yellow teeth says. “You are under arrest ...” He flashes an MI5 badge at me.
Stiff, thin metal straps snap into place around my wrists, they jerk together when the magnet activates.
Arleen walks out of the crowd, pink hair and all. Her face is shaken by what she just witnessed, but there is also triumph there. Culmination.
Winn is in handcuffs as well.
“Isa Schmidt,” she says, “You’re a hard woman to pin down.” She then smirks at me. “Sorry. Were.” She flashes an MI5 badge and starts giving orders to the men about where to take me.
She mentions Puo. They have him too. It’s like a movie, watching someone else’s life crumble, implode. It doesn’t make any sense. But still the music plays in my comm-link.
A muffled scream erupts from the rapidly clearing crowd. A new face has appeared on the float screens. A new face with a new countdown.
It’s an African American woman. The gray in her hair is matted. Blood mixes with dirt on her forehead and chin. Lines of sweat streak down her face.
It’s Charlie.
One week.
She never should have trained us.
The countdown activates as they shove me forward: Six days, twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds.
End of Book 4
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ALSO BY JEFFREY A. BALLARD
Sunken City Capers:
The Solid-State Shuffle, Book 1
The Elgin Deceptions, Book 2
Leverage, Book 3
The Brummie Con, Book 4
Underwater Restorations: A Sunken City Novelette
The Skim Job: A Sunken City Capers Short Story (only for newsletter recipients)
Other Works:
The Oracle Algorithm (Short Novel)
The Bear that Painted the Stars (Novella)
The Watchers (Novella)
Vacationing Offworld (Collection)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeffrey A. Ballard is a nomadic Yankee that currently lives in the Texas Hill Country. A long time fascination with the ocean lead him into academia, where he happily spends his days playing scientist and spends his nights and early mornings writing about the science he wished existed. His science fiction has appeared in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and Fiction River: Time Streams among other places. You can learn more and connect with Jeffrey at www.jaballard.com.
The Brummie Con Page 24