The whole precinct had turned crimson, as the first sign. As the second sign, the whole thing shuddered as if a train had crashed into the front door. It wasn’t a train. It was only a bomb.
I was taking the stairs down to reception to meet a witness when it happened and I saw the concrete chips crumble from the floor above me as everything shook. “Goddammit,” I said aloud. “I am not going to die today!”
They were wearing Squad body armour, obviously looted. Most of it was sporting dings and even bullet holes from the previous owners, and all of it was spray-painted Coca-Cola red. Automatic rifles, submachine guns, sawn-off shotguns. The first wave was caught by a retaliatory wave of gunfire from the survivors on the first floor: We’re cops, after all. This is the kind of thing we dream of.
But that was just a few, the bravest who had come in first. I knocked aside the door and burst out into the hallway, nearly colliding with a guy coming down the hallway with a light autogun – one of ours.
“Hey, watch it, jerk!” he said without looking back. These youngsters have no respect for experience these days. I checked my sidearm and followed him off down the hallway as fast as I could.

“No more corporate fascism!” cried a rebel, standing on the desk and raising her fist high, a snub-barrelled submachine cradled in her elbow. “Death to oppressors!”
I mean, if they will go and make targets of themselves like that. I rounded the corner and almost without taking time to aim I raised my gun and blasted her in the chest. She was lifted off her feet by the force and flew down off the desk with a crunch.
Dropping into cover behind a steel desk, I glanced at my allies in the defence of the ground level: the autogunner had got here before me, and was now flat on his back. Where his chest had been, a mangled, bloody heap of viscera and protruding bone was about all that remained.
I shot off a few more rounds at intruding rebels and smirked. If this was the best they could do, we would be more than able to hold them off. Just so long as nobody did anything stupid like Johnny autogun here.
The first bullet entered my spine, punching through the desk as if it were tissue paper, and I collapsed, my insensate lower body twitching. Through the pain and the urge to vomit I screwed up my eyes and tried to aim my weapon in a last bloody act of vengeance. The man who had killed me lowered his high-powered rifle. Through his visor I could see a satisfied expression. I fired impotently, the small-arms caliber glancing off his armour.
He walked calmly over to me and put his boot on my neck.
“Better dead than-” I wheezed. Gradually, he applied more pressure. My vision began to blur. Before the asphyxia could do for me, though, he went too far. Or perhaps that was his intent. Anyway, my neck broke clean, and I don’t remember much after that.

Tactical Officer Jute took a sip from a cold can and stabbed the elevator button with his thumb. He hummed a tuneless tune to himself as he waited for the doors to open. Finally, the set on his right swished aside, and he glared at the metal box, already full to heaving with people.
“It’s fine,” he said breezily, seething underneath, and waved them on. This was eating up his lunch break. If he didn’t get down to the canteen in five minutes he might as well fucking waddle back to his desk and give photosynthesis another try. Lucky for him the other door slid open before his heart exploded.
“Alright?” said a woman Jute didn’t recognise. She was wearing a cleaner’s uniform, dull blue coveralls with a silver name badge.
“Someone make a mess?” he smirked as he stepped inside. The door closed.
“Someone’s about to,” said the woman. Jute remembered that the cleaners didn’t work during the day.
His hand was on his gun, but the click behind him told her she had hers faster.
“Stay real still for me, pig” she said. “We’re going to pay a visit to the roof. Press the button.” Jute did so, and the steel doors closed on his escape route. He raised his hands above his head and turned around. His captor had short, straight hair and a scar that split both lips down the right hand side.
“So what, am I a hostage?” he said. “You’re taking a hostage in the middle of Headquarters?” The woman said nothing. Her badge read “Lin”. She glanced down at a plastic watch on her wrist.
“Come on…” she whispered, looking up. Jute realised she was watching the light display that traced their passage up to the roof.
“You in a hurry?” he said. “Got a deadline to keep?”
Lin laughed. “You’re cocky for a man with a gun pointed at his guts. I heard gut shot is a slow way to go.”
“Wanna find out?” said Jute. Lin shook her head.
“We’ve got better plans for you.”

The doors opened onto a freezing cold sky. A few others were standing around here – some in cleaner’s uniforms, some in street clothes.
“Wow, it’s a Zero Zone convention,” quipped Jute.
“Just shut the fuck up,” hissed Lin.
“Or you’ll shoot me?”
“No. You piss me off too much, and I won’t.”
Jute decided not to give that the time of day. These people were crazy, an assortment of rangy freaks by all appearances. He wouldn’t be up here long.
“How are we for time?” Lin asked one of the others. He shrugged. “Goddammit. Give me that,” she said, snatching a walkie off him. “I’m doing it, if you’re not in position, now is the time.”
Two of the men grabbed Jute by the arms.
“I’ve decided not to shoot you,” said Lin. She smiled sweetly, and turned her back.
The two men took Jute to the edge of the building’s roof.
It was a long way to the street below.
The building shook.

“Goddamn, Folie. They’re swarming all over the building!” said Master Canning, risking a glance out of his panic-sealed office window. He flinched as a bullet struck the hyperglass, and then watched the spiderweb crack that formed seal itself with fast-setting resin. “Where the hell did this come from? We should have seen this kind of mobilisation from miles off! This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about!”
He was referring to the meeting that had been interrupted. It was rare for Folie to be called in to the precinct given the secretive nature of her connection with the Squad but a coded message had been left with the superintendent of her building and as soon as she got it she had come running. When Canning called, you came running.
“Sit down, Folie,” Canning had said to her when she poked her head round the door. She was thinner than when he last saw her, her cheeks starting to draw in hollow. Purple rings rounded her eyes. “You haven’t checked in with our man for a month. What in the hell is up?”
“Your surveillance teams are too close. Flint suspects. I can’t get away,” said Folie, shuffling in her seat. Her clothes hung off her.
“It’s not good enough,” said Canning, lighting a cigarette. “Smoke?” Folie shook her head, and he went on. “Our surveillance teams are there to make sure you do your job. They can’t get anywhere near the intel you can from the rebels. Start reporting in, and they go away.”
“Take them off me now!” she said, her voice cracking. “Or I can’t report in!”
“Do your job!” said Canning, and the building rocked. Master and Detective both went sprawling to the floor.
Picking herself up, Folie said “It’s them…” She got up and ran to the door, but before she could grab the handle, it sealed shut. She spun, and saw Canning’s hand on the panic button. “Open it!” she yelled. “If they can’t get in they’ll bring the building down to kill you!”
“Let ’em,” said Canning. “We don’t negotiate.”
“Open it!”
A burst of gunfire hit the window, and they watched it seal itself up again.
“We’re safe as houses in here, Folie. Now I want to talk about something.”
“What?”
“You said they’ll bring down the building to kill ‘me’. Not ‘us’. Just me.”
Folie groaned. In Canning’s hand was a tiny little wrist-gun that she knew packed a deceptively powerful punch. “You knew,” he said, and pulled the trigger as she dove aside. The superheated metal slug splashed on the wall behind her. “Why?”
Folie snatched the knife from her sleeve and gave him his answer.
Blood spilling, bubbling from his throat, Canning collapsed to the floor. As she pressed the panic button and walked out, he tried to crawl towards the door.
That was where they found him.