As he fell, he fired five times in rapid succession, saw the bullets strike their targets and explode on impact, then the ground came up and he fell the bone-jarring impact and heard a loud snap as he struck.
The stairwell was full of smoke. Ben Stone coughed and squinted, trying to see through it. He heard something and fired at the sound. A man cried out and Stone saw a disruptor come clattering down the stairs. He grinned.
“Got you, you bastard!” he said, triumphantly.
He bent down to pick up the weapon and then suddenly a figure came flying through the air, directly at him. Delaney hit him and both men tumbled down the stairs. Delaney scrambled to his feet, trying to ignore the pain of the smashed bone in his elbow. He pulled his knife out its sheath and raised it, then saw that Stone was lying motionless on the smoke-filled landing, his neck at a crazy angle. He was dead.
Delaney bent over him and found his warp disc. Coughing from the smoke and grunting with pain, he programmed it for non-specific time and clocked Stone’s body to the dead zone. Then he retrieved his disruptor and moved back to the first floor.
Tilley crawled to the edge of the roof and looked over. There was no more laser fire coming from the other side. He heard someone groaning in the street below and looked down to see Cooper lying there, sprawled on his back, his weapon on the ground beside him. He heard movement behind him and spun around-
“Easy. Tilley!” said Delaney.
With a sigh of relief. Tilley lowered his weapon. “We get ’em all?”
“I think so,” said Delaney. “I clocked out the bodies. Geordy didn’t make it.”
“Shit…” said Tilley.
“How bad are you hit?”
“Don’t know…
“Where’s Cooper?”
“Down there.” said Tilley, jerking his head toward the street below.
Delaney looked over the side. There was shouting in the street and the distant sound of bells as the fire brigade approached. Cooper was trying to crawl toward where his gun lay in the street.
“Damn,” Delaney swore, “Tilley get out of here. Clock back to Plus Time.”
“What about-”
“Forget it. We’ve lost our transition point. Tell the strike force to stand by. Nobody moves till we send word. Now go!”
“Got it.”
Tilley reached for his warp disc and clocked out. Delaney ran back down the stairs and tumbled through the smoke and out the back door. He ran down the alleyway out to the street. People were converging on the rooming house, carrying buckets of water. Delaney ran over to Cooper, who’d just managed to retrieve his gun.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” grimaced Cooper, groaning through his teeth. “Misjudged the distance slightly… Peter Pan I ain’t. Broke both my damn legs
…”
“Come on, we’re clocking you out…”
“What about Tilley?”
“He’s clocked out already. I think he’ll make it.”
“Geordy?”
“Dead,” said Finn. “But he got ’em all.”
“Son of a bitch.” said Cooper, gasping.
Delaney fumbled for Cooper’s warp disc.