"Lock it!" he gasped. She keyed the door shut. They were in some Durona's residence suite. A cul-de-sac made a poor bolt-hole, but help seemed to be on the way. He just wasn't sure for whom. Something just dropped your force screen. . . . From the inside. It could only have been dropped from the inside. He half-bent, mouth wide for air, lungs on fire, heart racing and chest aching, a dizzy darkness clouding his vision. He stumbled to the dangerous window anyway, trying to get a handle on the tactical situation. Muffled shouts and thumps penetrated from the wall by the corridor.

"How t'hell'd those bastards get your screen down?" he wheezed to Rowan, clutching the windowsill. "Didn't hear an explosion—traitor?"

"I don't know," Rowan replied anxiously. "That's outer-perimeter security. Fell's men are supposed to be in charge of it."

He stared out over the icy parking lot of the compound. A couple more green-clad men were running across it, shouting, pointing upward, taking cover behind a parked vehicle, and struggling to get a projectile weapon aimed. Another guard made urgent negative gestures at them; a miss could take out the penthouse and everyone in it. They nodded and waited.

He craned his neck, face to the glass, trying to see upward and to the left. The armored aircar loomed, still hovering at the penthouse window.

The assailants were withdrawing already. Damn! No chance with the force-screen. I'm too slow. The aircar rocked as the troopers hastily re-boarded. Hands flashed, and a thick little gray-clad figure was dragged across the gap, six heart-stopping flights above the concrete. A limp trooper was dragged across too. They were leaving no wounded for questioning. Rowan, teeth clenched, pulled him back. "Get out of the line of fire!"

He resisted her. "They're getting away!" he protested. "We should fight them now, on our own turf—"

Another aircar rose from the street, beyond the old and obsolete compound wall. A small civilian model, unarmed and unarmored, it fought for altitude. Through its canopy he could see a blurred gray-clad figure at the controls, a white flash of teeth set in a grimace. The assailants' armored car yawed away from the window. The Dendarii aircar tried to ram it, to force it down. Sparks sprayed, plastic cracked, and metal screeched, but the armored car shook it off; it pinwheeled to the pavement and landed with a terminal crunch.

"Rented, I bet," he groaned, watching. "Gonna have to pay for it. Good try, it almost worked—Rowan! Are any of those aircars down there yours?"

"You mean the group's? Yes, but—"

"Come on. We've got to get down there." But the building was crawling with security by now. They'd be nailing everyone to the wall till identified and cleared. He could scarcely leap out the window and fly down the five flights, though he longed to. Oh, for a cloak of invisibility.

Oh. Yes! 

"Carry me! Can you carry me?"

"I suppose, but—"