Then one of the Gadsden Liners had enough, a blond man with a white goatee and small round sunglasses. He drew out his handgun, began marching toward her. She backed up as the man raised his gun at her, getting low to the ground and positioning herself in front of Ampersand’s head and neck, the parts of him that were most vulnerable. Terror flooded her, much stronger than the sense of grief she’d experienced a few minutes ago, mixing with her own, drowning her in it. Ampersand was still conscious, she could sense it. Unable to move, just like in her nightmares. He was experiencing every helpless moment of this.

The man held the gun at her, point-blank. “Get out of the way!”

Her breath was coming hot and fast now, her skin being torn off by a bed of needles, white spots clouding her vision. “No, please, no!”

She backed up against Ampersand, spreading her arms out like that would do any fucking good. Captive, trapped, but this time, Ampersand couldn’t even try to protect her. She just threw her hands up and begged, “No!”

“Get out of the fucking way!”

She could feel his fear as keenly as her own and him mirroring it right back, a fear ouroboros, and she could not think, could not strategize. Could only stay plastered where she was, begging this violent stranger, “Please, don’t! Stop! Stop!”

“Put down the fucking weapon!” She heard a man scream it, multiple men screaming it, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the black barrel of that handgun.

“Put it down!” One more time.

She cried out as she heard the shots, closing her eyes and bracing for the impact. Seconds stretched over millennia, one shot, then five, then twenty. She opened her eyes and saw the man with the gun on the ground being riddled with bullets, his body twitching with each impact as the people behind him panicked and mobbed trying to get away. It was the LAPD doing it.

She couldn’t take her eyes off the man with the gun, now a corpse with a dark red pool forming under him. There were people behind him who had been shot, too, unfortunates caught in the LAPD’s frenzied line of fire. It felt like a dream. He’s dead. He’s so obviously dead. Why do they keep shooting him?

Do they enjoy this?

She turned to her right, to the cluster of police officers who still had their guns trained on the dead man. Some of them were restraining Kaveh, wrestling him to the ground. One of the police officers now had his gun trained on her.

“Get on the ground!” the officer screamed. “On your stomach, now, hands behind your head!”