DIRE : BORN (The Dire Saga Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

little. This was the gutter, and... and wait.  If I went down far enough, I'd find a storm drain.  To hell with stealth! I bolted the ball down the street, and popped it down the first drain I found, ignoring Kinetica's shout.
    With all the casual motions I could muster, I turned and slipped into the night, past the scattered onlookers. As I walked I simultaneously controlled the drone, and tried to find a way back to the surface. Behind me I heard the jet lift off, the heroes evidently done wasting time. Good! I'd dodged a bullet there; I had the feeling that they would have asked questions I couldn't answer.
    I was so engrossed with maneuvering the drone, that I didn't notice the group forming ahead of me until they were thirty feet away.
    “Hey.” The guy in the lead grinned, white teeth in the darkness. He wore a heavy leather jacket, and an armband with a skull on it. Just like the five men behind him, and the two spreading out to flank me.
    “Nice mask, babe. You look lost. Why don't you come with us?”
    I killed the screen on the drone, and put my hands in my pockets, finding the forcefield generator. It would guard me against bullets, I knew. But slow-moving attacks like fists or knives wouldn't be stopped— they wouldn't trigger the field. My free hand crawled up to my belly, finding the butt of the pistol at my waist.
    “SHE DECLINES.”
    The group backed the hell up, surprised by my roar. It had bought me a second. I knew that if I capitalized on their surprise I could get a head start, flee the scene and possibly lose them among the rubble and backstreets.
    And yet... and yet I felt disinclined to do so. Something in me balked at running any further, since I'd done plenty of that this night. And something else within me knew that these punks were no real threat to me, unless I got very stupid.
    That said, I was outnumbered, and my force field couldn't handle it if they closed.
    Next step: Intimidation.
    I jerked my pistol free, popped the safety off, and held it pointing down. “DEPART. SHE WILL LEAVE NOW, AND HAS NO TIME FOR YOU.”
    Half of them stepped back. The other half started drawing their own guns I stood my ground. I had hoped they would switch to something the force field could stop, and they'd obliged.
    “You come on our street!” yelled the leader, waving some sort of large-caliber pistol around. “You come on our street and tell us what to do? You fucking know who we are?” He moved a step toward me, moved a few more when I kept my gun lowered.
    “NO. NOR DOES SHE CARE. SHE'S LEAVING, FEEL FREE TO DO THE SAME.”
    “Bitch, we're the Black Bloods! And you're meat!”
    By this point he was up to me, screaming in my face from a few feet away.  I glared at him from under my mask, started to raise my hand, and he shot me.
    A flare of light as the force field did its job, a whine as the bullet ricocheted off into the distance, a crack as it hit a wall, and a dull thud from his head as I slammed the gun's butt into his cheekbone. He staggered back a few steps, and my foot met his groin so hard that it hurt my toes. He folded to the ground, a shriek escaping his throat as he went.
    “RIGHT. ANYONE ELSE WANT TO FORFEIT FUTURE REPRODUCTIVE POTENTIAL? COME ON. SHE HASN'T GOT ALL NIGHT.”
    Low muttering among the remaining punks, and another one shot at me.  The force field flared again, and I rolled my eyes. Real geniuses, here. Still, they'd deplete the field's charge if they kept it up.  Looked like there was no help for it... I raised the gun, and they started to move toward cover.
    “Hey,” came a voice from a side-alley.  It was followed by the “click” of a safety, and the remaining punks froze. I knew that voice.
    “HELLO ROY.”
    The old man nodded to me, never taking his squinting eyes or the point of his gun away from the black-jacketed youths. “So. You boys are in what we used to call a crossfire ambush right now. She's got the east, and I've got her flank.”
    One of