Chapter 15 : The Colour of Blood
3:20am SST Tuesday 15 January 2085
It took Zak less than a minute to get from his hiding place to the cargo hold entrance. But by the time he had splashed his way there, the bottoms of his trouser legs were soaking.
This part of the plan was a repeat of the strategy he had used with success before – to attract attention and trigger a chase. But on this occasion, he ran the real risk of being shot.
He blocked the communication link between Sato and Krushkov, then burst in through the entrance, making sure to be heard.
‘Oh!’ he shouted, with a well-acted look of surprise.
Sato was crouched over the opening in the docking bay, lowering the spare machine guns into the ship. She turned her head and looked up at Zak in astonishment. She immediately took a grip of the gun on her shoulder and swung it round to aim at him.
Zak turned to scarper, but his right foot slipped on the wet floor. Instead of sprinting away, his legs tangled up and he tumbled through the doorway. Sato let fly with a round of fire.
Zak was sure he had scrambled clear in time, but as he got to his feet a sharp pain ripped up his right leg. The wall outside the cargo hold was torn up by the bullets, and a large triangle of video sheet stuck out of his thigh.
‘Boss!’ shouted Sato frantically. ‘A kid just burst in here, shall I go after him? Boss?’
There was no time. Zak plucked the shard out. The point was in deep, and the pain made him convulse. But he was not thinking about the pain, but about what he had allowed to happen. Getting hurt was not part of the plan. He set off down the corridor in a desperate sprint.
By the time he passed the tinted window over Phobos nightclub, the pain had intensified to an unbearable level, as each stride pounded the wound. He thought he was used to pain, but this was an altogether different experience. First, the pain represented real damage to his body, and second, he was fleeing for his real life.
He briefly closed his eyes to catch a glimpse of the cargo hold. Sato had started bounding up the steps towards the entrance.
