"For what?" Just curious, really, I'd probably broken a half dozen laws in the last ten minutes. A week ago, if you'd told me I'd be in this position, I'd assume you were crazy.
    "You are in violation of the warrant put out against you..." he started.
    "Yeah, yeah." I weighed my options, and watched him watching me weigh my options, no doubt wondering if he was going to have to shoot me. "All right." Given the rate at which potential informants keep dying on us, I didn't plan to let Gordon out of my sight no matter what. The PITS guy walked over the chopper—damn good pilot, I noted, he had maintained a perfect hover a yard off the ground during the entire conversation—and walked back over with another odd little device.
    "Put this on."
    One part went around my left wrist, the other around my upper arm.
    "What is it?"
    "Bioaura damper."
    It didn't hurt as it snapped into place. Presumably, as long as I didn't do anything dumb, it wouldn't. I could only hope I hadn't just made the stupidest decision of my life.
    He was polite enough to me as he escorted me to the chopper, but he grabbed Gordon by the back of the neck and pretty much just hauled him along, ignoring the man's protests.
    "Don't damage that brain," I muttered.

[Perspective switch: Scott]

    Along the way I struck up a pleasant conversation with our pilot. They seemed like nice guys, it was a pity I was under arrest. It wasn't long before we were hovering over the roof of the police station. I hopped out and the strike team guy hauled Gordon along; the WCL agent seemed resigned to whatever fate awaited. Scott, Winters and two more men in that silvery uniform met us there; one of the latter had In Charge written on his body language. The helicopter lifted away and headed out over the city.
    "All right," the PITS leader said. "Scott, why don't you tell us what happened in the building?" The one who had been in the chopper with me headed down into the station.
    "At the office building. We'd discovered that Gordon here was working with the people that you and I had been speaking about previously," Scott said carefully. "So we had the office under surveillance for a while. We decided to see what would happen if Needle actually made contact with him, so she came into the office"
    "Just to mess with his head, really," I admitted.
    "We were hoping he'd do something wrong and we could follow him back to who he works for," Scott continued. "I had the floor under surveillance. While we were there, one of the people dosed up with a dose of Javelin came through the door."
    "Are you aware of that case?" I asked.
    "No, what's going on?"
    "There's a genius-level serial killer in town capable of making a drug which causes the person injected with it to become a synthetic version of him for a number of hours, including his skills," the robot said. He's very good at summations like this. "Which involve psychology, chemistry, and Special Forces-level assassin training."
    "Okay." They looked very unhappy to hear that.
    "That man found very, very dead the other day? That was him," I told them.
    "The one who blew his own head off, that was this person. Who came through the door, to kill Gordon," Scott went on.
    "Why is Javelin after this guy?" the PITS leader wanted to know.
    "Because Gordon is the current end link in the chain, as far as I know neither Javelin nor myself have gotten any farther," Scott told him. "Of people who originally allowed Javelin to get enough access to chemicals to kill Senator Ellis, and the prosecutor, and all the people who were killed in that. Javelin then realized that they were probably going to kill him in order to destroy the backtrail. He escaped from the hospital, and now he is trying to trace them back in hope that he can eventually kill enough people that they will either leave him alone or he will kill them all."
    "And you got ahead of him on Gordon?"
    "We caught up with him on Gordon. We got there about the same time."

[Perspective switch: Everyone Else]

    All the sudden someone kicked the roof door open. Cops in SWAT gear poured out and opened fire. Scott moved faster than I have ever seen him and blocked the door, sending the bullets through himself at a harmless upward angle. That gave the rest of us a crucial few moments to recover. I hit the ground and rolled over to the PITS guys.

[Perspective switch: Phoenix Talon, then Lucky]

    "Can you get this fucking thing off me?" I asked the PITS leader. There were still two cops with guns on the roof, and at least three of us didn't have any defenses at all.
    Winters pulled out her gun. "Cease fire! Cease fire! What are you idiots doing?!"
    Mr. Lu pressed a button and things clicked in the device on my arm. I threw up a shield over everyone not shooting except Scott, pushing myself to the limit. Lu pulled out his radio.
    "Get the chopper back, we need evac now, now!"
    "Hell, I can get us up," I told him.
    "Miss, if there's any way you can get us out of a situation where the police are firing on us, I would appreciate if you'd do it with all due speed."
    "BANZAI!" someone shouted from inside, and then Phoenix came bursting through the door. "They're all mind-controlled!" He pointed at the strike team and asked, "Are they bad guys?"
    "No," I told him firmly. "Scott, go gaseous." This was going to be a little tricky, juggling five people. I gathered them up and put some vertical distance between us and the cops as a deep fog engulfed the stairwell and they began firing again.
    What the hell had just happened?
    "Who are you?" Phoenix asked Winters.
    "Winters. Police liaison. You must be Phoenix Talon."
    They kept shooting.

[Perspective switch: Lucky and Albert]

    When we finally got out of range I released a shaky breath. Then I heard the choppers coming in. One of them was from PITS, the other two were police. I headed for the former.

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