Blood Zero Sky by J. Gates Read Free Book Online Page B

trend. . . . ”
    The pause seems to last a decade as I build up the courage finish. “It appears that in the next fiscal year, N-Corp is projected to suffer a considerable financial loss.”
    I expected a long, stunned silence, a few outraged questions, laughter and disbelief, maybe then a vigorous discussion.
    But the words are barely out of my mouth when all hell erupts around me.

—Chapter ØØ4—
    The explosion sends a tongue of flame through the double doors in the back of the auditorium, and everyone in the room screams as one. Shards of glass glitter past, like a hail of diamonds. People are panicking, slamming into one another, screaming, rolling on the floor to put out burning suit jackets and skirts. To my left, a small army of security squadmen has appeared seemingly from nowhere, wearing helmets and bearing riot shields. They’ve positioned themselves between the board members and the hysterical crowd. Already, my father is being hustled out of the room, followed by Jimmy Shaw and Blackwell. That’s all I see before a curtain of smoke rolls in and obscures everything around me. Half blind, choking on the hot, dusty air, I stumble down the steps, away from the podium.
    “Randal?” I shout. “Randal?”
    He’s my only friend. Other than my dad, he’s the only one in the room who I have to make sure gets out of this alive. But this was his seat, I’m sure of it, and he’s already gone. I look around, searching for him, but everywhere I turn it’s the same: roiling, billowing smoke, churning limbs of fleeing tie-men, shrill screams, fluttering flames.
    Then, suddenly, there’s a hand gripping my elbow. I turn and see her, and that’s when I finally panic. Hazel eyes bloodshot with smoke, strawberry-blonde hair disheveled.
    “I’m Clair,” the beautiful stranger shouts over the din. “Come on.”
    It helps that the world is burning around me, that I have no idea how to get out of the conference room, that smoke obscures all the emergency exits, but who am I kidding? Even if the Headquarters weren’t crashing down around me, I would follow her anywhere.
    ~~~
    Inside the echo-filled stairwell, a red emergency light flashes in rhythm with my pounding heart. The air is better here, though still unclean. Clair and I clamor down the steps, side by side now. The descent seems endless. Once, something in the walls coughs and the whole building shutters and seems to rock on its foundation. Shouts linger all around us, some piercing, some low, all terrifying.
    “We have to get out of the building,” Clair shouts over the chaos. “Is there a faster way?”
    There might be, but I haven’t used my dad’s “special exit” in years. I’m not even sure if this is the right stairwell.
    “Follow me,” I say, and take the lead.
    Flight after flight we descend, until my legs ache and tremble beneath me. My hope at being Clair’s savior is giving way to despair when finally I see a door with a sign on it. Through the smoky haze, I can barely make out: Floor 125—Rooftop Access
    “Here,” I cough, hardly recognizing the inhuman rasp as my own voice.
    I shove through a heavy steel door, and Clair follows me into the whispering breeze of the South-Annex rooftop.
    Stumbling into the afternoon light is like awaking from a nightmare. Bizarre serenity. Behind us, the rest of the building rises up, a smooth shard of blue-black mirror, fractured somewhere above. Down here, the only signs something is wrong are the tiny particles of debris that fall onto us from above, drifting as placidly as flakes of black snow.
    “Thanks—” I try to finish with for getting me out of that conference room, but I’m wracked with a violent coughing fit before I can.
    Clair doesn’t even look at me. She’s glancing around the rooftop, back toward the door from which we emerged. “We have to get out of here,” she says.
    From above comes the low rumble of another small explosion, and in my mind I’m back up in that room,