Fast by Shane M Brown Page A

breath enough to jerk a fire extinguisher from the wall. She dashed towards the lift.
                ‘No, wait –’ Coleman said, but he never finished his sentence.
                The entire lift surged up under his boots, tossing him into the air.
                ‘Hol-ly shit,’ Coleman warbled as he landed on his heels, amazed and stunned by the incredible force that could jerk an elevator around like a yoyo.
                He thrust out a hand, but two more powerful jerks came so close together that he couldn’t recover his balance. He lost his footing and fell awkwardly on the carriage floor. The breath whumped from his body. Worse, and with a dreadful feeling of helplessness, Coleman realized his boot no longer jammed open the elevator doors. The doors started closing. He couldn’t reach the controls. He couldn’t block the doors. He couldn’t even get onto his hands and knees.
                He was literally bouncing off the elevator floor.
                Vanessa dove forward, thrusting the base of the fire extinguisher through the closing gap.
                The doors hit the extinguisher and started opening again.
                ‘Come on,’ she yelled. ‘Get out of there, Alex!’
                Coleman gave up trying to stand. He scrambled towards the doors and used the momentum of the next floor-surge to propel himself through the gap. He landed hard on his hands and knees outside the elevator.
                ‘Get ready to shoot the extinguisher!’ Vanessa yelled before Coleman could even rise. She heaved the fire extinguisher into the elevator and then, madly reaching her arm into the lift, fumbled with the control panel for the second that the elevator wasn’t jerking up and down. ‘Shoot it now! Shoot the extinguisher!’
                Coleman drew his colt and aimed.
                Blam!
                His bullet pierced the extinguisher a fraction of a second before the lift jerked again. As the carriage doors closed, the fire extinguisher flew into the air with foam spewing from its pierced cylinder.
                Now Coleman lay on the floor looking at Vanessa’s trainers. Their positions had completely reversed. She reached a hand down to help him up.
                Accepting the offered hand, Coleman stood up and checked her over for injuries. As well as being his ex-partner and mother of his child, she was the person Coleman’s platoon had been tasked to protect under any circumstances. Vanessa’s stolen genetic templates had triggered the entire operation.
                Flushed and breathing hard from her flight from the creature, she seemed to be in good physical condition. She still had the long lithe muscle tone of a regular swimmer, and she had certainly been moving at a cracking speed down the corridor ahead of the creature.
                ‘Thanks,’ Coleman said. ‘That was fast thinking. You saved my ass.’
                ‘What the hell are you even doing here?’ Vanessa repeated, throwing up her hands. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
                Coleman looked her straight in the eye. ‘I thought you might have those answers. Why don’t we start with David. Where is he?’
                ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out!’ Vanessa stalked past Coleman and picked up the receiver of a red emergency telephone mounted near the fire stairs. There were no buttons to dial numbers. ‘This should automatically call the admin hub and then redirect to the evac center.’
                Vanessa listened, frowned into the receiver and the tapped the reset button a few times. ‘It’s not working. These things are meant to be unbreakable.’
                ‘Where was David supposed to be when the evac sounded?’ insisted Coleman. ‘In