Shadow Unit 15 by Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear Page A

and on his lips he tastes the unmistakable fizz. It burns worse than he's used to. It must be very concentrated.
    "Peroxide," he says.
    "Chemically, very similar to water," Natalie remarks. She grabs his collar and his belt loop and drags him back, away, toward Ramachandran and the staff. "I need a better trick. He isn't down."
    And Eddie is. Lying in the blood, not moving. Still bleeding, a slow well visible between his lips. How fast can you drown in your own blood? If you're a gamma? How fast then?
    If you're a gamma, how fast do your eyes clear from a chemical burn?
    Hakes has staggered away from the door. He's casting about, groping: a hellish game of blindman's bluff. Dice sees Susanna raise her head from behind the table and begin creeping—tiptoeing—toward the axe. He wants to yell to her to watch out, but that'll give the game away.
    Then the part that seems like a hallucination happens. Because Dice sees an old man walk into the room—sedately, unconcerned. And with him, a young mixed-race woman, holding his hand. Except, is she there, or is she not? When he's looking at her, he can see her clear as day. But as soon as he glances back at Hakes, Dice is pretty sure he imagined her.
    She leads the old man up to Hakes, though, and the old man stops in front of him. Hakes windmills, and the old man just stands.
    "You, fellow," the old man says. "You need to stop that right now."
    Hakes stops. Perfectly balanced, suddenly, though his eyes are swollen shut and even from across the room, flat on his back, Dice can see whitish foam bubbling from between the lids.
    "Who are you?" Hakes asks. He reaches out, slowly, calibrating on the voice.
    The old man draws himself up. "Someone whose home this is, sonny. And you won't take the roof from over my head, or from over these people's heads, either. I won't have it. People need to keep warm!"
    Hakes' clutching hands grasp the old man's arm, twisting in layers of robe and cardigan. Dice tries to start to his feet, but Natalie gives his clothes a yank and he falls back down again. Susanna has forgotten she was going to get the axe and is just crouched now, staring.
    "Don't call me sonny," says Joseph Lawrence Hakes. He reaches blindly toward the old man's head.
    "Respect your elders," the old man answers. He lifts up his free hand—clad in a fingerless mitt that Dice recognizes as Hafidha's knitting. He presses the tips of his fingers to the side of Hakes' head.
    Hakes jerks, recoils. But the old man is holding his sleeve now, and he can't pull away. Hakes' hand seems to be stuck to the old man's cheek as if frozen there, and a bluish rime is spreading up his hand, up his arm, along his temple, down his throat. He gasps, shivers violently, sags to his knees. He falls, and the old man bends over him. His teeth chatter. His heels rattle against the floor. He screams a long, shivering scream.
    No one steps forward until he finally lies still.
    The old man straightens up and dusts the frost off his hands. "Ahh," he says, pink and happy. "Who'd like a nice cup of coffee, now?"
    Dice yanks himself away from Natalie. He crawls across the floor, the terrible cramps not yet subsiding. He drags himself through the slick of Eddie's blood. He sprawls across his brother's good arm and tries to press his fingers to Eddie's throat.
    Eddie's eyes blink. They focus on Dice. Eddie's lips move, and something like the touch of phantom fingers ruffles Dice's hair.
    "It's okay," Eddie says. "It's okay, big brother."
    The breath finishes coming out of him.
    It does not go back in.
    Dice puts his head down on Eddie's bloody shirt and wails between clenched teeth, not even able to form the word, no .
    "Fuck," says Natalie, behind Dice. "I know this isn't the time or the place, but I need a sandwich right now ."
     
    *
     
    Sol feels a spurt of sweet relief when his phone rings, and he recognizes the number as the main line at Idlewood. It's all okay, he tells himself. Something we'll laugh about