Ultraviolet Read Free Page A

of a large circular shield, a sort of Trojan design that I used sometimes in Demon Age 3 . If it had been made of steel it would have weighed a ton, but my shield was made of cold photons, and it weighed nothing at all. It was almost perfectly black because the light was all trapped in the object, but it did have a soft violet glow all over that was a little brighter along the edges.
    Damn. Photon bleed at the upper edge of the visible spectrum.
    Well, no one gets it right the first time.
    I was still looking at the inner side of the shield attached to my gloved hand when the man started shooting at the outer side.
    He fired four or five times before I really understood what was happening, and then he paused and we both realized that his bullets weren’t getting through my solid light shield, and I angled my hand closer to my body, more deliberately shielding myself, just as he fired three more times, and then twice, and then five more all in a row.
    I huddled behind the shield, my heart in my throat. But I felt nothing. No impacts, no injuries. But I saw the smashed bullets clinking quietly on the ground at my feet in front of the shield.
    Holy shit, it works.
    I peeked out around the shield and saw Frost reloading his gun, so I turned and punched the edge of my shield against the locked door, and the laser-fine edge sliced through the lock, letting the door swing open. I dashed down the steps, holding the shield awkwardly over my shoulder to cover my back, and its violet edges scraped and shredded the walls behind me as I ran.
    Apparently I had miscalculated how sharp the edges of an object made out of warped lasers could be.
    Oops.
    I got all the way down to the street before I stopped to look back and saw how the damaged walls were falling apart to create a jungle of boards and plaster and metal spearing out across the steps all the way up the stairwell, and it looked like Frost was still way, way up there, fighting his way down through the mess.
    I ran out into the alley behind the building where I found a lot of boxes and trashcans and a dead cat, and I ran.
    “Lux, off.”
    The big black shield with its violet glow disappeared, and I ran and ran and ran until I couldn’t run anymore.

Chapter 2

Field Test
    When I finally stopped running I was about eight blocks from home and barely able to breathe. A lifetime of sitting at a terminal or sitting with my phone hadn’t really prepared me for running from the cops.
    My phone. Shit.
    I yanked it out and turned off the GPS, and then with a roll of my eyes, I started walking again. I’d been leaving digital breadcrumbs east, so now I turned south just so I wouldn’t be where they thought I was. It was the middle of the afternoon, so I felt somewhat safe staying in the alleys behind the shops. They were completely empty and too narrow for a car to drive down, so it felt safer. Maybe it wasn’t but it felt that way.
    After another three blocks, I pulled out my phone again and logged back into my printer at the apartment and cleared out the queue of designs so no one would find the specs for the holo-gloves in its memory.
    Then I walked another three blocks.
    I tried to think, I tried to come up with a plan. That’s what you do when you’re on the run, right? You have to stay one step ahead of the bad guys. Except that technically, legally, I was the bad guy. And I knew it.
    And the memory of that gun pointed at my chest just wasn’t going away.
    So I took out my phone, activated the illegal scrambler app that no one was supposed to have but everyone had anyway, and I called a friend.
    Dominic answered immediately. “Hey Car.”
    I tried to smile to sound more normal. “Hey Dom. How are things?”
    “Well, my weight is up and my blood pressure is up and my mom won’t stop coming over here to check on me, but other than that, things are only as bad as usual. How are you?”
    “Oh… Kinda in trouble, actually.”
    “What’d you do, blow all your money at that