“Can I help you?” he asked through the security system’s comms.
One of the officers smiled in a friendly way at the security camera, thumbs hooked over his gun belt. “We’re your security detail downstairs. Shift change happened and we’re just dropping by for a quick check-in. We want to be sure everything is as it should be.”
“Everything is fine.”
“We’d still like to come in and do a security check,” the other officer said with polite firmness.
Considering only the police and MDF knew why a squad car was parked outside his building, Brendan opted to let them inside. He palmed open the door and waved them through. “Feel free to look around.”
Brendan didn’t think anything of letting them into his apartment. Their uniforms were regulation and they carried themselves like cops. Growing up in a family of cops meant Brendan inherently trusted the men and women who put on that uniform.
“Going somewhere we should know about?” the shorter cop asked.
“What?”
The cop pointed at Trevor’s suitcase against the wall. “If you’re planning on leaving anytime soon, the station should be updated.”
“That’s my brother’s,” Brendan lied. “He was here over the weekend but got called in for overtime and left it behind.”
Luckily nothing else of Trevor’s was within view other than the tablet, which was locked, but Brendan could pass that off as his own. The officers did a cursory circuit of the apartment before meandering closer to the door. They smiled at Brendan, but their hands were resting on their holstered guns and Tasers and that detail gave him pause.
“Everything good?” Brendan asked.
“Yeah, just one last thing to take care of and we’ll be on our way.”
The lights in the apartment flickered before going out. The windows weren’t shaded dark, and late afternoon sunlight filtered through. It was enough illumination for Brendan to see both cops pulling their weapons free, and that spurred him into action.
He ran for the bedroom even as he accessed his bioware and called Trevor on the emergency line programed into his contacts. The snap in his ear of a live connection had Brendan yelling, “Trevor, they—”
Something dug into his back, a sharp pinch that heralded the surge of electricity from a Taser that jerked Brendan to a painful stop. High volts of electricity coursed through his body, fiery agony accosting every single nerve. Brendan couldn’t do anything but shake through it, frozen by electricity that paralyzed him.
When the shock stopped, he fell to the floor, the scent of urine thick in his nose. He couldn’t breathe, limbs twitching in the aftermath. The kick to his side had him rolling onto his back, barely able to curl around the pain that radiated from the blow. Brendan stared up at the blurry officers standing over him and couldn’t find his voice.
“He’s all yours, boys,” one of the officers said.
Brendan flopped his head to the side, watching dazedly as five men he didn’t recognize sauntered into his apartment.
“Make it quick,” the other officer said as he and his partner headed for the door. “The power in the building is off but it won’t stay that way for long.”
They left, but not before one of them fried the control panel by the door with the Taser, destroying the security camera there.
Fuck you, it’s backed up by the MDF now.
That giddy thought rattled through Brendan’s brain as the door slid shut behind the cops, leaving him at the mercy of strangers. The tallest man got within kicking distance and didn’t wait, taking the cops’ advice to heart. He drew back his leg and Brendan couldn’t get his body to work well enough to even brace for the blow that slammed into his chest.
The bruising force sent him skidding against the door frame. All the air was punched out of his lungs and he couldn’t breathe. Curled on his side, he couldn’t escape the next blow, or the one after that. Someone grabbed his ankle, dragging him away from the wall into the middle of the living room and that circle of hellish pain.
“This is what you get for messing with the Hawthornes and the Sons of Adam,” one of the men sneered.
Someone grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him to his knees. Brendan’s head snapped to the side from a punch, blood filling his mouth as his lip split and teeth gouged into his cheek. His entire face throbbed in pain as he blinked dazedly down at the floor.
I’m going to die here.
The thought was a whisper in the back of his mind as the man holding him drew back his fist for another punch.
It never landed.
The door to the apartment blew apart, metal crumpling from an invisible force. Four of the men surrounding Brendan were picked up and thrown aside, slamming into the walls with bone-crushing force. His shirt ripped as the man holding him screamed in pain when they were separated, his attacker’s arm going limp in a strangely mushy way Brendan had only seen in crush injuries.
